unfiltered. unscripted. some written years ago, some this week. whatever's moving through me.
no ai touches or edits my writing.
11 am and i just woke up because last night i was up until five editing our grassroots organizing website. my friend has been editing a video for a resident who is losing his home and lies asleep on the couch with his mouth open, snoring. my email inbox is already filling: a cell phone video of a natural gas explosion melting the blinds and shattering the windows of a neighboring home; a congratulatory message saying that over the next three to five years silica sand sales rates will 'boom;' a news article of the illegal usage, by our department of environmental protection, of a law that protects the industry they are supposedly regulating. i grab my cup of coffee, forgetting breakfast, and continue to work. wednesday in late august and the idea of societal collapse and hopelessness is fresh in my cup.
last weekend, a dozen people came to our house to help us fight. we drank canadian beer and played music that alluded to poverty, environmental injustice, and wheels of wagons. cigarette smoke wafted through the house and the fireside was accompanied by burnt-out environmentalists, like myself, who threw their sad thoughts into the flames for another night before continuing on with ideas and fantasies that big green environmental organizations are too cowardly to enforce. some of these people will never know news headlines or record deals or even facebook posts that proliferate social media like ignorance dragons, sweeping through newsfeeds and burning all who post in opposition.
we work for little, using our money to travel and talk and spread our stories and the stories of those who cannot drink their water. some laugh and hold their signs that say otherwise, but we know late at night, the gas men come to their houses and fill their buffaloes, the ones that have nothing to do with what america was before it was america. native americans, the real founding fathers, are too busy blockading pipelines that threaten their ancestral land to oppose the industrial copyright infringement of their most sacred of animals. locking themselves to gas drilling equipment, they chant meditational mantras and close their eyes, praying that when the sun comes up they'll awake from whatever hell the white man has them hypnotized into.
five days ago, i sat on a rock with my feet hovering above the salt water. as my hair blew behind me, i squinted out across the ocean as a sailboat floated past my periphery and seagulls complained about climate change. removing my shirt, i dunked myself below the waves, to cleanse my mind and body of the daily pollutants that accompany life in the middle class suburbs of massachusetts. a life that i have tried and failed to drink, write and dream away in the mid-morning when the birds come out and remind me it's time to pretend to go to sleep. despite my efforts, i keep coming back to eat lobsters and burn gasoline because the nearest friends i have live two miles past the nearest awakening of consciousness and they've missed their exit for over twenty two years now. text message exchanges have a hint of hesitation and i know people are avoiding me so they can focus on the fabrication of the established and revered society they continue to accept as acceptable.
knowing our future is sealing itself in direct opposition to the wishes of gas wells, i replace sobriety with intoxication and photos of things that can still make me smile. solace is found in pretending the business i'm building is going to make a difference and that i won't be sued for calling myself the lorax. contrary to the belief of whoever keeps ignoring me, it's not an egotistical or prideful name. i grew up on a boat with an animal on the back and when i could spell i realized the name was a children's book. i didn't understand the metaphors of thneeds and big business until later in life, but i knew from the start that that creature was the hero, the one they call the lorax. surrounded by trees in my suburb home, my father explained their importance in the circle of life and grade-school science told me that us and them had a semi-symbiotic relationship in this world.
when it came time to get my first tattoo, after having my lung collapse and my vision of pain increased to a point 3 percent shy of premature death, i knew what i wanted. asking my friend to draw me concepts, i chose a pose that reminded me that i need to keep digging for the next story, that i needed to keep questioning and objecting, that i needed to continue speaking for the trees.
it was no act of my self worth that chose the lorax on my back. there were no pre-determined measures of future success or parental disagreements that drove me to that shop in mechanicsburg pennsylvania. it was a vision of my childhood. it was building wooden forts. it was eating calzones heated by the hum of the engine. it was boating across the water, holding my mother's hand, and squirming inside my always-tightening lifejacket as the bow blocked the horizon from my childish height. it was the understanding that i would fight forever, that i could never give up, that i would protect my brothers and sisters until i enter the ground, joining the armies of energy that provoke tree sits, duct-taped mouths, and forms of resistance that seek to fracture the fault lines of fraudulent forms of freedom. it was the dedication to earthly preservation and environmental justice and the power of the people. it was the promises of my father's mustache. it was legacy i needed to save from the misunderstanding of the meaning of life he had been taught been graduate education. it was knowing that i will be lifted by my tuft, tossed and ridiculed, abandoned and ignored, and looked down upon for being the one voice of many trees.
