Friday March 27 2020
This is it. The final round. I close things up yesterday feeling strong and ready to rock. But as the night wears on and the morning comes, it appears the struggle is not over and this won’t be as easy as I thought.
The unknowns pile up. It appears China may have been lying about deaths in Wuhan. Upwards of 10,000 urns have been shipped to funeral homes in an area where reportedly only 3500 or so deaths occurred. People in their 40s, their 30s–they are dying from this now, many without any underlying conditions. Against the onslaught of difficult news, holding to the unknown, moving toward and hanging onto what is beautiful and good feels…well…a bit more challenging.
But my daughter still hums while she reads and my wife and I are still strong and I’ve made it this far and I still got my balls and there’s sucking to be done so…
Click boom bust, a swing and a punch and…
The round starts harder than I imagined, right away I run into difficulty. As soon as I post Round 14 I’m having problems where I really didn’t think any problems would be.
Every day I post these rounds to facebook and leave a brief note about what the hell people can expect. Some days it is “wherein I feel sick” or “wherein I take a look around”…for round 14, the words that come tumbling out before I can stop them are “almost there”.
Hey. Wait a minute. What’s that doing there? Isn’t that the special phrase I came up with a few rounds ago to put on my tombstone? Why is it there? And fuck a duck, you don’t put something special like that on facebook, place is infested and crawling with bullshit, what’s this? I immediately erase it and then try something else, and then put it back, and then try something else…but in the end, no…if that is what fits and that comes out then that is what is and you can’t censor it or scratch it out — this is where you are, and those are the words, and so this is what it means.
Well shit, we’re already headed into the unknown. The immensity of what this round might be, while I felt like I had covid on the ropes, is a little bit staggering. I figured I’d slip in here, throw a few punches, hang on, maybe dance a little bit, and then take my victory.
Nope. Not so much.
Almost there.
Well what will go on my tombstone then? And where the hell are we in all of this? And how much more is there to know?
Damn.
The immensity of it all, of what covid is, of what he has already wrought, of what life is becoming, keeps pounding into my brain. It’s a fact you can’t deny, a truth that continually announces itself. Things continue to change. Things continue to alter. The unknowns grow. I guess this has changed too.
Last night I thought I had this all figured out. Licked. I knew exactly how it would go. I had even written some of it up. Because in the midst of the unknown, and while holding to the unknown, and reflecting on the beauty and the good to be done, to live, to grow… I was reminded of something I had known a long time ago. Something I had shared with others. And it was like, duh, the answers have been there all along, all you had to do was lock in and find them.
A few years ago, to make some extra money and do something I thought was good, I worked as a driver’s ed instructor. One of the classes I taught teenagers–who would rather being doing anything else than sitting on a saturday morning in a strip mall storefront–dealt with reality. There were slides I was supposed to follow but I didn’t. That’s one of the reasons I think a lot of those kids liked me. Instead I talked about something else.
I’d draw a circle and say that this circle represents reality. All the things that are possible. Inside this circle is everything that could happen. Sometimes, in some periods of history, the circle is small. In feudal periods, if you were a serf, the circle was not that big at all. You eat. You sleep.You bow to the lord. You die. If you lived in egypt during the time of the pharoahs and got to enjoy the bountiful, cyclical blessing of the nile, your life was really really static and the circle was really small. Other times, like the times we’re living in now, I’d tell the kids, the circle is big. It’s huge. It encompasses many many things. Life, as they all knew, was chaotic and crazy and strange. And you know what, those kids loved hearing that. SOmeone was telling them the truth…that the world was nuts, and they were living in it…and if it felt nuts, that’s because it was. But that’s not all there is to it. You can also choose to shape and grow the circle yourself. Invent a new drug? Reality just got bigger. More beauty, more life, more wonder, has come into our world. Or, you could get a gun and go kill people. Mass shootings, I tell them, were not a thing of my youth, they are now. The circle is larger. What will you do? How will you view it? How will you grow it? These are the questions you answer when you choose how you’ll handle yourself every day of your life. And then, since I was a driver’s ed instructor after all, I’d say…so…use your turn signal…. And they would all roll their eyes at me and I’d tell another joke. One of my favorites was letting them know I was from purgatory and hadn’t signaled while turning around a corner so I was sentenced to a thousand years of teaching driver’s ed…and that…wait a minute, never mind!…Time’s now up! That was fun.
