Latest / Relatively Stable / Jason Chambers

Transcript

Jason Chambers · Relatively Stable

• 0:05
  SPEAKER_00: The best stories aren't just told.
• 0:09
  SPEAKER_00: They are lived and carried in the rhythm of the land,
• 0:13
  SPEAKER_00: the pull of the tide,
• 0:14
  SPEAKER_00: and the weight of an ancient oak's shadow.
• 0:18
  SPEAKER_00: Jason Chambers is a poet, a farmer, and a storyteller.
• 0:23
  SPEAKER_00: Someone who doesn't just observe the world, but listens deeply to it.
• 0:29
  SPEAKER_00: Rooted in the low country of South Carolina,
• 0:32
  SPEAKER_00: his words move like the rivers and shores he calls home,
• 0:36
  SPEAKER_00: winding through themes of redemption,
• 0:39
  SPEAKER_00: transformation,
• 0:41
  SPEAKER_00: and the wisdom found in solitude with nature.
• 0:46
  SPEAKER_00: In this episode of Relatively Stable,
• 0:48
  SPEAKER_00: we learn how Jason's poetry became a kind of map,
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_00: one that charts the past and brings him back to the present.
• 0:56
  SPEAKER_00: We hear how Jason captures the stories held in the land,
• 1:01
  SPEAKER_00: the water,
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_00: and how we capture the stories in each other.
• 1:05
  SPEAKER_00: From open mics to open fields, from loss to love,
• 1:09
  SPEAKER_00: We explore what it means to bear witness,
• 1:13
  to stay still long enough to hear what the world and our hearts
• 1:17
  are saying.
• 1:19
  SPEAKER_00: I'm Kim, and this is Relatively Stable.
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_00: Today,
• 1:23
  SPEAKER_00: I'm having a conversation with Jason Chambers,
• 1:26
  a person who I personally believe will be remembered as one of
• 1:29
  the best South
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_00: Carolina poets of this era.
• 1:33
  SPEAKER_00: He also just happens to work at a horse farm.
• 1:37
  Thank you so much for taking the time to sit down with me today,
• 1:42
  Jason Chambers.
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_01: It's a pleasure to be here.
• 1:46
  I was just talking to you about how I stumbled on your work and
• 1:50
  it was an Easter
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_00: Sunday and I was sitting in my writing ring
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_00: I was recovering from surgery and I had lost all my inspiration.
• 2:03
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't know how to find my way back.
• 2:07
  SPEAKER_00: And through a friend of a friend,
• 2:08
  I stumbled on your poetry on Facebook and it connected with me
• 2:15
  in a space that I
• 2:16
  SPEAKER_00: had not been able to reach for a really long time.
• 2:21
  SPEAKER_00: And I have been talking about the premise of Relatively Stable,
• 2:26
  the premise of this podcast is showing people that
• 2:31
  transformation is possible in
• 2:34
  SPEAKER_00: their lives,
• 2:34
  helping people find a way back to their inspiration and their
• 2:38
  creativity and
• 2:39
  SPEAKER_00: connecting with the natural world.
• 2:41
  SPEAKER_00: And it just so happens that you also have been working with horses.
• 2:46
  SPEAKER_00: So it just all came together.
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_00: I wanted you on here for your poetry and talking to you about your work,
• 2:51
  SPEAKER_00: but you are also with horses.
• 2:53
  SPEAKER_00: So that connects with our greater community.
• 2:56
  SPEAKER_00: Can you tell me a little bit about your life in the Lowcountry?
• 3:01
  SPEAKER_01: Currently, I work two jobs.
• 3:04
  SPEAKER_01: I work on a horse farm with maybe 20 horses there.
• 3:11
  SPEAKER_01: They are fairly expensive dressage horses.
• 3:16
  There was a competition recently and almost every one of them
• 3:19
  went and almost every
• 3:20
  SPEAKER_01: one of them won some kind of award in their category.
• 3:25
  So the owners and the people that ride them are fairly serious
• 3:30
  and sophisticated
• 3:31
  SPEAKER_01: about their relationship and their knowledge,
• 3:34
  SPEAKER_01: which is nice and intimidating as someone who didn't grow up with horses.
• 3:41
  I've always been an animal lover,
• 3:42
  but I don't have that particular experience.
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_01: I'm there several days a week.
• 3:48
  SPEAKER_01: I also have a job at an organic vegetable farm that I work on Mondays,
• 3:54
  SPEAKER_01: and that is also something I'm really proud of.
• 3:57
  SPEAKER_01: It's a really beautiful place.
• 4:00
  Everything they grow out there that we grow is stunning,
• 4:04
  and I'm learning a lot.
• 4:07
  It's knowledge I bring home and I use to feed our tiny family
• 4:11
  to the extent that I can.
• 4:12
  SPEAKER_01: That's how I bring money into the house for the most part.
• 4:17
  But what I think of as my true profession,
• 4:23
  first and foremost,
• 4:24
  I'm a father recently.
• 4:28
  SPEAKER_01: My little girl is 13 months old.
• 4:31
  SPEAKER_01: And with her mother, I grow flowers and a few vegetables for us to eat.
• 4:38
  But the flowers for bouquets,
• 4:40
  for florists,
• 4:43
  a little farm on Johns Island,
• 4:45
  South Carolina.
• 4:46
  SPEAKER_01: We rent space to put our camper.
• 4:50
  SPEAKER_01: We have part of a greenhouse we're allowed to use.
• 4:52
  SPEAKER_01: And the rest of it is just sort of an empty field,
• 4:55
  SPEAKER_01: or it was an empty field before we moved there.
• 4:57
  SPEAKER_01: And now it's full of beauty.
• 4:59
  SPEAKER_01: And we're really proud of that.
• 5:01
  SPEAKER_00: Have you always been in the Charleston area?
• 5:07
  SPEAKER_01: I was born here.
• 5:07
  SPEAKER_01: I grew up here.
• 5:09
  SPEAKER_01: I went to high school here, to college here at the College of Charleston.
• 5:14
  SPEAKER_01: But I left after college.
• 5:18
  I worked a few years in construction and then was sort of
• 5:22
  induced to go to law school.
• 5:24
  SPEAKER_01: I had a friend that went straight into law school right out of college.
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  SPEAKER_01: And I spoke to her a couple of years later and
• 5:31
  SPEAKER_01: She seemed to think I had an aptitude for it.
• 5:33
  SPEAKER_01: And I said, you know, my grades weren't very great in college.