and though i say i am the lorax, i bow and solute the other loraxes among us, who may be less fortunate, but are nevertheless, just as crucial to saving our home. we all must fight the onceler, restore the grickle grass, bestow upon the barbaloots and the fish and the birds the waters and air they breathed once upon a time. and so i say to you, my family, that though the water may choke and the air may sting, we must all grab a stump. though the voices of machinery and millionaires may echo louder than our mic-checks, we must stand tall and sing our stories. though the kochs and the obamas and the halliburtons may pollute and destroy and pretend everything's business as usual, we must object. we must fight for our future and the generations that will follow. we must dedicate ourselves to prove the worth of our planet. we are all a different version of the lorax. we all must speak for the trees.
i can’t believe he’d do this to me. he always seemed like a nice guy. i thought i could trust him. he was always there for me. he liked me for me and i know he did. i guess some people just get confused sometimes. he didn’t know what he was doing. he couldn’t have. it’s not possible. alcohol will do that to someone. we’ve been together almost 5 months now. i mean, i know that isn’t too long for a college relationship, but it was just starting to go somewhere. i was gonna go to his house for spring break. he has a pool. we were gonna go swimming in it. not anymore. not after this. my nose still has dried blood on it. it hurts. i think it’s broken. i can’t believe this. it’s not fair. i know life isn’t fair, but this is more than that. it was important to me. really important. and then he goes and does something like this. i’m still limping. i’ll bet he sprained my ankle when he threw me against that rocking chair in his dorm room. i wouldn’t be surprised if no one even found me here, the day after. i’ll probably just die here. i hope i do. i don’t want to keep living after that. it’s pointless. really. whatever. you don’t care anyway. i’m done with this shit. fuck it.
i think i’m in love with the idea of you. it's been ages since i’ve told someone something like that and i’m not sure if it's even true or what but i thought it best to tell you i think i’m in love with the idea of you.
you’re scared of something. an empty box that was filled with memories, maybe. or more of like an unused train ticket, a phone call that never made it through, an unwanted hand on your thigh, a silver blade against your neck and a hand that seeks to prove its dominance.
it's eating me from the inside like a zombified tapeworm, biting through my organs, leaving no blood vessel untouched. eventually, you’ll have to tell me, i know, but till then my heart is hanging out in the sun and slowly baking away because it forgot the tanning lotion and its sunglasses. i guess that’s appropriate since we'll be living in the islands later on when we're more familiar with each other's facial expressions and can tell if something's wrong from a slight difference in vocal inflection.
if i told you i had dreams about what your lips felt like when they were coated in denial and that a man who’d never seen the sunset assembled the teeth in your mouth from an army of pearls, you’d disappear behind those shadows again. so i just fold my feelings over themselves and smile and you ask why and i say its nothing.
there’s something there. i couldn’t begin to tell you because i’m not sure i’ve ever felt anything. after this, after you, after everything. it's taken me so many bottles i’ve lost count and i don’t even know your favorite flavor of ice cream yet.
if i force the words onto the page, the pen won’t write because it refuses to lie for me anymore. if i try to sing, the words get all confused and start asking if i’m going to give them a real reason to live. if i imagine us in a bed in the keys and you in a nightgown and your head resting on my chest, my mind coughs and tells me to breathe.
my mother told me first-person writing is like a confession. but a narrative's a narrative and my mother's an old lady with legs that don’t work so good who murdered her husband so she could spread his blood on the snow and remember their honeymoon. or maybe she’s a lioness with eyes that draw in prey with sparkles and promises of kingship.
a few days ago, a boy came up to me and told me there aren’t any bitches on the beach. i didn’t hear what he said after that, though, because the wind slid past my ears and all i heard was the sun telling me it’s going to be okay, it’s going to be okay.
