Holy. Fucking. Shit. Yes...

Tribe To Tribe Marathon...

Let it play out. That's all I could think as I was hopping on busses and off busses after the marathon, wandering streets looking for things I didn't know I was looking for, yawning to correct nausea and holding my pounding head, sweating and malnourished, sharing the back seat of a bus with 5 gracious Thais, all of us trying to make it back to Chang Mai for different reasons on a Sunday night...feeling like I was going to die, convinced that every moment I survived would only strengthen my lines in this life...

Chiang Mai & Mae Sariang...

Before I left Mozza to do the things I had to do with life, I was rapping with Nancy Silverton about the best meal I had ever had. I told her I was staying at this cheap place outside of Venice sometime in 2007. Italy. I remember being in the middle of this very lonely, yearning stretch. It was raining out and I left the grounds of my place and just started walking down a country road before I kept walking...and walking...and walking. Eventually, miles away and soaked, I stumbled into this place that looked like a farm house in the middle of Wisconsin. They gave me a table and I felt like they didn't really want me there before they served me the most extraordinary meal I had ever eaten. When this lead was presented to Ms. Silverton - the greatest meal I had ever eaten, and outside of Venice - she wanted to know everything: the tastes, the presentation, the style...bottom to top then back over again. I think she knew me as eloquence in a lot of ways but in those moments I was anything but. I told her I remembered being sad, and cold, and lonely and lost, and then that I felt like everyone hated me before my Nebbiolo came with a simple pasta course, home made with an easy and beautiful marinara before another glass of red with a pizza they folded into something that looked like a calzone before they practically kicked me out. It's possible I was being overdramatic, as usual, or not...and at some point she asked me fairly emphatically what I liked about it, as if I wasn't remembering my life correctly, before someone cut in to talk to her...

Today, after checking in, after all the connections and thought it took for me to be wandering through Mae Sariang, I was starving. There was a guy on the street one block down and one up from my hotel, cooking on the outside edge of the patio of this place with a TV and yellow and green checked tablecloth and some locals strewn about. He was plating for this woman a simple dish - chicken on rice with greens and a hard boiled egg. I walked up and he looked at me very suspiciously before I pointed to what he was plating and held up 2 fingers. He pointed to a table and I sat down. There were a lot of flies and jugs of water on the tables and a couple minutes later, he brought me exactly what I ordered - chicken on rice with some odd greens and a hard boiled then browned egg and a small bowl of chicken soup. The first bite of the chicken made me think back to Venice - that was my first thought, these two joints fighting for rank. It tasted like he had been soaking the chicken in whisky and caramel and black magic for weeks - unreal. I ordered the same thing again and it came and I ate it and when I asked for my bill, he asked for 50 baht or about 1.65 and then I went on my way, trying not to blink too fast or at all because I'm beginning to recognize my greatest fear -- missing any of this as it's happening, all that is happening...

Korp Kun Krap Thailand...

Tomorrow morning I'm getting up at 630, heading to the airport in Samui. Can't believe it's already been 20 days. After living on an island for most of it, I need some big city jolt before heading to another island. Everything here is so close. I used to have this dark spot in my mind - what cultures were like on this side of the world - like I didn't understand the world completely and how all of it worked together. Now that plans are starting to form in my mind, I'm beginning to think of the world as a very small place - or at least I will fully when this is all said and done.

I thought I was going to stay in Thailand for a long, long time. It's such a big country - so many places to go, so many different flavors to taste and see. I got it, at least as well as I'll ever need to right now. Something is taking me elsewhere, and it's the kind of something I'd be best not to question, the kind of something I'd be better off just following. So that's what I'm doing. I feel detached and exhausted, wonderfully exhausted, like there are things inside of me that needed to get pulled out and got pulled out.

There's a Girl here that's been treating me real good, a Girl I have to say goodbye to tomorrow morning, who I will see again and not forget. She caught it nicely...

Reset...
Reload...
Repeat and onward.

Angthong...

This...

Made me go back and get my camera. I felt like today, I committed to a cause that will propel the rest of my life. Today, I finally felt like I dug my toes in and made a commitment to be strong, to bury any past perceptions I've had of myself, good or bad and essentially start from scratch. I was walking back from my 3rd hard workout of the day and I was swaying before I dropped myself in the pool. They were setting up for the night - nights here are always big...and Absolution was playing on the beach...the entire album...all the way through. Fucking Absolution. My chest was beating so hard in the water, it was making waves. To the south, a massive island storm was on its way - lightning continuously lighting up the sky. All I had to do was sit and breathe and realize it would be a moment in my entire life I would never forget, and that I am finding my stride.