• 5:37
  SPEAKER_01: And she said, well, just take the LSAT.
• 5:39
  SPEAKER_01: And if you do well, you can go.
• 5:40
  SPEAKER_01: And if you don't, you can't.
• 5:41
  SPEAKER_01: So there's, you know, no harm in it.
• 5:44
  SPEAKER_01: So I took the LSAT and I did well.
• 5:47
  And at the time,
• 5:48
  I thought it would be a good way to be useful,
• 5:53
  to be able to help people that
• 5:56
  SPEAKER_01: found themselves in situations that,
• 5:58
  SPEAKER_01: frankly,
• 5:58
  I by then had found myself in trouble with the law and sort of
• 6:02
  matched by system
• 6:03
  SPEAKER_01: far more powerful than any one of us is.
• 6:07
  SPEAKER_01: That was very appealing to me.
• 6:09
  SPEAKER_01: I applied to exactly one school,
• 6:11
  SPEAKER_01: which was Loyola in New Orleans,
• 6:13
  because it was a Jesuit school that offered loan forgiveness if
• 6:18
  you did public
• 6:18
  SPEAKER_01: interest work after graduation.
• 6:21
  SPEAKER_01: And that was my intention.
• 6:22
  SPEAKER_01: That was my only intention.
• 6:25
  SPEAKER_01: and seeking a law degree was to find some way, like I say, to be useful.
• 6:30
  SPEAKER_01: That did not turn out the way I planned, thankfully.
• 6:36
  I had just started my third year of law school when Hurricane
• 6:40
  Katrina hit New Orleans.
• 6:41
  SPEAKER_01: I lost everything I owned.
• 6:44
  SPEAKER_01: The home I lived in was destroyed.
• 6:46
  SPEAKER_01: All my possessions were gone.
• 6:48
  SPEAKER_01: The car that I had, which was in the shop,
• 6:51
  was never even recovered by the insurance company that that
• 6:55
  shop ended up 13 feet
• 6:56
  underwater and it was an uninvited and at the time unwelcome
• 7:03
  complete reset of my
• 7:04
  life but it also saved me because another thing that I picked
• 7:13
  up in New Orleans was
• 7:14
  SPEAKER_01: a
• 7:15
  pretty serious heroin habit i would go to law school in the day
• 7:19
  time i would come
• 7:20
  home i would do my homework and then i would use dope until i
• 7:28
  fell asleep and then
• 7:29
  i'd get up and and do it over again and very quickly developed
• 7:35
  physical dependence
• 7:37
  SPEAKER_01: that required me to constantly have it or be sick and that was um
• 7:44
  I don't think it's a mystery to anybody what that does to
• 7:49
  someone's life or their soul.
• 7:52
  SPEAKER_01: But I was able to maintain my grades to,
• 7:56
  SPEAKER_01: for the most part,
• 7:57
  SPEAKER_01: maintain the appearance of being a diligent and zealous law student.
• 8:04
  SPEAKER_01: I was liked in my classes.
• 8:05
  SPEAKER_01: I was liked by my professor.
• 8:07
  SPEAKER_01: I made good grades.
• 8:09
  SPEAKER_01: And I don't doubt that if not for that hurricane, I would have
• 8:13
  that degree and I would have been practicing law as a very very
• 8:19
  heavy intravenous
• 8:22
  drug user and of course the legal profession like so many
• 8:27
  others involves a
• 8:29
  tremendous amount of trust and you very often hold people's
• 8:34
  lives in your hands
• 8:36
  SPEAKER_01: your own clients first and foremost and I am
• 8:42
  extremely grateful that I was not put in the position to abuse
• 8:47
  that trust.
• 8:49
  SPEAKER_01: Because whatever my intentions,
• 8:52
  SPEAKER_01: whatever the nature of my own heart,
• 8:56
  SPEAKER_01: which I do have faith in,
• 8:58
  SPEAKER_01: that addiction robbed me of a lot of willpower.
• 9:02
  SPEAKER_01: It took away my ability to make decisions with other people in mind.
• 9:10
  SPEAKER_01: If for no other reason,
• 9:11
  because you get to a point where you need $100 a day or $200 a
• 9:14
  day or wherever it
• 9:16
  SPEAKER_01: gets to,
• 9:17
  SPEAKER_01: you start to cut corners to get that money.
• 9:21
  SPEAKER_01: And I saw where that led just as a student.
• 9:26
  I can only imagine what that would have looked like as a legal professional.
• 9:30
  SPEAKER_01: So when I left New Orleans, I ended up in Tucson, Arizona.
• 9:36
  SPEAKER_01: I had a friend there that
• 9:39
  SPEAKER_01: did trail maintenance for the park service,
• 9:41
  and he would be gone for weeks at a time and allow me to stay
• 9:45
  at his home.
• 9:45
  SPEAKER_01: But that was a 30 or 40-minute drive to the Mexican border.
• 9:51
  SPEAKER_01: Not to get bogged down in the economics of narcotics,
• 9:55
  but they're much cheaper on the south side of our border than
• 9:59
  they are in the north.
• 10:01
  SPEAKER_01: And I started out making one trip a week, and that became two or three.
• 10:07
  SPEAKER_01: And after a while, I just stayed down there.
• 10:10
  in Nogales,
• 10:11
  which is a border town in the state of Sonora,
• 10:14
  Mexico,
• 10:15
  just south of Tucson.
• 10:17
  And that was,
• 10:19
  if there is a low point in my life,
• 10:21
  I would say that was it.
• 10:23
  SPEAKER_01: I was there to use heroin.
• 10:28
  That was the only reason I was there,
• 10:31
  was to attempt to keep my life going as an addict and
• 10:39
  SPEAKER_00: And how long were you there after Katrina?
• 10:43
  SPEAKER_01: In Mexico?
• 10:46
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe six months.
• 10:48
  SPEAKER_01: There was,
• 10:49
  SPEAKER_01: and again,
• 10:50
  I was only saved by what probably felt like tragedy to those
• 10:56
  involved at the time.
• 10:57
  But apparently the cartels had a scheme there where they owned
• 11:02
  the payphones.
• 11:04
  And what happens when you go to a payphone in a border town,
• 11:07
  at least back then,
• 11:10
  SPEAKER_01: was you're given an option if you need an English operator.
• 11:14
  SPEAKER_01: All of those calls,
• 11:15
  SPEAKER_01: to my understanding,
• 11:17
  SPEAKER_01: were monitored by the cartel,
• 11:18
  SPEAKER_01: the ones where someone in Mexico is using a payphone to call collect,
• 11:23
  SPEAKER_01: but asks for an English operator.