when the boy left, my brother asked me what love was and if you could feel it inside you, moving around. i looked out over the ocean and told him i didn’t know and now he's floating somewhere in the south atlantic looking for the answer.
later that night, i sat on the dock with a can full of fiery happiness and watched the manatees. they came together to talk and when they saw me standing there one of them came over and put out his flipper. as i shook it, he eyes turned red and i saw how his father was killed by a drunken fisherman somewhere off the coast back when he was just a pup. i apologized, but as the words came out he pulled me under the surface and i heard propellers and chattering clams.
i followed behind him, holding onto his bruised back and watched the staring faces around me. we entered a kingdom somewhere near the bottom of the sea and the guards lifted a drawbridge seasoned by barnacles and flaking rust. leading me to a room, the manatee disappeared and giant doors opened in front of me.
you were there, in that kingdom, in that room. you tried to hide your face, but i saw you standing there with your tail in your hand and those shells in your hair. i saw the smile beneath your other hand and your nipples sitting in the middle of your chest and the tilt of the crown on your head. you nodded to me and waved, revealing your face and the king slammed his scepter and everything vanished.
i woke up on the dock under the night sky with a stranger's breath in my mouth and water all in my ears and your face in my head. the moon was falling behind the clouds and a star shot across the sky like it was late for dinner with its girlfriends' parents. the stranger asked me my name and when i said i didn’t know, you smiled from the shadows and i knew i'd finally found atlantis.
there’s thunder and it’s getting dark in the forest. i’ve been going in circles. i know i passed that stick already. i hear the rain on the leaves above, falling down through the trees. the water lands on rocks and sticks and the bandana on my head in thin droplets. i came in without knowing which way to go and now i’m lost five miles into the woods without a trail.
nature is listening to me as i scream and curse and ask her why. “why do you let us do this to you?” i say. “you’re so much greater than us. you can stop this. you can stop anything!”
i’ve been saying things like this for about an hour because whenever it gets dark, and the trail disappears in a storm, it’s natural to search for a friend. there aren’t any other hikers because they all probably watch the weather, but me, i’m in the middle of a tornado warning.
nature answers me with growls of thunder and slivers of lightening. i huddle under a tree, trying to read my soaking map––it’s torn in several places. the rain is falling harder. i crumble the map and toss it into my bag.
“there’s no trail,” i say. “i don’t know where to go. we don’t know where to go. please, guide us, show us what to do.” i’m jogging now and the rain has penetrated my cotton shirt and the backpack with my camera inside. i pass trees i’ve seen before and i know i’m lost somewhere on the mountain.
“we care, you know,” i say, tears falling and mixing with the rain. “some of us, we only want what’s right. we only want to help you, to help everyone.” i trip over a stump and stumble, catching myself before i fall into the thick mud. “we’re trying to stop them, these people, from hurting you, from fracking you until you cough gas into their pipelines to satisfy them. we’re trying to help them see.”
i wipe my face. “how many people have to die before they realize they’re killing us, all of us? ten? fifty? a hundred? two hundred? a thousand? five thousand? twenty, fifty, a hundred thousand? two hundred thousand? five hundred thousand? a million? six million? ten million? where do we stop? when is enough enough? when will we learn? when will we stop fighting and finally love again?”
my hair is soaked and flopping around behind me in wet curls. i’m clutching my phone––which is tucked into my waistband––through my shirt, trying to prevent it from getting wet; it’s not working, my phone is wet and if the flashlight doesn’t work, i’m stuck here in the storm till morning.
i keep walking, a faster pace now that it’s getting darker. i shine my phone on trees, in search of blue squares, the ones that used to be the trail, the ones that disappeared. the squares are spray-painted and dull, sometimes no more than a small dot. i have to get close to the trees in order to see their dots and some of them aren’t even blue anymore.
i enter a cross in the trail––now the squares are orange or red. the color on the dots are fading and it’s dark, like i said, so it’s hard to tell. i look up in the trees, searching for something out of my periphery. the flag waves, it’s torn and discolored, like the trees, but there’s no mistaking the jolly roger––an elongated skull n crossbones is nested in the middle of the still-black flag. it dances in the wind and i know it’s looking at me with those empty eyes.
