My Time as a Human

When I returned from India in 2008 I was a rocket boosted panther on roller skates. I was feeling great about my skills and I had proven to myself yet again that I could both do and enjoy the work for which I had been birthed: sleeping in old buildings with broken windows, no heat, and little water, repairing gear on the fly, solving computer problems, shooting while running across muddy fields, and interacting passionately with people who didn’t even speak my language.

When I returned I immediately had a shot at another job custom made for my skills: traveling cross country in a small RV to capture and retell people’s stories about healthcare. I was ready to rock and roll… but I didn’t get the job. The documentary I was shopping at the time got a few nibbles, but nothing came through. Suddenly I went from the top of the world to twitching and muttering and swinging my arms wildly in the dark, looking desperately for something big and worthwhile to chase. My claws and teeth were long and sharp and, like a cat, they needed to be cut down regularly with work or they’d grow out of control.

But it’s dangerous to simply chase whatever comes by. Wandering through a film festival and talking about my latest projects I learned an important trick. I went on about an introverted guy living at the center of a huge crowd in a plexiglas box. I talked passionately about an inspirational traveling musician who was shot defending an elderly man. But the moment I said the words, “and I just got back from India shooting a…” the yawning listener would leap at me like I was their long lost mother. “What? India?! What did you see? What did you do? Can I see it?” They were ready to buy and watch the film without knowing what it was about. There are a lot of great films to be made, but some topics lead to uphill battles either to make them visually interesting or to sell them. Others sell themselves. As most take at least two years to make, I realized that I needed to take it easy and put some real thought into my next project.

I decided to take a year, 2009, to figure out my next direction. I wouldn’t allow myself to leap into anything without some real thought, and I wouldn’t begin implementing anything huge until Jan 1, 2010. Almost immediately I realized that this went beyond film projects, and I worked actively to make sure everything was on the table. If my next big move was to become an amazing boatswain or french maid, c’est magnifique. This opened me up in a variety of ways, including the realization that it might be possible to find what I was looking for in a position working for someone else. I hadn’t even realized that I’d never considered that before. I also started playing and writing music again, something I’d tried hard to restrict as it wasn’t making me a better filmmaker. The whole concept even lead to a re-evaluation of my dating life, and I decided to take the same approach there, stay single, and refuse to let myself dive wildly into any committed, long term relationships.

Now it’s November. I’ve researched a number of documentary projects, but my standards are high enough that nothing has clicked. I’ve explored the idea of using my scribbling skills to pursue some of the topics that I found unsuitable for film as books. Sure, no one reads, but books are a lot cheaper to make than films. In the end, I have a couple of projects in the works, but nothing huge has leapt out at me yet. Here is what I have learned.

Through interviewing people over the years, both for films and in general, everyone is full of great stories and great ideas. You just have to find the right way to trigger them. I’ve told a lot of people that I’m looking for the next big mountain to climb, the next big challenge that brings all of my skills to bear, but received nothing but nods. There’s no trigger there. On the other hand, lately I have pointed out to a few people that if I don’t find anything by my deadline, I may just start traveling and put myself out into the world. I mentioned Vietnam as a possible starting point. Behold: a trigger.

Instantly I met a girl who just returned from three years in Vietnam and was excited to offer me contacts and stories. A few days later, walking down the streets of Austin, I met another woman who was about to move to Hanoi in January and who offered me a swank place to stay, for as long as I wanted, near the embassy. Then an old friend appeared and asked me if I wanted to be his business partner in setting up a hostel in another smaller city.

If conquering Vietnam was the mountain, the end goal, I’d be set. As soon as you can proclaim your mission people will rally to your aid. But without a mission flag, the ships full of opportunity will drift by, they themselves unaware of what they contain.

Got an idea for the mountain? Big problem you think needs addressing by someone with film, writing, computer, mechanical, building and music skills? Drop me a line. I’m wide open.

As always, click on images to see photographer’s site

The pits. Everyone always wants to know about the mud pits. They want to know how it felt to search through the dark for a hidden location and then climb down into a muddy hole in the earth, the size and shape of a grave, and go to sleep for the night. Patience. First I had to dig it.

The first step was to find a good location. One of my teammates picked a spot surrounded by fallen trees. My first thought when I saw it was, “that’s the perfect place to hide a scout pit.” My second thought was, “wait, if that was my first thought, it’d be the first thought of someone searching for it.” I then realized that I had to dig my secret den of sleeping in plain sight. That was, until I realized that I’d thought of that idea second, and so would someone hunting me. In fact, maybe someone looking for me would be so sure I’d never fall for hiding my pit in the obvious place that the obvious place was exactly where I should dig. Soon this lead to the inevitable game of, “clearly I cannot chose the glass in front of me.” At last I split the difference by finding a spot in a fairly open clearing with enough saplings protruding from the ground that there was just barely enough room for a person to fit between them. More importantly, it would be hard to imagine that someone could fit between them.