• 11:25
  SPEAKER_01: And it's a very particular subset of people that'll be in that situation.
• 11:29
  SPEAKER_01: These are people that are out of their home country,
• 11:31
  SPEAKER_01: but they're not wealthy enough to have a satellite phone.
• 11:35
  SPEAKER_01: They're using a pay phone in a public place,
• 11:37
  SPEAKER_01: call and collect,
• 11:38
  SPEAKER_01: which often means you're in a situation you need help,
• 11:41
  SPEAKER_01: et cetera.
• 11:43
  SPEAKER_00: So you're vulnerable.
• 11:44
  SPEAKER_01: You're vulnerable,
• 11:45
  SPEAKER_01: but you have people,
• 11:47
  SPEAKER_01: at least one person that cares about you in the United States.
• 11:51
  SPEAKER_01: So there were a handful of people that I called while I was there,
• 11:55
  SPEAKER_01: family members,
• 11:56
  SPEAKER_01: check in,
• 11:57
  SPEAKER_01: ask for money,
• 11:58
  SPEAKER_01: whatever.
• 11:59
  SPEAKER_01: And
• 12:00
  SPEAKER_01: Very quickly, those people started getting phone calls.
• 12:04
  SPEAKER_01: Or not very quickly,
• 12:05
  SPEAKER_01: but after a few weeks,
• 12:06
  these people started getting phone calls telling them that I'd
• 12:10
  been kidnapped,
• 12:12
  SPEAKER_01: that I was being held by the cartel,
• 12:15
  SPEAKER_01: and that if they didn't send money,
• 12:18
  SPEAKER_01: they'd never see me again.
• 12:19
  SPEAKER_01: Wow.
• 12:21
  SPEAKER_01: My father was not wealthy and never was, but he was definitely a fighter.
• 12:28
  SPEAKER_01: And he...
• 12:30
  SPEAKER_01: He got on a plane.
• 12:32
  SPEAKER_01: He came to Tucson.
• 12:33
  SPEAKER_01: He presented himself at the border,
• 12:35
  SPEAKER_01: demanded help from the United States Border Patrol,
• 12:38
  SPEAKER_01: which was not forthcoming at all.
• 12:40
  SPEAKER_01: So he crossed the border on foot,
• 12:43
  SPEAKER_01: demanded help from the Mexican authorities,
• 12:46
  SPEAKER_01: who promptly identified him as someone that perhaps they could extort.
• 12:50
  SPEAKER_01: They pretended to be in contact with my kidnappers.
• 12:54
  SPEAKER_01: took him to the morgue to identify a body that wasn't mine.
• 12:58
  SPEAKER_01: He went through all kinds of nonsense.
• 13:00
  But what he refused to do was to pay any money until he either
• 13:04
  saw me or spoke to me,
• 13:06
  SPEAKER_01: which,
• 13:06
  SPEAKER_01: of course,
• 13:07
  SPEAKER_01: never happened because I wasn't kidnapped.
• 13:09
  SPEAKER_01: The whole time this was going on,
• 13:10
  SPEAKER_01: I'm walking up and down the streets of Nogales,
• 13:13
  SPEAKER_01: buying dope,
• 13:14
  living in an abandoned construction site in a tent I made out
• 13:18
  of a tarp and cinder blocks.
• 13:20
  But it was a very dangerous situation that I wasn't even aware
• 13:23
  of because now
• 13:25
  SPEAKER_01: there's someone that's showed up saying,
• 13:30
  SPEAKER_01: if you have my son,
• 13:31
  SPEAKER_01: I will pay.
• 13:32
  SPEAKER_01: So now I'm valuable and I'm a target.
• 13:35
  SPEAKER_01: The only thing that saved me was I had a snap card,
• 13:39
  SPEAKER_01: a food stamp card that I got in Tucson,
• 13:42
  SPEAKER_01: but you couldn't use it on the Mexico side of the border.
• 13:47
  And while all this was going on,
• 13:49
  I walked across the border and bought groceries.
• 13:53
  And when I tried to walk back,
• 13:55
  the Border Patrol had me on a red flag list.
• 14:01
  They took me into custody of sort of a hold,
• 14:04
  contacted my dad and said,
• 14:06
  we've got him.
• 14:07
  SPEAKER_01: And that was it.
• 14:09
  SPEAKER_01: That's when I found out everything had been going on.
• 14:12
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, my God.
• 14:15
  SPEAKER_01: We got on a Greyhound bus and came back to Charleston.
• 14:18
  SPEAKER_01: I spent four days on a Greyhound bus, dope sick.
• 14:23
  SPEAKER_01: That was the beginning of my serious attempts at recovery.
• 14:28
  SPEAKER_01: It was only a beginning.
• 14:30
  SPEAKER_01: It took years after that.
• 14:33
  SPEAKER_01: Even after I gave up the opiates,
• 14:35
  SPEAKER_01: I switched to cocaine,
• 14:37
  which I thought was safer because it doesn't create a physical dependence,
• 14:42
  SPEAKER_01: which had been my sort of
• 14:44
  SPEAKER_01: My demon was like,
• 14:45
  SPEAKER_01: oh,
• 14:45
  SPEAKER_01: OK,
• 14:45
  SPEAKER_01: well,
• 14:46
  SPEAKER_01: even if I don't want to do this,
• 14:47
  SPEAKER_01: even if I don't want to party,
• 14:49
  SPEAKER_01: I have to or I'll be sick.
• 14:51
  SPEAKER_01: So I thought,
• 14:51
  SPEAKER_01: well,
• 14:52
  SPEAKER_01: I don't want to be sober,
• 14:52
  SPEAKER_01: but maybe I'll just try something that's a little more forgiving.
• 14:57
  SPEAKER_01: It didn't really turn out that way.
• 14:59
  SPEAKER_01: I had created a mindset where drug use and even addiction,
• 15:06
  SPEAKER_01: that involvement with the criminal underworld,
• 15:10
  SPEAKER_01: hiding and running from police,
• 15:13
  the complete rejection of everything that sort of straight
• 15:18
  society stood for,
• 15:20
  SPEAKER_01: that became my identity in place of anything else.
• 15:25
  SPEAKER_01: For lack of anything else to offer the world, that was what I had.
• 15:29
  SPEAKER_01: And it was a firm and full rejection of what I'd seen of society,
• 15:37
  SPEAKER_01: what I'd seen of the straight life,
• 15:40
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 15:40
  SPEAKER_01: the...