up ahead, the trail splits and i follow. i look around. no markings––shit. i must’ve missed one. i walk what i think is backwards. finding the last marked tree i remember, i look for the next one. shadows cover the trunks and i tell myself to breathe, that i’ll get out of this place eventually, though part of me is looking for a place to sleep and has given up on the trail.
i check for cell service, but i know i won’t find any. the sun is setting now––soon it will be much darker. i shine my light from tree to tree and increase my speed again. i hear a child, crying. “hello?” i say. no answer. i think about walking down to where i hear the noise, but i decide to stick to the path. it’s getting brighter and i see light ahead now. not much, and it might just be another clearing, but maybe it’s the way out.
earlier, when i got on the trail, a woman told me to follow the contours. “follow the landscape,” she said. “it’ll lead you to frog pond.” as she drove away, i remember thinking she was a ghost––leading me to a gathering at frog pond, a ritual, some kind of dark magic. creatures creeping out of the shadows to pray to the storm gods, that they might douse these humans in sadness. several times on the trail my hair stood on end as i hiked, but when i looked around, all i saw were trees––the spirits of the creatures were shy.
i followed the blue squares. hacking my way through the brush, with a walking stick that ended up breaking, my legs were covered in scrapes. when the blue trail disappeared i made my own. i wasn’t afraid of the woods and it was only a mile hike, after all. it was half past five and i wanted to be at frog pond before sunset.
a week from writing this, i'll be in my favorite place in the world, the hot ponds of pohoiki on the big island, listening to the coqui frogs fill the air with their melodic mating “ko key” music and staring at the milky way while shooting stars welcome me home.
today, i sit on a couch in my client's living room in angels camp california as her daughters, who earlier gifted me a tuft of moss from the backyard, play some game involving dinosaurs and dirt.
for the first time in my life, i'm not worried about money. living in scarcity. trying to hustle the next thing that'll make me a quick buck. it seems while everyone else has been going through it cosmically over the past few months, i've just been here to hold the space and stay grounded on as much moss and waterfalls as humanly possible.
i'm growing a business, staying healthy, sleeping 8 hours a night, and having regular bowel movements. no issues, no pain, no distractions, no hurry.
i barely batted an eye earlier at the mechanic shop when i dropped $1,100 on fixing the brakes on my van, which somehow did not miraculously kill me, as i apparently drove nearly all summer with brake pads that were worn down and the incorrect size (one of them is actually missing) and my rotors are torn as well.
shoutout to god for that one.
i'm not crushing it by any means. and i'm not working with a shitton of people either. only a handful. but the work is deep. it's shifting peoples mindsets. opening their hearts. inspiring the muse within. and keeping me stoked. one of my clients said the other day:
“i'm a completely different person than i am when we first spoke.”
another one wrote 160 pages in her journal after a week with me in the jungles of costa rica.
another wrote 8 songs after 5 days with me in the oregon forest.
i've added two of the full post-immersion testimonial videos to my website. along with a poem that one of my clients wrote, set to a video of our experience together. these videos are empowering, beautiful, and give me a deep knowing that i'm doing what i came here to do.
as i've continued to grow online and in person, things have shifted. the work has evolved. i'm much more dialed than i was a year ago when i started this in a hotel in koh phangan, thailand.
that feels like years ago.
my capacity is expanding. i see this work growing. as the world opens up its lenses and perspective, more and more people are getting the memos i've been shouting on the streets for years:
returning to nature returns us to ourselves
playfulness reconnects us to our inner child
travel is an antidote to the one-track mind of babylon.
i've removed all my music from streaming. i've begun posting more long-form videos on youtube. i'm scheduling meetings to talk to podcasts.
amidst all of this, i'm still showing up for my friends. still present for what's in front of me. not spending countless hours on my phone.
and i'm fucking proud of myself.
most businesses fail within 5 years. i'm on track for rapid success one year in. and i'm still learning every day. i haven't been shutting down. i've been opening.
thanks for being here and witnessing me. i see you, too.
i'll write again next week.
see you in the waves,
x Penn
