"Growing up." Oh, really?

Why don't you grow up?

It's time to grow up.

It's about time you be serious and grow up.


What's listed above is a but a small sample of the messages I occasionally received from friends and acquaintances. The frequency of which has increased dramatically ever since Cloe was built. Which leads me to ask, what does it mean to "grow up"?

To these folks, it means getting married, having kids, and then spending the next 2 to 3 decades paying for it. I do not see how being saddled with baggage (in its entire range of meanings) qualifies as the mark of adulthood. If "growing up" means being stuck in a job just to pay for a situation of your own making, then I will have none of it.

I do not consider such advice as well-meaning. I do not even consider them deluded. I consider them malicious, for misery loves company. Why should I give up my precious mobility--geographical, economic, cultural, social and academic--just to please you? Pardon the French, but, Who the fuck do you think you are?

I can go anywhere I wish. Do anything I wish. Live anyhow I wish. If that freedom arouses unbearable envy in you, then, well, you made your bed, now sleep in it. If I decide to spend 10 years, like Professor Hammerud did, employing Derrida and Lacan to interrogate how "Pip" transmogrifies to "Handel" and then finally to "Philip" in Dickens' Great Expectations, I can do that. We are all agents of free choice, unless we choose not to. Be honorable enough to shoulder your own consequences and refrain from attempting to shunt your burden to others under the guise of friendship. A serpent among the flowers has more honor: it hunts because it must. In my not-so-humble opinion, slogging the next 2 decades off to pay for the consequences of one night's indulgence between sweaty sheets does not a man--or growing up--make. Billions of homo sapiens have rutted and bred, rutted and bred. You are nothing special. Get over yourself.




Lemmings. Lemmings. How strange that some are proud to be lemmings!

What do I hear most often from the breeders? Complaints about bills. Bills. Bills. Bills. They take on jobs not for the love of the work, but because they need to pay the bills. Suddenly, out of necessity, money becomes the most important part of their lives. It is no longer about self-fulfillment, self-development, but merely to keep afloat, keep the kids brats fed and clothed. Overnight, these people become zombies of Mammon. Well, excuse me if the applause you expect for your noble sacrifice is not forthcoming from me. Here are two syllables for free though: schmuck. Pardon me if I have no interest in joining your lifestyle just so that I can trade empathetic sentiments about the plight of Al Bundy with you over a beer.

To quote Professor Lin Haire-Sargeant,


Have you done with anathematizing me, sirrah? How much examination will your own life bear? Will your every action prove without blemish when exposed to the harsh light of conventional sanctity?


"Grow up"? When you were freaking out to Mommy about your first nocturnal emission, I was cycling up a 7641 ft (2329 m) mountain on a self-supported trip--in a foreign country where I do not speak the language. How's that for growing up?




Elevation 6593 ft (2010 m). Touring East Java with Michelle (Bridgestone MB-3), 1992.





Ordinarily, I would sign off with an image like this, but this time I think I have an even better idea: a series of pictures.

One final paragraph of advice: Do not burn yourselves out. Be as I am - a reluctant enthusiast... a part-time crusader, a half-hearted fanatic. Save the other half of yourselves and your lives for pleasure and adventure. It is not enough to fight for the land; it is even more important to enjoy it. While you can. While it's still here. So get out there and hunt and fish and mess around with your friends, ramble out yonder and explore the forests, encounter the grizz, climb the mountains, bag the peaks, run the rivers, breathe deep of that yet sweet and lucid air, sit quietly for awhile and contemplate the precious stillness, that lovely, mysterious and awesome space. Enjoy yourselves, keep your brain in your head and your head firmly attached to the body, the body active and alive, and I promise you this one sweet victory over our enemies, over those desk-bound people with their hearts in a safe deposit box and their eyes hypnotized by desk calculators. I promise you this: You will outlive the bastards. (Edward Abbey)






Crater rim.






Active crater.






Shut up and ride your bike. C'mon (Lance Armstrong).