• 15:42
  go get a job and pay the bills and become a good little cog in
• 15:47
  the machine.
• 15:48
  SPEAKER_01: I wanted no part in that.
• 15:49
  SPEAKER_01: So the first opportunity,
• 15:51
  SPEAKER_01: I,
• 15:51
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 15:52
  SPEAKER_01: I turned away from it and I,
• 15:54
  SPEAKER_01: I turned away really hard,
• 15:55
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 15:56
  SPEAKER_00: Have you found,
• 15:57
  and I want to pick back up at that part of your story and talk
• 16:01
  to you more about
• 16:03
  SPEAKER_00: the time since you've gotten clean to where you are now,
• 16:07
  SPEAKER_00: but have you found a solution to that in a more healthy life now?
• 16:14
  SPEAKER_00: That sense of not having to play society's game,
• 16:19
  SPEAKER_00: but also not having to sacrifice yourself in the pursuit of
• 16:25
  SPEAKER_00: not buying in?
• 16:29
  SPEAKER_01: I have.
• 16:31
  SPEAKER_01: It's not a complete victory.
• 16:33
  What I sort of arrived at that works for me is an almost
• 16:38
  complete and total
• 16:39
  SPEAKER_01: immersion in nature at every opportunity I get,
• 16:43
  SPEAKER_01: including in my choices of where to live,
• 16:45
  SPEAKER_01: where to work,
• 16:47
  SPEAKER_01: how I spend my free time.
• 16:49
  SPEAKER_01: It's a deliberate pulling back from civilization, from development,
• 16:55
  SPEAKER_01: from the things I find most distasteful about society.
• 16:59
  I just don't really get involved in to the extent that I can
• 17:03
  avoid it,
• 17:03
  I do.
• 17:05
  SPEAKER_01: I, like everybody else, I still have bills.
• 17:08
  SPEAKER_01: I still have to, I have to engage.
• 17:12
  SPEAKER_01: We all go to the DMV eventually.
• 17:15
  SPEAKER_01: And that's what I mean when I say the victory isn't total,
• 17:18
  SPEAKER_01: but I'm able to do that on terms that I'm more comfortable with now.
• 17:24
  turning away from that whole idea of a white collar job and and
• 17:30
  again this is just
• 17:31
  no judgment on the legal profession there are attorneys that
• 17:35
  are dear friends of
• 17:36
  mine that i went to school with that have done great favors for
• 17:39
  me that i wouldn't
• 17:42
  be sitting here if they weren't there it just wasn't for me
• 17:47
  that world wasn't for
• 17:48
  SPEAKER_01: me and
• 17:50
  There are so many other jobs that are valuable and important
• 17:52
  that are just,
• 17:53
  I can't do it.
• 17:55
  SPEAKER_01: I can't sit in front of a computer.
• 17:57
  SPEAKER_01: I can't sit under fluorescent light.
• 17:59
  SPEAKER_01: I can't honestly be inside the same four walls over and over again.
• 18:04
  SPEAKER_01: I tried working in kitchens for a while as a younger man and it just,
• 18:09
  SPEAKER_01: it's beautiful and important a thing as it is to feed other people.
• 18:14
  SPEAKER_01: I'm not cut out for it.
• 18:16
  SPEAKER_01: And I've gotten better at honoring
• 18:19
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 18:19
  what feels good to me at finding the ways that what few talents
• 18:24
  I have sort of line
• 18:25
  SPEAKER_01: up with how I can get those bills paid,
• 18:29
  SPEAKER_01: that helps a lot.
• 18:30
  SPEAKER_01: But it's also a fundamental shift in perspective.
• 18:35
  SPEAKER_01: I've come to sort of embody my belief that at the end of the day,
• 18:42
  SPEAKER_01: what I do for those hours that I'm on the clock somewhere,
• 18:45
  SPEAKER_01: is not really that important.
• 18:48
  SPEAKER_01: It's not the most important thing about me.
• 18:50
  SPEAKER_01: The time I spend in our fields at home,
• 18:53
  SPEAKER_01: the time I spend with my daughter,
• 18:56
  SPEAKER_01: with my fiance,
• 18:58
  with the family members that I still have left that I spent so
• 19:02
  long disappointing,
• 19:04
  SPEAKER_01: the time that I spend writing and reading poetry in public,
• 19:09
  SPEAKER_01: which I do occasionally,
• 19:12
  SPEAKER_01: that's where I find my humanity.
• 19:15
  I can be myself at work because I've now found jobs that align
• 19:20
  with my values and
• 19:21
  SPEAKER_01: let me use my body outdoors to be with animals,
• 19:24
  SPEAKER_01: to work with the land.
• 19:26
  But at the end of the day,
• 19:28
  I'm much more myself when I leave those places.
• 19:32
  SPEAKER_01: It's when I have the freedom to,
• 19:36
  SPEAKER_01: when I get in the truck at the end of the day and it's,
• 19:39
  SPEAKER_01: I can drive anywhere I want,
• 19:40
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 19:41
  SPEAKER_01: but where I choose to go over and over again,
• 19:45
  100% of the time is straight to the little sanctuary that we've
• 19:49
  made of our lives,
• 19:50
  SPEAKER_01: home to my family,
• 19:52
  SPEAKER_01: to our plants,
• 19:53
  SPEAKER_01: to our animals.
• 19:55
  SPEAKER_01: And that's where I want to be.
• 19:57
  SPEAKER_01: That's what matters to me now.
• 20:00
  SPEAKER_00: And,
• 20:00
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 20:01
  SPEAKER_00: when we were talking before we started recording today,
• 20:05
  SPEAKER_00: and I was explaining that this podcast and my work starts with horses,
• 20:11
  but it's about so much more than that and the community that
• 20:14
  we've created here.
• 20:16
  SPEAKER_00: My stories really...
• 20:18
  SPEAKER_00: Similar in not in similar details,
• 20:22
  but I tried to have all of the jobs that were lined up for me
• 20:29
  that were amazing.
• 20:30
  SPEAKER_00: When I left college, I had so much early success as a writer and.
• 20:37
  SPEAKER_00: I found myself,
• 20:38
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 20:39
  in positions like covering visual arts and food in upstate
• 20:43
  South Carolina.
• 20:44
  SPEAKER_00: I had all of my dream jobs, but I was sick on the inside.
• 20:51
  SPEAKER_00: I was sick on the inside with these jobs, with my life.