Koh Phagnan...

Full Moon...

Sometime around 730, I'm getting picked up in front of my hotel and heading to Koh Phagnan, an island about 20 kilos from Koh Samui...because once a month, this legendary thing is supposed to take place - Thailand's Full Moon Party. People from all over the world that are staying all over Thailand or any nearby place of living end up on Phagnan 12 times a year. One of those nights is tonight.

I was walking through the front of the hotel a little while ago, stopped in for a chat with my Thai girl. She essentially runs the place I'm staying and every time I walk by or through, she treats me like a burden pig so no suspicions are raised. Of course I know this and stop by quite often, making sure I'm flirting, and hard, quite often. It pisses her off. Really. I love it. At night I leave my door unlocked and she'll slip in when I fall asleep if we haven't been out together already. Last night we were lying in bed and I told her I was going to Full Moon and she balked for a second before accusing me of saying I wasn't going to go. I never said that. There was this moment then when I could tell she was feeling something before she said something like, good...so you can meet some other girls...I'm happy for you. I think I said something like, no that's not me I'm not really like that. Then I tried to lean on my tone to convince her I'm like nothing like anything she has ever come across in her life (an exhausting bit, really), and that her expectations for my side of our species could not be laid upon me...

But I was riffing, and quick and when I looked up she was confused and I could tell she didn't understand my string of words, and was probably still thinking about what had happened with us, thinking about her own thinking that I was so incredibly harmless before I wasn't. I think I said something like don't worry. Then I said it again and sometime after, I think we went to sleep. At 6, her phone started making noises and shortly after, after checking to make sure no one would see her, she slipped out.

I'm here for another week and then I'm leaving. That's been in my head from the beginning. Truth, permanent abandonment will be in my head for the duration of this trip...and because of that, I trust myself to handle any any all situations such as the above mentioned with as much love and delicacy as I am capable. I don't know exactly what's in her head but I can speculate. I have an idea about how things are going to go down when I'm leaving next week, but then again maybe I don't.

Are You Happy?

I've been rapping with the great Lindsey Long about Lost and its finale and the astounding Moulin Rouge (which was on here in Thailand yesterday...as was P.S. I Love You ((I'm sure the guild is right on top of that, aren't they Steve!)), when she decided to so casually drop the casual, "Are You Happy?" Big question. Maybe the biggest question of them all...

Let me say first off that I am an extraordinarily self-reflective person. Probably to a fault. It means I usually know what every decision I make means to me, at least on the grand scale. When the decision came for me to get up and leave Los Angeles, there was room for a thousand questions, most of them concentrating around the word why. Los Angeles was comfortable and accessible. I had love for it and it had love for me. It didn't make sense for me to get up and do what I did...but maybe that's exactly why I knew I had to - why I knew I didn't have a choice. I would also be lying if I didn't admit something was strangling me there, taking me and squeezing me dry of something I can't afford to be dry of. I needed a rinse. I needed a shake. I needed to reset myself and have now begun to start that process here.

Yes, I am happy. Absolutely. I was happy when I was in Los Angeles too. Absolutely. Like most people if they are willing to admit, I can swing pretty far in both directions, and often do. When I hit black, I try to understand it and know that I have control over the events that will lead me back towards the light. I know what it takes, know a little better what it takes every time I go into badness and get out of it.

The question of happiness means a lot coming from who it came from because about 3 years ago, we met up and lived together in Cape Town for 8 weeks - essentially to do similar things as the things I'm doing here. There were times in paradise where we hit some form of black and didn't know how to handle it because how could something like that exist in the place we were living? That's what we were thinking. That's what we were asking each other - heavy when you consider it. Just like everything in this life, circumstances can't change you. I think we understood that better than most people, at least because we were in it and living in it...or at least we understand it excellently now.

So when it was time to move to Thailand, to come over here and go searching again - I didn't expect it to be some form of rescue. Never in my life would I ever rely on something like this to patch something in my former life. That would be weak and evasive and I flag shit like that instantly and face it instantly. This was something else. This was in my guts. If I've learned to trust anything in this world, it's that my intuition is strong and I must follow it.

