The man across from me looked in my direction with a twinkle in his eye that I had so long missed in the world. This man was not an alcoholic or an addict; this man was Heaven and Hell wrapped into a single spicy moment of lust, a breath of sweet air tinged with a sour essence. He left his chair and danced on the carpeted floor. His filthy, matted hair swung joyously in the air like the wings of a thousand doves leaving their tainted roost for the openness of the wide world. Eyes closed in deep concentration, the man hunched his shoulders and shook his arms in rhythm to an unseen Big Band playing the music of the soul, the free soul. His knees were snakes weaving in and out of unison with the earth's rotation. Suddenly, the man stopped dancing and looked at me with longing. He asked me simply, "Why must it be so long?" A million ideas pulsated through my head; I attempted to answer his question before understanding it. I wanted to tell him something to offset the tomes he had allowed me simply by existing right before my young, dry, crackling eyes. Long? The road? Life? Love? Hate? Death? Eternity? WHAT?!

He could see the look of determined concern on my face and promptly interjected, "Hey, man, don't think, just go. Thinking only clogs things up." I peered at him in even more confusion. I saw his face. Tattered and bedraggled it stared at me with an omniscience known only to those who don't restrain themselves. I loved the wrinkles that pervaded his sunken eye sockets. I could tell he hadn't shaved in a week or so and his beard looked rough and unkempt. He was a man of few words and even fewer treatises. I played gin rummy with this man. I talked with him and saw in his face what no one could ever say. The world may spit in the eye of very few, but only those who spit back can accomplish life under fire. This man guided me to a torrential river of questions, and promptly threw me in with nothing more than a vial of curiosity and a satchel of confidence.

Today I stand on a tiny island in the middle of this roaring river. Tongues of chilly water lap at my feet, weary from standing. I have not traveled far from my original port, and I shall not be content to hold my present position. Perhaps this man will come to usher me on. I know he won't, and I secretly don't want his help. He is dead in the earthly sense and I see him in the abysmal sky above. I clutch my possessions tightly and prepare to jump back into the icy depths. Splash! And the current takes me away. Babies and grandparents whiz by me as the river sweeps me down the dark and dangerous route towards an unknown delta. I know I will die soon, but only in death will I truly know how long, where, when, or who.

A few days ago I jumped into my pickup truck and drove away from Scottsdale, Arizona. I didn't know where I wanted to go, and that didn't matter. I wasn't concerned with where so long as I traveled away; away from this land of concrete, landscaping, and old people in Cadillacs. I went north for the heat dissipates at higher elevations near The Rim. I turned up my beloved stereo and sped away to a higher plane and a greater appreciation. I passed through Fountain Hills on my way to wherever. I saw everything I had ever loved or longed for pass before my eyes. I don't know why, but that didn't matter; again, as long as they exist.

Fountain Hills, Arizona, is a big suburb built around golf courses and one of the nation's greatest fountains. I never understood its importance to the metropolitan food chain, but I'm sure there is one and I don't care to consider it. Where Fountains Hills ends, I turned left. Shifting into fifth gear, I looked around for the ever-present police man yearning to ruin my month. I know you're out there. As I hit 80, I hoped he wasn't around. The Arizona landscape zips by me in a fusion of browns, maroons, and greens.

Thanks to El Niño, the desert hadn't been this green since the seventies. Small, dry bushes snicker as I pass. The two-lane highway splits a mountain and I gaze at the infinite layers of sedimentation that arch precariously close to my window. My road music, Phish, reminds me soon I will be just a grain of shiny sand stuck in such a cross-section. I leave the mountain pass and the land opens before me. This is not suburban Phoenix anymore. The vague desert landscape has changed! Before me stand millions of valleys and mounds. Enormous rich, red rocks stand in questionable stability overhead reminding me that "God" could play a really nasty joke on me if he wanted to. I know he's a prankster, but I'm sure he has better things to do than drop doom around an insignificant being such as myself. The boulders are smooth with weathering and I could sense a stone aristocracy. The mighty and wise elders sat crumpled and befuddled along the bottom of the valleys while the reeling youth dangled from each other, tempting gravity with their precarious positions. I observed this antediluvian trapeze with selfish disdain, knowing that I could only watch such excitement; knowing that rocks are enjoying life more than I. My contempt turned to joy when I realize rocks will be rocks and people, such as myself, have no one to blame but themselves for a boring life. Smiling, I passed through another mountain that had been blown up to accommodate my traveling whims. The mighty Saguaro cactuses danced in time with the musical earth. They reached towards the sky that gave them life. They loved the sky and sun for being; they were content to exist and revel in it.