• 20:56
  SPEAKER_00: And I knew that I felt better when I was a kid and I was around horses.
• 21:01
  SPEAKER_00: I knew I felt better when I was in nature.
• 21:04
  And so I took a year off to try to figure out what I was going
• 21:07
  to do next and heal
• 21:09
  SPEAKER_00: myself so that I could so I could function again.
• 21:13
  SPEAKER_00: And then I landed with horses and I've been with them for 20 years.
• 21:18
  But why I come to horses is in a lot of ways why I originally
• 21:25
  came to poetry.
• 21:27
  It was being able to sink deeper into things that don't have
• 21:31
  words and to be able
• 21:34
  SPEAKER_00: to convey ideas that called to me deeply from the inside,
• 21:39
  SPEAKER_00: but I wasn't able to live out in society as we knew it.
• 21:45
  SPEAKER_00: So was nature always the place where you could go?
• 21:50
  SPEAKER_01: It was, and it was even before
• 21:55
  SPEAKER_01: Even before I was able to articulate that,
• 21:58
  SPEAKER_01: if you had asked me as a kid that question,
• 22:02
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know if I would have answered in the affirmative,
• 22:05
  but looking back at the places and times that I felt grounded
• 22:13
  and safe and alive
• 22:17
  SPEAKER_01: and without fear.
• 22:18
  SPEAKER_01: Fear was a big part of my childhood and even my early adulthood.
• 22:23
  SPEAKER_01: But there were moments and places that offered respite from that.
• 22:27
  SPEAKER_01: And they are, they were camping in the mountains with my family.
• 22:33
  SPEAKER_01: And while they were setting up the campsite every year,
• 22:36
  I would just walk off straight up the mountain and I would be
• 22:40
  allowed to go.
• 22:41
  SPEAKER_01: I would always find my way back.
• 22:44
  SPEAKER_01: And in the nighttime, I couldn't wait for the fire to get built.
• 22:49
  SPEAKER_01: And I would sit by the flames and
• 22:53
  SPEAKER_01: Every trip, there would be some adult that would comment on that.
• 22:57
  Boy,
• 22:57
  he'll just sit by the fire and just look at the flames,
• 23:00
  and that's all he needs.
• 23:02
  SPEAKER_01: And that elemental connection was incredibly calming for me back then.
• 23:09
  The neighborhood I grew up in was sort of small ranch houses
• 23:14
  built in the late 50s,
• 23:16
  SPEAKER_01: early 60s maybe,
• 23:18
  But in the style of neighborhoods back then,
• 23:21
  it was a lot of trees left standing.
• 23:23
  There were very significant networks of ditches that ran behind
• 23:27
  the houses that
• 23:28
  SPEAKER_01: were mostly overgrown.
• 23:29
  SPEAKER_01: And I could climb my back fence and use those ditches to travel the whole
• 23:34
  SPEAKER_01: neighborhood and connect to other neighborhoods and visit friends.
• 23:37
  SPEAKER_01: And I would almost never use the street to travel.
• 23:40
  SPEAKER_01: I would use the ditches.
• 23:42
  SPEAKER_01: And it felt like a little jungle.
• 23:46
  SPEAKER_01: Those are the memories for me
• 23:48
  SPEAKER_01: that when I think back on my childhood, when did I feel safe?
• 23:52
  SPEAKER_01: You know, it was walking that ditch line.
• 23:56
  SPEAKER_01: It was being in the mountains by myself,
• 24:00
  SPEAKER_01: walking out in the middle of these chimney rock,
• 24:04
  SPEAKER_01: North Carolina streams,
• 24:07
  going from rock to rock until I was as far out as I could be
• 24:11
  and just sitting there
• 24:13
  SPEAKER_01: watching the water go by.
• 24:14
  SPEAKER_01: And I never had a need to talk about it
• 24:18
  SPEAKER_01: I never really had a need for company while I was doing it.
• 24:24
  SPEAKER_01: It was enough to just observe.
• 24:28
  SPEAKER_01: And that to this day to me is so incredibly valuable.
• 24:35
  SPEAKER_01: If I'm sitting by a fire and somebody comes and sits next to me,
• 24:40
  I'm grateful for the company,
• 24:41
  but I'm also secretly hoping that they don't start talking.
• 24:50
  When I'm in nature,
• 24:51
  I just have this overwhelming feeling that this is enough.
• 24:55
  SPEAKER_01: We don't need a soundtrack.
• 24:57
  SPEAKER_01: We don't need to narrate it.
• 24:59
  SPEAKER_01: We don't need to talk about it, except maybe when we get back home.
• 25:05
  SPEAKER_01: While I'm there, it's enough to just be and exist.
• 25:11
  SPEAKER_01: As someone that tries to write about it,
• 25:13
  I do find some tension there because I want to bring something
• 25:18
  of that joy to people.
• 25:21
  SPEAKER_01: I want to bring something back and be able to offer it to others.
• 25:27
  But it's so fundamentally indescribable at its bottom that I do
• 25:35
  worry about
• 25:39
  SPEAKER_01: putting things into words that transcend language.
• 25:42
  SPEAKER_01: It's a very fine line.
• 25:47
  And it's the only vehicle we have in so many ways is this
• 25:51
  language as humans.
• 25:55
  SPEAKER_00: When did you start writing?
• 25:59
  SPEAKER_01: Well, there's two answers to that, and they're both true.
• 26:02
  SPEAKER_01: One is that I've always...
• 26:04
  SPEAKER_01: been a writer since I could write.
• 26:07
  SPEAKER_01: I was told I was good at it.
• 26:09
  SPEAKER_01: I was always a big reader.
• 26:11
  SPEAKER_01: My mother was a middle school English teacher,
• 26:14
  SPEAKER_01: so I had a good,
• 26:15
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 26:16
  SPEAKER_01: very early childhood foundation in reading,
• 26:20
  SPEAKER_01: and I found it
• 26:21
  SPEAKER_01: comforting right away.
• 26:22
  I would sit in the corner quietly with a book and there wasn't
• 26:26
  much trouble as a small child.
• 26:28
  SPEAKER_01: And as soon as writing became asked of me in school,
• 26:32
  SPEAKER_01: like it is everyone,
• 26:33
  I found I had a talent for it and was encouraged in my writing
• 26:38
  by almost every
• 26:39
  SPEAKER_01: English teacher I've ever had.