I came here to write another book, or to find the colors for the next book - even though the first one is still, actually still in limbo. It makes me sleepless but not really. I came here to train for the November Ironman in Cozumel. Yesterday I ran a morning and evening 5k sprint and swam for an hour in the ocean. This morning, I already ran for 90 minutes in the soul-sucking heat...and I genuinely, genuinely feel like I have yet to commit to the cause. My head is so beautifully poisoned. So I'm dealing with that...a lot of that. The first day I got here, I met a Thai girl who reminded me of my sole crazy at first sight that I never took to bed. I was so in love with this girl and it never happened because of her. When I met this Thai girl, she was so shy, barely spoke English. I've been spending time on Google translator, started to get worried that I was turning into a Love Actually arc when last night, she came knocking on my door. She spoke English beautifully and then didn't have to. Now I have a Thai girlfriend until the 5th of June and she woos me incredibly.

Happiness is difficult to define. I still wake up in the mornings here and know I have to bleed something out. I think of all the rabid dogs I'll have to outrun and of the fights that will ensue in those following moments and for the rest of my life. At 6 in the morning, even here, that's black. I am aware of it, and also that it is here because I summon it, because I cannot survive without it. After 28 years of life, I've come to accept and understand what is necessary for me to operate with honesty. When hurt comes, it's usually because I'm asking it to come, to test me, to lend me new understanding before I deal with it. The origin usually stems from worlds that are out of my control or self-imposed titanic expectations I have of myself and I know that, know all of that. Like I said, I am an incredibly self-reflective person. I am aware of these battles. I am aware that with all of the light I live in and with all the light I believe I desire to shine, I'm equally evil and coarse. If you don't know, you don't know me. Not many do. That's how it will always remain...and I wouldn't be saying that unless there was a need. There is.

I feel open, more open than I have felt in a long, long time. I can feel everything here. I can feel so much. That truth makes me lose myself for moments thinking about it. Happiness to me...happiness to me is feeling like I am on a journey, knowing that everything happening here, every moment of literally every day is banking somewhere inside of me, giving me some form of a greater understanding of myself, of the people all around me. That is happening. I am growing. Saying that, knowing it's the truth...I'm happy here.

Samui Falls...

Not Training...

Last night I got pulled to an event at this hotel on the water called The Library. Very cool joint. They flew an artist in (from Los Angeles of all places) to showcase his work and then flew in an equally talented chef to create a 5 course dinner menu that would match the colors and textures of the paintings. Harmony, or so they said...and was achieved. It was a great night. I met three other people from my end of the table and we paired wines with each course. After, we jumped in a car and crossed town to seek out a fabled bar that two of us had never been to and was supposed to be tucked back into one of the hills of Samui, chasing immortality...or so I say.

Training...

This morning, like the last 2, I got up in the 6's to go for a run. I thought today I would extend things to about 8 miles, as I'm slowly letting my body come to terms with what it's like to chase strength in this heat. Deciding to take on the Ironman is propelling me. The fact that I need to qualify for Kona in 6 months is propelling me. I know I'll have to find new spaces in myself that I didn't think existed. It's not that I'm not ready for them yet but more...one thing at a time.

I had one major concern coming over here and training across uncontrolled territories - stray dogs. Stray dogs don't like runners. They don't trust us - here I am speaking for the collective when I might be the only one on the planet with this problem...but I know that's not true. Even the craziest of crazed dogs will usually follow me wherever I am going. It's a fact. In Thailand and on the main stretch of Chaweng, they're everywhere. Most of them are absolutely friendly and most of them are too hot or too old or too hungry to give a shit about someone running by. But some do. Right now, I'd say about 1 in 14 do give a shit. Today, at about the turnaround or the 4 mile mark, I met one of them. You can usually tell right away if they are going to make a move on you. It's in their eyes, a distinct change in their movement. As I ran past today, this one came after me, barking and moving with me, looking like it was going to take a swipe at my feet or my shoes - as it's understandable and widely known that some dogs absolutely have a shoe fetish, right? The first time I passed, I slowed down to an easy jog, began yelling and flagging my shirt in its face. Once we had gone about a hundred yards, it turned back, not wanting to get taken too far from home or having successfully chased me away from it's territory. I knew I was going to come the same way home, knew that the same fucker was going to be sitting outside of the same shop and waiting for me...