I thought about all of this last night and was like…yeah. Okey dokey. And I even thought I had a sense of where all this could keep going.
I thought about the circle, and how much it has grown in the last few weeks, and how it keeps growing and changing. How reality has gotten so much larger. There are so many more moments of beauty and wonder and love that have never occurred before, and so many moments of tragedy and death and loss.
The circle just keeps growing.
It’s like one giant ball…
Or nose.
An entity…
…Containing all that is, all that is known, all that is possible…a huge shape…
A…well, what’s a good word for it?
An epicenter.
An epicenter of existence.
An epicenter that encompasses all experience, all emotion, all thought, all dreams, all events — and it just keeps growing. To the darkest depths of hell, to the greatest moments of triumph and bliss. And then I thought about the title of this website “live from the epicenter.”. Live. Like alive. Like happening now. The title sprang from the end of my first post, a sort of snarky rebuttal to all the shit I saw going on that appeared to just be dumb shit. After all, I am doing stuff here, shut the fuck up.
But no. The circle keeps growing.
And now I sit and I look at all of it….and I think yes, it is an epicenter. And if it is an epicenter…then it’s not live. Like alive. It’s the soft I. Live. Pronounced like the i in tit.
Live. Live from the epicenter.
That’s the trick. See all, feel all, embrace all, acknowledge all, and then grow it. Grow it. Grow all that is good, and all that is beautiful…from this. This new existence. This epicenter. It was a relief to have this thought bust into my brain. And it was inspiring.
It said to me that the good things we do from the good places we have are gifts to pass on, and the best things we do, from the best places, those things are there to preserve and save us from the darkest times.
I gave that driver’s ed job all I had. This thought, this idea, was one good thing I had to offer, an idea I passed on that I know inspired at least one kid who was looking at a world where adults bullshitted them all the time. In my own dark moment, the idea returned. I’d known it all along. And it’s return said to me that the beautiful things we do live on and are there to sustain us. Always.
Live from the epicenter. I like that.
Imagine what you might do, what good things might come, if you live from the epicenter now.
And then I woke up this morning and already things have derailed a bit from the track I thought was laid down, which is the nature of all of this and now I am thinking…
Well fa di dah, motherfucker!
You’re still in the ring, bitch. And covid is right here!
Hey, mr philosopher! Snap out of it. Nobody gives a shit. The fight is here. Now!
Yes. That’s right.
You’re not done, not yet. Covid has killed a 16 year old girl in France. And your daughter knows you and your wife are both a bit more scared.
How you going to go live like the i in tit from the epicenter — when this shit isn’t finished? With this fucker covid around? Huh?
Sure, the circle is bigger, got it. Great. But…
What do you do with this? How do you live? what can you expect? Where do you head? And with what purpose, and hope? What can you hang onto?
Dammit, you’re still in a fight, right now, you don’t get to sit and pontificate about shit.
You shouted suck my balls, he has sucked them, it’s on, stay in this goddamn moment and fucking get it!
It is how you fucking finish!
Okay.
Yes. That’s it.
So I put aside all of this and I stepped into the ring and covid was there.
I see you covid. I see all that you are. I see all that you bring. You bring death. You bring despair. You bring doubt. You bring misery. You bring change. You bring complete chaos. I see you. I got your fucking number, too. I do. I got you. My balls fucking work and I can fucking own your ass and I have. So let’s do this.
I’m nervous and I get up and tell my wife and daughter I’m going out. This is no regular ball sucking event. This is no regular end to a regular round. We are here. We are in the moment. This is it. Fucker keeps fucking shit up, I keep charging ahead, I am locked in and want his ass sprawled out the mat and done. This endeavor has limits. Fifteen rounds is it. Life goes on.
I know I am headed into the unknown. I know I need all the beauty and strength and inspiration I can get. All of it. I want to see this and get it, now. I want to end this fight on solid ground and go live like tit from all of this and own this shit with confidence and some fucking green pastoral NW pride. If I am almost there I want to get there and then get it behind me and fill up life with whatever that tombstone is going to say and fucking get it. Now. Let’s go.
So, I pick up my balls and wave by to the ladies who are doing their thing. Knowing I am in for a struggle, I take a hat I really like, it has a unicorn on it, yeah covid, you can’t stop that. And I take my favorite shoes. And I take an umbrella I like a lot. Beautiful and good and inspiring things. Headed into this moment. This unknown. The end of covid and all of this. To see what there is to see. To finish this. Free and clear, go and live like the i in tit.