• 26:41
  SPEAKER_01: They were all unanimous that,
• 26:45
  SPEAKER_01: okay,
• 26:45
  SPEAKER_01: well,
• 26:45
  SPEAKER_01: you're better at this than we typically expect from your age or whatever,
• 26:50
  SPEAKER_01: you know.
• 26:51
  But it wasn't something that I took seriously until I stopped
• 27:00
  with the drugs.
• 27:02
  When I finally let go of addiction and the way that happened,
• 27:09
  if I can summarize it quickly.
• 27:11
  SPEAKER_00: Absolutely.
• 27:12
  SPEAKER_01: I had been in treatment for a couple of years,
• 27:15
  went through methadone treatment for the opiates and continued
• 27:18
  that treatment
• 27:19
  SPEAKER_01: because of the counseling that was offered there.
• 27:22
  SPEAKER_01: They required once a month.
• 27:23
  I was going once a week and I was taking it as seriously as I
• 27:27
  could take anything.
• 27:28
  SPEAKER_01: I was incredibly honest with my counselor and I'm very grateful for him.
• 27:33
  But I was,
• 27:34
  you know,
• 27:34
  it would be two steps forward,
• 27:36
  three back,
• 27:37
  that kind of thing for years.
• 27:40
  SPEAKER_01: And one night I went out to Folly Beach.
• 27:43
  SPEAKER_01: The beach was always a place of solace for me.
• 27:47
  SPEAKER_01: It wasn't somewhere I would go to use drugs.
• 27:49
  SPEAKER_01: It's always sort of a clean encounter.
• 27:52
  SPEAKER_01: with something more powerful than me.
• 27:54
  SPEAKER_00: I have to just for a moment,
• 27:56
  just interject to say my uncle and aunt lived on folly and I
• 28:00
  grew up in Charleston
• 28:01
  SPEAKER_00: in the summers with them.
• 28:03
  And I have had more transformative experiences on that beach
• 28:08
  than really anywhere in the world.
• 28:09
  And so I just wanna say,
• 28:13
  there's something about that place that's always called beyond me.
• 28:17
  SPEAKER_01: It's a very powerful place.
• 28:19
  SPEAKER_01: The beach as a town is a really special community,
• 28:24
  SPEAKER_01: but I've always been one when I go to the beach,
• 28:28
  SPEAKER_01: I want to be facing the ocean.
• 28:31
  SPEAKER_01: And if there are other people out there,
• 28:33
  SPEAKER_01: I want my back to them so that I can sort of pretend they aren't there.
• 28:38
  And if I got to go in the water and stay there for that to happen,
• 28:41
  that's what I do.
• 28:43
  SPEAKER_01: This was an afternoon.
• 28:45
  SPEAKER_01: I went out there.
• 28:46
  SPEAKER_01: I had maybe two days clean.
• 28:48
  SPEAKER_01: which at that time was a miracle.
• 28:51
  SPEAKER_01: And I was feeling pretty good.
• 28:52
  And I just wanted to go out to the beach and kind of hold on to
• 28:54
  it for a minute.
• 28:56
  SPEAKER_01: I thought for sure that it was temporary.
• 29:00
  And I thought,
• 29:00
  well,
• 29:00
  you know,
• 29:01
  maybe this is something I should just go enjoy.
• 29:04
  SPEAKER_01: And I got out there and I just stayed.
• 29:07
  SPEAKER_01: I just stayed on the beach and it got later and darker.
• 29:11
  And at some point I decided I wasn't going to leave and just
• 29:15
  sat there through the night sort of
• 29:17
  SPEAKER_01: holding all of that, just really just being there with who I was.
• 29:23
  And sun came up on the beach and I had almost no experience
• 29:30
  with sunrise other than,
• 29:32
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 29:32
  coming out of a bar and it was dark when I went in and daylight
• 29:36
  when I came out,
• 29:37
  SPEAKER_01: that kind of thing,
• 29:38
  SPEAKER_01: or a house.
• 29:39
  SPEAKER_01: It wasn't a good association up until that point.
• 29:45
  SPEAKER_01: But that,
• 29:46
  SPEAKER_01: That morning, it felt like revelation.
• 29:50
  SPEAKER_01: It felt like a promise being kept.
• 29:54
  SPEAKER_01: And I remember I stayed on the beach a good part of the morning,
• 29:59
  SPEAKER_01: and I left,
• 29:59
  SPEAKER_01: and I was walking down Center Street,
• 30:01
  SPEAKER_01: decided I was going to have breakfast like a normal person would,
• 30:05
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 30:05
  SPEAKER_01: like go sit in a restaurant and eat food.
• 30:08
  SPEAKER_01: And my friend called me.
• 30:10
  SPEAKER_01: He's a guy that I hadn't heard from in years,
• 30:13
  SPEAKER_01: but he had been a really good friend through college.
• 30:15
  SPEAKER_01: And we weren't on the phone one minute.
• 30:17
  SPEAKER_01: He picked up on just the energy.
• 30:21
  SPEAKER_01: And he said, Jason, you sound funny.
• 30:23
  SPEAKER_01: I said, are you okay?
• 30:24
  SPEAKER_01: Is something going on?
• 30:25
  SPEAKER_01: And I'll never forget.
• 30:26
  SPEAKER_01: I said, well, yeah, everything's great.
• 30:28
  SPEAKER_01: But I think I just decided a couple things.
• 30:31
  SPEAKER_01: And I said, oh, yeah, what's that?
• 30:33
  SPEAKER_01: I said, well, I don't think I ever want to do drugs again.
• 30:37
  And I think I want to watch the sunrise every day for the rest
• 30:40
  of my life.
• 30:43
  SPEAKER_01: And he just says, okay.
• 30:45
  SPEAKER_01: That sounds good.
• 30:48
  We were on the phone a couple more minutes and I hung up and I
• 30:50
  realized that at
• 30:51
  SPEAKER_01: least at that time that both of those statements were true.
• 30:55
  SPEAKER_01: And for something like nine years, that's what I did.
• 31:01
  SPEAKER_01: Every morning,
• 31:03
  SPEAKER_01: no matter what I'd done the night before,
• 31:06
  SPEAKER_01: where I had to be that day,
• 31:09
  SPEAKER_01: I got myself somewhere on the water and I waited for the sun to come up.
• 31:15
  SPEAKER_01: And my life,
• 31:18
  SPEAKER_01: my relationships,
• 31:19
  SPEAKER_01: my job,
• 31:21
  SPEAKER_01: whatever I was doing,
• 31:23
  SPEAKER_01: it had to adjust to that,
• 31:25
  SPEAKER_01: that part of my morning.