I came to the top of a hill and he was watching me. He was EXACTLY fucking waiting for me. He was watching the cars pass in front of him like Frogger waiting for a break so that he could cross and fuck with me. I got to the top of the hill and started walking, hoping that he might let me slide. He wasn't about to. When he broke for me, I broke. There were Thais on the opposite side of the road and they were watching this crazy dog chasing a monster Farang and I can only imagine the Thai things they were saying to one another. Maybe they said nothing. There was a moment I looked back and realized he didn't stand a chance or didn't want to and I turned around and taunted the dog because why wouldn't I before turning back and finishing at a blazing pace all the way home, so fast the 20 or so dogs I then passed didn't even think of chasing me.

I am a person who does everything he can to find light in darkness, to spin and spin and spin until things turn out in my head the way I know I'll need them to turn out in my life. These dogs scattered all over this island and wherever else I'm headed, they are my gift. They are here to keep me sharp and alert and they are here to teach me to love them and they are here to make me fast, so fast. For that, I am grateful.

Chaweng...

It's 10 in the morning now. While the video was uploading, I walked to the beach. The cats chase crabs here and watching them is a good way to get some sun and listen to music and pass some time. I have to walk to the street to find some goggles to keep salt out of my eyes when I swim. That's my major sub noon development in Koh Samui, as I've already been up since 4 and writing. There's a party at my resort today, every wednesday and it's supposed to draw from most of this side of the island.

Durban is staying north of me. I told him I wanted to stay here and he has a place and we decided that be the best way to do things. He's recently been through something very trying and we're trying to have respect for that. When he comes to meet me, he comes to meet me and we're okay to leave it at that.

But for now, this is home...

Already On A Flight To Koh Samui...

Where I'm gonna set up for a while because I need to start training and hard and start that peel. And because after rubbing elbows with what I just rubbed elbows with, I need to get my feet on the ground, solid ground, try to come to terms with the fact that every native woman here looks a lot or at least a little bit like Phoebe Cates circa Fast Times...

And that I may never need sleep again.

So I've Got This Rocking Chair...

I think it was my grandfather's. I've got a desk, also my grandfather's. There are some boxes with my clothes in them, some electrical cords that will connect to things and make things work when I eventually come back home. There's a bottle of Jack on the bookshelf, where my books used to be, about 2 swigs are left. I don't think I'll finish it. There are backpacks, so many backpacks...clothes on the floor. A bike. A bed. European condoms. Tide...

On Friday, I'm gone from Kings Road and I think it's starting to settle in, finally. There's a race in San Francisco this weekend, Escape From Alcatraz that attracts 2000 of the baddest Tri-Aths in the world. I can feel it coming. I can taste it. My guts are starting to roll. After that, I'm here for the week before Vegas to meet the family for a much needed beat before a goodbye to Los Angeles before I get on a plane to Bangkok on May 15th, that Saturday afternoon. Flying fascinates me, absolutely. I have this talent of being able to shut off my body, to find stillness on a plane and sit for hours and hours and then it lands and I come back to life and step out into a new and bizarre and enthralling world. Then something takes over me, fucking invades me and I just breathe it in and let it in my brains and blood. I'm going to meet John Durban. We have some important work to do, such important work to do. The thought of it makes my life feel beautiful. The thought of it makes me hungry for the world, makes me want to spit my pretty poison out onto the world. Due time. Due time.

When I get there, that world is going to be fast and out of control, and I'll have to find a way to slow it, to find control of it, to take control of it, to set fucking fire to it. Me and John. Watch us, wait for us. Every day, I try to make certain that I am not the same man I was the day before. And when I go away, I don't just pull wires, I rip them, fucking tear them so that they never again fit the way they did, so that I'm lost until I'm not. Then lost again.

This is right, no matter what comes.

This is right, no matter what comes.

Tuesday Immunization Funday...

I walked into the office in Torrance, fucking Torrance and said Thailand and we were off. There was a brief discussion about rabies but with a 280 dollar price tag, I told the guy I would just run with a knife attached to my hip in case a wild monkey or dog tried to attack me. He didn't get it and there was this long silence before I tried to laugh like I was making a joke but by then it was too late and he thought I was crazy.

Durban...