There is a shelter in place law right now in seattle. We’re all supposed to stay inside. Covid is out on the grounds, moving around, fucking us all up. I’ve sat inside or I’ve sat in a car for the last two weeks while doing this. Never have my balls tasted the covid air out there. Never have I walked out into the fight, the struggle, where it is all going down, the epicenter growing and containing not just beauty but the kind of hell that makes women weep and children wail and men bemoan the day they were born. Oh yeah. It’s like that.
Let’s go. We’re headed out into that sick and fucked up land. That dark, dreary world. People are dying. Not enough ventilators. Nobody says hi anymore, or if they do, they certainly don’t want a hug or a kiss. Fuck, how are people even meeting one another and boning anymore? You goddamn asshole what kind of world have you made? What have you done?
I’m at the door, with my balls, and my hat and my umbrella, I’m ready, I’m walking out and I am doing this, I have a focus, I have a locked in path — I actually did use to train and fight in muay thai and sanshou, I know how locked in, how jacked up you have to be, to fucking nail this shit, to vanquish your opponent and end the round, and I am jacked up, holding my unicorn hat, lets fucking go!
I walk outside and lock the door and turn to get it, whatever it might be, whatever dystopic hell is to come…
And my neighbors are out on their porch talking to each other. I don’t hear the words (I AM FUCKING JACKED UP AND FOCUSED MAN) but it seems from their body language they are both really connected. Really sharing some things. There’s not a lot of talk, just a word here and there, like every word counts. They turn and say hi (I AM JACKED UP MAN NO TIME FOR TALK), but I say hi a little bit too, sort of, and then stride, that’s right, stride toward my car, and as I go the guy across the street, he plays in a band in his basement every wednesdays, tells women who walk by how hot they look (Something that is frowned upon in this fair local fresh vegan sometimes stupid town) he’s in his fifties and chain smokes and is pretty goddamn funny, all of the time. He’s talking to a friend on his phone and they are laughing about something (BUT NO TIME FOR THIS, IT’S FUCKING ON, FUCKING COVID SHIT LET’S GO)…None of this matches the fight, the struggle, the war…but that’s okay because…fucking a…it’s …it’s…
It’s?
On?
Huh.
I get in the car and I sit down and put all of my stuff to th side and look at the conversations, the humanity, the beauty.
And the words shout in my brain. Shout. Literally. Echoing off my skull and reforming everything, in an instant.
It’s just this, and nothing else.
BE.
NICE.
What….????
BE. NICE.
YEP.
BE.
NICE.
I can’t ignore this thought. Or where it comes from.
BE.
NICE.
And I stop and sit in it for a moment. Be nice.
Huh.
Where would that go after all? What would it look like.
And then suddenly, yeah, I feel you, I feel you, you devious son…allright. What you’re taking about is a weapon that the enemy doesn’t use, won’t even see it coming. Fucking a, that’ll knock their ass out for sure. YES. Okay. You’re slick. You’re good. This is gonna floor that bitch cuz they don’t even use it, don’t even know of it. Nice…like cool, nice. And nice, you know, like nice…Ha.
BE NICE.
Yeah, but like to fuck them up…
BE NICE.
Shoot.
BE NICE.
For real?
BE NICE.
Okay…
So I take deep breath, shaking my head, this feels dumb. But the clock is ticking down, this fight is almost finished, are you going to swing and punch or not? Are you going to listen? Where are you going, what’s up?
Fine.
Let’s do it.
Let’s try.
I decide to start with covid himself. The hardest thing to be nice to. Maybe it will help.
So I turn and I open my eyes to what I see…some sort of gangly red creature in the corner of the ring…
And I say…
Hello, mr. covid. Welcome. I don’t think I have welcomed you yet to earth. Welcome. I hope you’re enjoying yourself. It would be really…swell…of you if we could work out a few ground rules so we all can get along. What do you say? We humans do have some tricks up our sleeves and we will contain you before long, and we’d hate to see you suffer too much, although you are crossing a few of our lines. There’s plenty of life for all of us, and I know it must be hard just being a life particle and having to glom on to others all the time. You’re not even a fully functioning life form on your own. Tough, huh? Getting up in the morning and knowing you have to find a host in order to survive. I imagine a guy like you probably just wants to one day be homeostatic on his own? Well. Look. We can find ways to work it out, and hopefully we will..okay? By the way, cool name. For real. Coronavirus. I like it.