• 31:28
  SPEAKER_01: And that was just sort of the choice I offered people.
• 31:30
  SPEAKER_01: Like,
• 31:30
  SPEAKER_01: I can be there at eight,
• 31:32
  SPEAKER_01: but at seven,
• 31:32
  SPEAKER_01: I'm going to be at the creek waiting on the sun to come up.
• 31:35
  SPEAKER_01: And of course,
• 31:38
  SPEAKER_01: what you find out when you make that a practice is,
• 31:41
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 31:42
  SPEAKER_01: sunrise isn't a time.
• 31:44
  It's an event and it happens at a different time every day as
• 31:48
  the year progresses.
• 31:49
  SPEAKER_01: You know, it gets earlier and earlier and later and later.
• 31:52
  So that required some adjustment,
• 31:54
  but it was more than anything else I've ever done.
• 31:57
  SPEAKER_01: That habit offered immeasurable benefits.
• 32:00
  SPEAKER_01: The sort of mundane ones were fairly quick.
• 32:04
  SPEAKER_01: And that was that,
• 32:05
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 32:05
  if you're going to leave an hour early for work to go sit on
• 32:09
  the creek somewhere
• 32:10
  SPEAKER_01: and wait on the sun,
• 32:11
  SPEAKER_01: standing in pluff mud,
• 32:14
  SPEAKER_01: no matter what,
• 32:15
  SPEAKER_01: Eventually,
• 32:16
  you realize it's a lot more enjoyable if you've had six or
• 32:20
  seven hours of sleep
• 32:21
  SPEAKER_01: than if you've had two.
• 32:23
  SPEAKER_01: You start wanting to go to bed, which gets you off the street at night.
• 32:27
  SPEAKER_01: It starts your day early.
• 32:29
  SPEAKER_01: I can remember being in traffic and would be surrounded by cars,
• 32:33
  and I would feel genuinely sorry for people because I would
• 32:37
  know just looking at
• 32:38
  SPEAKER_01: them that they had gotten up,
• 32:40
  SPEAKER_01: taken a shower,
• 32:41
  SPEAKER_01: gotten in their car,
• 32:42
  SPEAKER_01: and now they were headed to an office somewhere.
• 32:44
  SPEAKER_01: I would think,
• 32:45
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 32:45
  SPEAKER_01: I'm going to work too,
• 32:46
  SPEAKER_01: but I spent an hour on the creek and it was just me and the birds.
• 32:51
  SPEAKER_01: And I watched the sky turn color six times in an hour.
• 32:55
  SPEAKER_01: And that was and still is my, that's my holy space.
• 33:03
  SPEAKER_01: That is my encounter with the divine.
• 33:06
  SPEAKER_01: And it has been amazing.
• 33:09
  incredibly strengthening for me like Thoreau says cultivate
• 33:14
  reverence I think
• 33:16
  that's a really brilliant expression because say that one more
• 33:20
  time because you cut
• 33:21
  out just a little bit and I don't want to lose that it's just a
• 33:25
  two word quote from
• 33:27
  Henry David Thoreau that I that I came across and never forgot
• 33:31
  and he says
• 33:34
  SPEAKER_01: cultivate reverence reverence our ability to
• 33:39
  To humble ourselves before unimaginable beauty and power and
• 33:43
  grace is available to
• 33:45
  SPEAKER_01: anybody at any time,
• 33:47
  SPEAKER_01: whether it's the first time they've ever experienced it in a thousand.
• 33:52
  SPEAKER_01: But this idea of cultivating it,
• 33:54
  of treating it like something that can grow over time is very
• 33:59
  powerful by putting
• 34:01
  SPEAKER_01: yourself in a place on a daily basis to witness the world waking up.
• 34:08
  to witness the coming of the dawn to cease the moving of heaven
• 34:14
  and earth.
• 34:15
  SPEAKER_01: It's, it has an effect that's immediate, but also cumulative.
• 34:21
  SPEAKER_01: The more you do it, it doesn't lose its power.
• 34:24
  SPEAKER_01: It becomes more powerful.
• 34:26
  SPEAKER_01: And it's something that I'm really grateful for.
• 34:30
  SPEAKER_01: I, uh,
• 34:32
  For a while in my attempts to get sober,
• 34:34
  I went to a few AA and NA meetings.
• 34:37
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm not really a meetings person for a lot of reasons.
• 34:41
  SPEAKER_01: But I remembered, you know, they have a lot of little expressions.
• 34:46
  And one of them was you go to a meeting every day and you don't
• 34:48
  drink or use between meetings.
• 34:51
  SPEAKER_01: And I kind of went in one ear and out the other.
• 34:54
  SPEAKER_01: But maybe six months into going to the Sunrise every day,
• 34:58
  SPEAKER_01: I was like,
• 34:59
  SPEAKER_01: well,
• 34:59
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 34:59
  SPEAKER_01: this is my meeting.
• 35:02
  SPEAKER_01: But rather than sitting in a room with a bunch of other addicts,
• 35:05
  SPEAKER_01: I'm sitting here before God as I encounter the idea.
• 35:11
  And if I know I'm going to be here tomorrow morning,
• 35:16
  who do I want to show up as?
• 35:18
  I found it profoundly affecting the way I spent the time in
• 35:22
  between sunrises.
• 35:24
  SPEAKER_01: Because I knew,
• 35:25
  I didn't wanna be standing in that marsh watching the sky turn
• 35:31
  pink and gold and
• 35:32
  filling with birds and dolphins breaking the water and feeling
• 35:37
  worthy of it.
• 35:38
  SPEAKER_01: Or to feel ungrateful.
• 35:42
  To have done something in the interim since the last time I was
• 35:46
  there to suggest
• 35:48
  SPEAKER_01: maybe this isn't enough.
• 35:50
  SPEAKER_01: Because frankly it is.
• 35:54
  SPEAKER_01: And it started to shape who I was.
• 35:57
  You know,
• 35:59
  I would spend that 20 minutes,
• 36:00
  30 minutes,
• 36:01
  an hour in the morning in nature.
• 36:04
  SPEAKER_01: And then I would go to my job and just kind of be a normal person.
• 36:09
  SPEAKER_01: But it sent tendrils out.
• 36:12
  SPEAKER_01: It sent roots out into the rest of my life.
• 36:15
  SPEAKER_01: And I found myself seeking those opportunities all day.