Soon, Saguaros were replaced with trees. Trees are a difficult concept in the Valley, especially Scottsdale. People consider Scottsdale trees actual living organisms. I, however, do not. Those "trees" are landscaping, hence my excitement to see real trees. Trees that had grown from the same earth which bore them. Trees that had never tasted a pruner's blade or a gardener's fertilizer. These trees were the real deal and not some bogus impersonation. Rocks turned to grass and dead heat turned to cool breeze. Someone sighed as life was born to the desert. He smiled upon the people who left well enough alone, the people who worked with nature instead of irrigating the hell out of it and planting what they thought was pleasant. The natural experience, the quintessential return to roots. No desert landscaping , no exhorbitant concrete, no mirrored corporate offices, no Mercedes-Benz 600 SL V12's, no obnoxious attitude. Just regular things doing their best to just be regular things.

I have decided there is a time and a place for coloring outside of the lines. There is occasional merit in overstepping bounds and breaking down walls. Then there is a time to shut up, sit down, and relax in the world that created us. I finally reached my destination and it was wonderful. I stopped and got out to smell the world around me. I took a deep breath and kicked some brown pine needles. The people passing by knew I had come from far away to breathe their air and kick their pine needles, and they were kind enough to allow me to do so. After I had gotten my fill of air and green, I jumped back in to the truck and turned around. I would have to save my trip to the sun for another time for duty called back in the Valley of the Sun. As I left the little Rim town, I knew the inhabitants hadn't experienced half of the bizarre things I had. I knew they would never know the twisted things my rushed life had shown me or the smell of a wasted soul, but I found jealous solace in knowing they didn't have to know such things. They lived in the real world, and that was reason enough to live. The rocks and cacti chuckled as I returned to the rat race. They knew I would be back to nature soon. They also knew if I didn't come, then I most surely had become yet another sullen, soulless prole.

For the last four years I have slaved to bring my term as a high school student to a glorious end. I am approaching the end, and it is hardly glorious and I am far from wanting it to be so. I will set off no fireworks nor dance naked in the streets till dawn. No, I will take my silly piece of paper, that signifies so much, and sit down. I will sit for a few days, possibly a week and then I will rise, ready and willing to move on with my life, free from the high school stigma. Graduated. Yes! Yes. Yes? Eh. High school isn't all it's cracked up to be. Instead of considered a valid education experience, it is simply a gauge which tests you for acceptance to the real education: college. High school prepares you to go to a place that prepares you for the real world. I really don't understand it, but I'm not complaining; I had a wonderful time and learned a lot in my four years. I am ready to leave and never look back, but I still enjoyed it while it lasted. I have met interesting people. I have had fun, at times, being an athlete. I have been happy, sad, and extremely angry on occasion. Ignorance and competence has stumbled across my path while I tried to juggle my own level of worth. I found the tough way is the only way, though the jury is still out on the actual benefits of never cutting corners. Thousands of new things slammed my soft, malleable head. I tried things I used to only dream of, while accomplishing things only others dream of. People, places, feelings, smells, memories. I don't know what to say. All I can do is wonder who allowed me to be the person I am today. Who blessed me with the things I have to use? Who vaguely guides me in the right direction?

Why did I stumble into success while more competent people fell around me like flies, dead on the vine? What is going on here and why am I concerned?

So many questions and so little time to search for answers.

Who will answer these?
We all look for someone:

Someone to love
Someone to hate
Someone to blame
Someone to credit
Someone to believe in
Someone to abuse
Someone to save
Someone to hurt
Someone to help
Someone to control
Someone to lead
Someone to follow
Someone to listen
Someone to speak

Someone.

Who speaks to us in the night when we have no one else?
Who fills our void while hollowing us?
Who tells us how we are to live our lives?
Who says?

"Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player That struts and frets his hour upon the stage And then is heard no more: it is a tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing."

- Shakespeare, Macbeth

"So in America when the sun goes down and I sit on the old broken-down river pier watching the long, lone skies over New Jersey and sense all that raw land that rolls in one unbelievable huge bulge over to the West Coast, and all that road going, all the people dreaming in the immensity of it, and in Iowa I know by now the children must be crying in the land where they let the children cry, and tonight the stars'll be out, and don't you know that God is Pooh Bear? The evening star must be drooping and shedding her sparkler dims on the prairie, which is just before the coming of complete night that blesses the earth, darkens all rivers, cups the peaks and folds the final shore in, and nobody, nobody knows what's going to happen to anybody besides the forlorn rags of growing old, I think of Dean Moriarty, I even think of Old Dean Moriarty the father we never found, I think of Dean

Moriarty." - Jack Kerouac from On the Road

"The young hipsters seem lacking in energy and spontaneous enjoyment of life. The mention of pot of junk will galvanize them like a shot of coke. They jump around and say, 'Too much! Man, let's pick up! Let's get loaded.' But after a shot, they slump into a chair like a resigned baby waiting for life to bring the bottle again."

- William S. Burroughs from Junky