Huh.
So…
Suddenly I feel…quite free. No covidness can touch me. With a gentle touch, all fear, all suffering, starts to disappear. The virus is just doing what viruses do, and viruses are a part of life on this planet, and fuck a duck if life isn’t good. It is. So…okay.
I’ll keep going.
How about being nice to others now.
Hey, people. How are you? I just want to send you a word from Seattle, where I’ve been dealing with the coronavirus now for two weeks. I just want to let you know that you will survive this, you will overcome it, you do carry the strength and tenacity of your forebears, who fought through this and worse, you can come together, you can save lives, you can grow, you can face your darkest fears, and you can find answers. You might even find that in this experience, there is not just loss, and pain, and sadness, but love, joy, and wonder…that when you are confronted with this you will come out on the other side more humane, more grateful, and more capable of creating a more beautiful world, which will be there for you, as you face each day with a much deeper wisdom and respect for living. Every breath you take will be a blessing you acknowledge, as will every hug, every kiss, and ever bit of hand sanitizer. Who knew? You will. And you’ll do fine. Trips to the grocery store will transform into running behind enemy lines…your gratitude for your brave partners, and yourself, will soar.
That felt good!
Hey Seattle?
NW pride.
Okay.
So what else? What else is left?
Well, there is one person left. There’s me.
It’s time, in all of this, as the clock ticks down, to be nice…
To myself.
Huh.
Okay.
Well.
What is the gift I would like? What could I do that would be…nice?
I want to see, I want to know, more, where this goes. And I want to end this not with a whimper, but with a bang, to harness all the powers I have at my behest, to head out the door and fucking blow.
When all of this shit hit I was about to launch all kinds of things that I felt fit the world at the time, and now the world has changed, it has changed mightily, and much of what I was doing feels like it doesn’t fit at all — or might be wrong, and maybe there is nothing more to make and that all of it, everything — would be almost there — or not it all… You shout suck my balls, because it is your balls that covid — metaphorically — literally – means to take.
Well then.
There’s really only one thing to do.
I go for a drive down to the park. Find a quiet area.
You’ve got to hand yourself to some higher power, to some thing, some entity or practice or way of being or whatever you want to call it that pulls you out of that reptile place and puts you in a higher state, to connect with higher and more sacred things — in a dark hour, sick and reeling from change — I put myself in the hands of my practice, my sacred, silly, special sick ass place, and it just happens to be the way of the clown.
So now, in this moment, the end, with my lot cast, my job is to see it through, to follow the thread, to its natural and honest conclusion…
So when I ask myself, where at the end do these noses belong — it was with surprise and also a sense of the inevitable that I heard the words come and it was with a bit of a laugh and a smooth and simple gesture that I complied.
Yes, there was one last place, one last place to connect with, to bond with…the seat of creation — the place that has been spoken of many many times.
Now, I have a feeling that someone in Cleveland or Nebraska, cruising along with this and feeling a bit better about things, might get to this point and be like — okay, so people in Seattle do go fucking nuts and covid gets the better of everyone, because this guy is crazy.
Well, look, the circle expands out and you have no choice but to ride with it, okay…and yes, in a normal world where I wasn’t afraid for my family’s life and suddenly trying to make sense of all of it, by using and embracing the practice I have as an artist to connect myself to the higher, sacred place that exists all around us, you’re right, this might be some weird ass shit (and maybe not…maybe it would still fucking rock!)– but in the world I am in now, where everyone sits inside, nobody goes out, people are hunted and stalked by an invisible bug, and answers drop like flies swatted by some reality that just keeps changing — you get down to it and if doing this is what it takes– when you ask big questions and know it’s going to take it all to get big answers — then this is what it takes.
Because fuck a duck, this is it, this moment will pass, life will go on, and I want to see it all, dig in, learn and witness all I can.
So when I get there, there’s nothing for it…
…but to take two clown noses and, with a deep breath, put them to my balls.
And my brain opens up and again I am hit with a vision of stoke…
Fucking bullshit, dude.