I started by carefully clearing away and saving the top layer of decaying leaves and twigs. They were going to be the camouflage I would use to rebuild the forest floor as it was. Then I started enthusiastically carving out the dirt beneath with my small shovel. I had known we’d be traveling some distance to the site of our hidden camps and so I opted for a collapsing german army shovel. I think it cost me about $25 at a military surplus shop. The little green tri-folding tool took some serious abuse without complaint. One edge was serrated, which was perfect for cutting through the tough layers of roots near the surface. The front came to a point, and I could use that to hack at the thick clay to loosen it up before shoveling it out. Unfortunately, despite all of it’s great features, the shovel could not escape its tiny size.

After six hours of furious digging, pauses to pant and stare blankly at the ground, mad, aimless stabbing at dirt, ceaseless sweating in the rain, and general psychological mayhem as I forced myself time and again to keep digging, I still wasn’t done. I just couldn’t move enough earth with that tiny shovel. It didn’t help that I’d also come across a number of massive rocks. I’d had to use a whole slew of levering and digging and tugging tactics before I could heave them out, their resistance stubborn and unrelenting until the last. It was like trying to get my housemate Dhruv Bansal out of bed for a morning game of squash. Actually, in both cases pouring water on them helped to some extent. So did yelling.

Graham emerges from one of our scout pits

The class had to continue, so in the end we compromised. Our team of four joined forces the next morning to finish two scout pits and we rotated nights sleeping in them. I was really disappointed in myself for not having been able to finish one completely solo, but the massive blisters on my thumbs and palms (in rock climbing we call them “bloody flappers” when they reach that point) were enough badges of honor to justify moving on to the next challenge.

As it turns out, the scout pits were really comfortable. The walls weren’t wet and muddy, but solid and cool to the touch. The thick layer of dirt on top was enough to stop water from getting in and acted as insulation. There was plenty of room and maybe it was because I live with six housemates already, but the guests didn’t bother me. There were only a couple of large spiders, crickets, and beetles that decided to wander through my crude door to join me and none of them had any intention of harming me. I actually enjoyed having them around. It made everything feel more authentic somehow.

In the morning I climbed up out into the early morning light, the dewey ground and the smell of the damp leaves all around me, feeling very woven into the woods. I felt refreshed and exhilarated. I wasn’t a stranger wrapped in plastic, I was alive and a part of it all.

In Cody Lundin’s survival book, 98.6 Degrees: The Art of Keeping You Ass Alive he describes the essential attitude for dealing with stress as “Party On” and gives the following examples:

“Holy Smoke! We lost our last match and there’s a storm coming!”
Party On!
“A flash flood swept away all our gear and we’re twenty miles from the trail head!”
Party On!
“My femur bone’s sticking through my skin and I’ve gotta cross that river!”
Party On!

This weekend I had to skip a camping trip and told a friend not to visit because I’d already scheduled time with people that were important to me, only to have every single one of those people vanish at the scheduled time. I showed up at the wrong location for the first meeting of a new job. I also screwed up a difficult discussion and drove through the rain to an outdoor event that sold out minutes before I arrived.

There are a variety of ways to look at this weekend.

1. My friends hate me.
2. The universe hates me.
3. I am a complete disaster.

There’s one more.

4. No one died. Hurrah! Now what part of those situations can I control next time?

My friends flaked on me. I have some flakey friends. This part I cannot control, neither can I stop loving them. Was there some miscommunication? Probably. Can I figure out exactly how that happened? Maybe. But maybe by stepping back and looking for places where I can change my own behavior, I can work around these things. After making plans with my friends, it may not seem fair that I should have to check with them once or twice as the date and time arrive to make sure things are still on track. But “fair” is not what I’m looking for here, I’m looking for “effective in making things work out they way I want them to”. Dropping an email a day before a scheduled event to confirm, and making a phone call an hour before, really isn’t that great a cost. It may take a total of several minutes, but if it allows me to know ahead of time that I’m free to spend hours doing something more exciting and productive with my time besides waiting, that’s well worth it. In this case, it also allows me to not be as angry with my friends, and potentially to want to see them again the next time.

Showing up at the wrong location is an expansion of the same idea. My friend gave me the date and time, then sent me a separate email with the details to make sure I had them. After adding it to my calendar the first time, I didn’t bother to re-confirm details by looking at the email. When I have run projection or managed a crew or event in the past, the most important lesson I’ve learned again and again is to never assume anything. Believe me, I’ve been badly burned more than once, and I’ve learned to make time for other people’s mistakes, bad equipment, wrong information etc. so that I was no more than singed and back on track the next time around. Again, the cost to confirm the location of this weekend’s meeting? About 4 minutes on the phone. Anything someone doesn’t tell you explicitly you should confirm. Is it someone else’s fault for not telling me an important detail? Maybe. But I’m the one who loses if I don’t check and re-check.