Is in my head, hard, all the time these days. He won't relent - we have to go we have to go we have to go. When something creeps into his head, it becomes unstoppable. He knows me, all too well, knows my growing need to flee. I've been trying to keep things from him as best I can - not letting him in on anything until it is absolutely necessary. See, John has little patience. He has no patience. He makes me feel like I have an abundance, which is astoundingly not accurate. The thing about knowing John for as long as I have is that we have something of a shorthand. We've seen a lot of the world, been through a lot of the same shit. It makes this easier, our flow. He's been sending me pictures, one every hour on the hour today saying something like book it already motherfucker what are you waiting for...



I keep on telling him, keep on trying to explain my life, how he couldn't understand it and he usually says something like what's there to understand. Then, ditch your fucking crutches. Then, all you are these days are crutches, and weak. Then, writing bitch posts about fucking gingerbread houses and our book that you're trying to sell to New York. Then, fuck New York, they'll never understand us anyway. Then, that's not what this is about. Then, I thought this wasn't about that - or didn't need to be about that - that one would always happen without the other - that nothing is contingent and if you say it is, then you are finished my friend and not only that but that I might not want you as a friend anymore because you used to be so immune to traps - so immune. I usually take a breath and say nothing or say something like Mid May, over and over but for whatever reason, it's never good enough for him, as if I expected it to be - as if he expects me to leave tomorrow, say something like I'm on my way John, see you in Bangkok. I still have a couple ends to tie up in life or so I tell myself. No, I do. The point, I keep telling him is that someone has to sell this book - and he sure as hell isn't going to do it. Someone has got to give us weight, relevance. That's on me, and I keep trying to explain this and he doesn't seem to care, and there's really nothing I can do about that except tell him that my calendar is circled.

Our time will come again. It's approaching. Love you, brother, now leave me the fuck alone for a month. I'm trying to make you famous.

Time To Put This Down...

I posted a picture on November 20th with a title that said something exactly like Trouble Coming. There was a picture of a boat in blue water. I had Google searched something like Thailand Beaches and it seemed like the best one to fit what was in my head. I used it as a flag, something of a nod to myself to mark the moment I decided that this coming April, when my lease in LA expires, I'm buying a one way ticket to live in Thailand for a bit of time. It's not an I've had enough or an expat thing, quite the contrary. In my mind, the one life I want to live sounds exactly like this: see the world, place your voice in that world, give it life. I've always had this notion of selling a script or getting an advance on a book and using it to wipe away the 10,000 I owe in debt and then escape to the world and live somewhere where I don't have to worry about that shit and just create. Bleeding artist, I know, but if you know any truth to me, you know that's my heart. That's what I've got to stay true to. Something happened to me recently, some sort of epiphany I always knew was there. I'm a slave. The job I work runs me in circles just to support me and allow me time to write and create from Los Angeles. I love Los Angeles - there's nowhere like it...and I live a good life, I do. My complaints are so petty but still, this notion that's echoing, and it is, is saying something like what the fuck are you waiting for what the fuck are you waiting for what the fuck are you waiting for? Maybe I would feel more chained if I didn't have an escape, but the truth and my great fortune is that I have a golden ticket - a piece of paper that could remove my debt and get me where I want to go - a land where I can rent a shanty on a cliff on a beach for 5 dollars a day, where I can eat all I need for 2, where I could stretch one thousand dollars forever if I needed to. What the fuck am I waiting for? I'm not anymore. I'm gone.

This Monday, I met with a book manager that Team Burn set me up with. We had drinks in Culver City and he said something like I read everything...fucking everything from unpublished authors and this is the best thing I've read in a long time. Then he said these two magic words that went exactly like this, maybe ever. Then he told me we were going to sell it in the new year, to be ready to storm New York in February. Two days prior, the Bestselling NY Times Titan I got the book to sent me an e-mail apologizing for the wait, but that he was nearly done and that it was exactly, really...really good...very impressive. Then he told me to check back in two weeks. I didn't tell him I close strong, that if I had him early, I'll most certainly have him late. In both cases, I don't know what I felt. I've always had belief. Maybe at some point, I thought some form of validation would come but now I don't think it ever will. None of this matters. It can't matter so I'm glad it doesn't. Whether I sell this thing or whether it gets published matters but can't. If my work never sniffs a screen or a hardcover matters but can't. I was in a pure place on November 20th, alone, me and my pen and what we came up with, me and my pen, was something exactly like, we know exactly what this next book is going to be about...we know what we want to say...write it...do it...make it happen. It's in Thailand, life and my story after the work that remains in-between. I find myself often taking breaths and thinking about that and it fixes anything in the world that could possibly ail me. What else could be the path if there is one...