Your tombstone doesn’t read almost there…it will say something else instead —
Here lies Brandon Drake one motherfucking bad ass who did lots of cool ass shit
And there will be a long list of things…
One will be…
Telling a virus to suck his balls and then showing it empathy
And another is…
Putting clown noses on his balls at a park on a quiet friday
Well okay.
A feeling of warmth, of healing, spread through me, and from me…and it was as if all of it was filling up and spreading out with life, with essence, with sprigs of creation, ounces of creativity and life and bits of wonder and laughter, shards of delight — here and there and everywhere– just cumming all over the place and making and building and creating…
Now all that remained was to finish it off. You don’t get to bail when it’s easy, you have to go all the way if you want the truth, you want to understand, you want to dig deep from the marrow of life and suck it out or however that quote goes, there’s no bailing when the work is done and you have what you want — you got to keep going…
So I took the noses from my balls and I made to do what I had done for the last week, as I slowly but surely passed through this period and found more and more to sustain and grow my life and my soul — I took the first clown nose and went to put it to my nose…
And yes…
Suddenly it dawned on me what I was doing.
Well hell.
I just put this to my crotch, and now I am putting it to my face…
In the end, what is this, but me sucking my own balls?
It appears god has a sense of humor.
I say this not to make a joke of it, but just to bear witness.
My predicament.
Laugh, or shake your head, or call me crazy, if you seek answers and wisdom, you must be prepared to make a fool of yourself.
So I did.
I took the clown nose with my ballness on it and put it to my nose and…
I breathed in and waited for some sort of sign or memory or moment to make sense of this and continue…
But what I saw made no sense to me…
Strawberry shortcake?
What the shit.
Am I mad? What is this?
And what the hell am I doing? What does any of this mean?
I wanted to end this and make some kind of sense of it. It is one thing to see all of it, it is another to see it all and still move forward, still head down your path…with something like confidence, or at least peace, illumination and understanding perhaps…
what does this mean? I am now sucking my own balls? Strawberry shortcake? Have I gone mad?
And I thought, well, maybe this is that feeling I had several rounds ago — that I am somehow covid, that it is my job to cleanse myself, this last act does that…by me assuming his role. Okay, I’m covid and now I will…
No that feels stupid and dumb. Plus all that self-loathing shit is lame. Let’s keep going.
So I took the other clown nose and put it to my nose to finish the act…to suck one last time.
And it hit me.
I understood what this was…
Finally, in the end, I am putting the noses to my face and sucking my balls, and doing what covid has done…
And seeing it all from his perspective.
The last great reveal.
The last tiny bit of understanding. To see every last bit that is in this circle we are all living in. To see the whole epicenter.
Okay, let’s go.
I put the second nose to my face and breathe in and this one is peppery, and dark, smelly, it’s like a long gravel road that never changes, dark rocks, a landscape barren of trees, a neverending wasteland that never alters form.
It’s bleak, and it is endless…it’s the world of the virus, where life is just a particle, incomplete, static, never changing, and there is no love, and there is no hope, or joy, or laughter, there is no song, there is no beauty, there is only the next step down the road, the next slog, the next death, the next victim, the next day, and it is gray and it is static and it is dull…ever and ever and ever on.
We are the shortcake. The dessert Covid is feasting on. While he slogs down this road, that is his world, all he knows, all he sees, all he ever will experience.
I take the balls from my face and put them down…
I sit and let all of this leave me.
God, what a horrible existence. Life…as a particle.
I think of Covid and…
I even feel…pity.
And off somewhere, as this emotion hits me, I hear a bell ring and I hear a voice say…by unanimous choice, the winner of the fight…we give you…
But I’m not listening.
Not now.
Because in this moment I am overwhelmed by a feeling of immense gratitude. ~
I have never have felt so grateful to be human.
We think. We feel. We live. We love. And our path looks nothing like his. Our road changes and morphs and changes again, on our path there are rivers and trees, green pastoral shores, salmon swimming and people dancing and making love and girls laughing and children growing up and huddles of old women sewing in a starbucks and cars honking as everyone goes about their very important busy things and guitars being bought and sold and new inventions and old typewriters refurbished by hipsters looking to do something original, it is all a song with notes lifting and falling and rising again, and over and over again it twists and shifts and changes again and again, growing deeper, and fuller, encompassing more love and more pain and more beauty. The darkness comes and it ushers in the chance for even more beautiful things to begin. That’s the way of the circle, the way of life lived from the epicenter.