Fortunately, checking and re-checking works. That’s what’s empowering. Obviously I still make numerous mistakes, this weekend being a good example. But I see how my own actions could have made things work out differently, and that’s what leaves me feeling strong and capable. I’m not fighting impossible odds, a universe that hates me. I’m just working on making myself better.

I wasn’t walking particularly carefully but my awareness was turned up high when, suddenly, the smallest movement to my right exploded like fireworks in my brain. I froze immediately and snapped my focus from a wide, expansive view to a narrow tube, zooming in on the barely visible fawn. Her colors, a complex blend of camouflage patterns, would have made her nearly invisible if not for her slight movement. Only days ago I would have missed her entirely, but now my brain was turned up to a level of awareness innate to all humans, but trained to disuse by environments like cities, thick with background noise. I was perceiving the world in a way that was essential to the survival of our ancestors.

Awareness. Throughout my experience, my understanding of what that word meant expanded as rapidly as the thing itself. Awareness is like reading. Awareness is like feeling. Awareness is a way of being.

Learning to read

When I first started to learn Chinese characters, they were beautiful scribbles, little bits and pieces of art neatly woven together. As I learned the radicals (simple bits of characters that form larger characters) I started to see them pop out of the background until the whole written Chinese language started to break apart and form simple, repeated shapes I could recognize. I think the experience is something like standing up close to a painting entirely of dots and, as you step back, seeing the dots suddenly form into people having a picnic.

As I learned about the various plants that surrounded us, just as with Chinese characters they began to emerge from the green mush before me that my brain called, “woods”. Suddenly I could spot the medicinal plantain and then the tulip poplar, with its catlike leaves and easy to peel bark, ready material for tinder or cordage. Quickly my brain used this head start to begin breaking down and separating a whole variety of plants I couldn’t even name, but could recognize instantly.

Where is the moon

Awareness is about keeping track of things. Like the moon. Every time I was overly focused on moving I lost track of the moon and went in the wrong direction. I don’t have a child, but I imagine that the way a parent maintains a constant background connection to where their child is in the room is how I learned to love the moon. It was another center, ever present, but also moving over time. By being constantly aware of its shift as it moved across the southern sky I could make continuous adjustments for how I was moving in relation to my glowing friend.

Spiritual?

I’ve been asked if we did anything “spiritual” during our week. I think the best answer is yes, we did: we set tripwires for each other linked to small, very loud firecrackers. Most importantly, awareness is about learning to sense. The secret to learning to be very aware is repeatedly catching yourself when you are not aware and turning your awareness back on. I am particularly prone to walking while looking at the ground, completely lost in my head as I play out a story or song idea or problem that is thousands of miles away from the present moment. There is nothing like an explosion next to my head to bring me quickly into the present. After your first explosion, you suddenly feel every very slight tug against your leg or arm. Feeling for each little sensation of unnatural resistance means you are also feeling out everything else around you. Sounds. Smells.

Awareness is about taking in a lot of information simultaneously, without focusing overly much on any one piece, and allowing the subconscious to learn to process that information. I remember the first time I was instantly aware of a temperature drop. When I began repeatedly noticing hawks overhead.

This wide open, full awareness I’ve been describing comes from a whole variety of seemingly unconnected practices. Walking blindfolded in the dark. Stalking other humans. Being stalked by other humans. Knowing there are tripwires somewhere between you and the glow stick you are trying to steal. All these things produce a state that is difficult to describe but beautiful to experience. Everything feels expansive and also like a thick space, or material, stretching out in all directions where I am at the center. Things are continually in motion through that material, interacting in an ordered and coherent way over time.

Even with the brief time I spent in this state, I was able to feel the connected nature of everything around me. I glimpsed the integral way that things play out, and how one movement leads to another. It is abundantly clear that, living in this state for a longer period of time, even more attuned to the movement and shifts of nature, seasons, and the millions of cycles that repeat time and again, I would want to find a name for this ever present essence. Maybe I, too, would call it, “The spirit that moves through all things”.

It’s an incredible way of being, and at our last fire together many grown men were overwhelmed and even cried. Wallace put it best. “I don’t ever want to forget… this”, he said, yanking out a wad of mud and leaves from the ground before him and holding it up in a fist. I knew exactly what he meant.

That feeling, that connection to that fistful of earth, came not just from spending time on trails in the woods or the awareness we built. It was shaped by living in the earth, quite literally as the week progressed. The many physical challenges I would face over the week forced me to time and again learn to take on my single greatest opponent and obstacle: my own brain.

Stay tuned for more tales from the underbrush!