• 36:21
  SPEAKER_01: if I had five minutes,
• 36:22
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 36:23
  if I was at a doctor's appointment and I'm looking out the
• 36:25
  window and there's a
• 36:26
  SPEAKER_01: little Creek through the woods and I'm like,
• 36:28
  SPEAKER_01: well,
• 36:29
  SPEAKER_01: I got five minutes.
• 36:30
  I could spend it in this waiting room or I could just walk
• 36:34
  through that little gap
• 36:35
  SPEAKER_01: in the fence and see what's over there,
• 36:37
  SPEAKER_01: you know?
• 36:40
  SPEAKER_01: And that's the person that I've become.
• 36:44
  SPEAKER_01: If you take me to a party somewhere and you can't find me, I've,
• 36:49
  probably walked straight to the edge of the yard and into the
• 36:52
  woods and I'll be
• 36:53
  back when I'm back but that's where I'm comfortable and I'm
• 37:01
  okay with that it saved
• 37:04
  my life so maybe I'm not capable of being the person that I
• 37:08
  thought I should be
• 37:10
  SPEAKER_01: that my dad wanted me to be but if the choice is
• 37:17
  SPEAKER_01: death or this.
• 37:18
  SPEAKER_01: That's no choice at all.
• 37:20
  SPEAKER_01: And that is pretty much the choice I had.
• 37:25
  SPEAKER_01: What I was doing was not working.
• 37:31
  SPEAKER_01: That was...
• 37:33
  SPEAKER_01: The counselor I mentioned, that was one of his favorite questions.
• 37:36
  SPEAKER_01: I would give him some long explanation and justification.
• 37:40
  SPEAKER_01: Why do this and that?
• 37:41
  SPEAKER_01: And I don't do this.
• 37:42
  SPEAKER_01: I don't do that.
• 37:44
  He would just let me talk and he'd say,
• 37:47
  well,
• 37:48
  how's that working out for you?
• 37:52
  Which,
• 37:52
  of course,
• 37:53
  was a rhetorical question because we both knew why I was there.
• 37:58
  SPEAKER_01: And it's one that I've had occasion to ask a few friends since then.
• 38:03
  SPEAKER_01: How's that working out for you?
• 38:07
  SPEAKER_01: What are these choices doing for your well-being?
• 38:10
  SPEAKER_01: Not for your bank account,
• 38:12
  SPEAKER_01: not for your climb up some imaginary ladder,
• 38:16
  but how does it make you feel on a day-to-day basis to keep
• 38:20
  making this choice?
• 38:21
  SPEAKER_01: I think it's a very informative question to answer for yourself.
• 38:27
  SPEAKER_01: At least it is for me.
• 38:29
  And your father,
• 38:30
  I've noticed in your writing,
• 38:31
  your father's spirit is very much present.
• 38:37
  SPEAKER_00: When did he pass?
• 38:39
  SPEAKER_01: It's been maybe three years now.
• 38:43
  SPEAKER_01: I'm bad with dates and with chronological order of things.
• 38:50
  SPEAKER_01: It's been at least two years.
• 38:53
  SPEAKER_01: He did live long enough to see me clean.
• 38:56
  He lived long enough to meet Juliet,
• 38:59
  the mother of my child,
• 39:00
  my fiance,
• 39:02
  which I'm grateful for.
• 39:04
  SPEAKER_01: He's someone that grew up in an abusive household,
• 39:09
  SPEAKER_01: an alcoholic household,
• 39:11
  SPEAKER_01: left home as a very young man,
• 39:13
  SPEAKER_01: 15,
• 39:15
  and sort of spent his life trying to make up for those
• 39:20
  inadequacies that he was
• 39:22
  SPEAKER_01: born into.
• 39:23
  SPEAKER_01: Always wanted to dress nice.
• 39:25
  SPEAKER_01: Always wanted to have the appearance of financial stability,
• 39:28
  SPEAKER_01: if not wealth,
• 39:30
  SPEAKER_01: even when it was an illusion.
• 39:33
  SPEAKER_01: Always wanted us to have a house full of presents on Christmas,
• 39:37
  even if they would sometimes have to go back to the store two
• 39:40
  weeks later,
• 39:41
  SPEAKER_01: or if the lights would get turned off in January,
• 39:44
  SPEAKER_01: which they often did.
• 39:46
  There were a lot of things we disagreed about,
• 39:48
  but I found towards the end of his life
• 39:52
  in the beginning of my recovery,
• 39:55
  that those things weren't really important.
• 39:57
  SPEAKER_01: He is someone that never gave up on me.
• 40:01
  SPEAKER_01: There were years where on a regular basis, I was stealing money from him.
• 40:10
  I used to have his signature downloaded on the home screen of
• 40:16
  my computer so that I could
• 40:19
  SPEAKER_01: drag and drop it into electronic checks.
• 40:22
  SPEAKER_01: That's how far I took my abuse of his love for me as an addict.
• 40:28
  But he kept insisting to me and to anybody that would listen,
• 40:34
  that isn't you.
• 40:35
  SPEAKER_01: That's not Jason.
• 40:37
  SPEAKER_01: He's still in there.
• 40:39
  SPEAKER_01: And if he hadn't have shown up in Mexico,
• 40:42
  SPEAKER_01: if he hadn't have brought me home,
• 40:43
  SPEAKER_01: if he hadn't have stood by me over and over and over again,
• 40:49
  SPEAKER_01: There's no doubt in my mind I wouldn't have made it.
• 40:53
  SPEAKER_01: I see him every day.
• 40:55
  SPEAKER_01: He visits...
• 40:58
  SPEAKER_01: I always feel like I should couch this in the language of metaphor,
• 41:01
  SPEAKER_01: but that's not what I believe.
• 41:04
  SPEAKER_01: He visits me as a red-tailed hawk.
• 41:07
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 41:07
  SPEAKER_01: Very frequently.
• 41:09
  SPEAKER_01: And shows up for almost every important occasion in that form.
• 41:15
  SPEAKER_00: How did you know that was him in that form when he first appeared?
• 41:21
  SPEAKER_01: intuition, recognition.
• 41:23
  SPEAKER_01: It's funny because I had been seeing his brother,
• 41:27
  SPEAKER_01: my uncle Jimmy,
• 41:29
  SPEAKER_01: for years in Cardinals while my dad was still alive.
• 41:32
  And if he had asked me then,
• 41:35
  I would have thought he would maybe come in similar form.
• 41:38
  SPEAKER_01: But he was at his own memorial service as a red-tailed hawk.
• 41:42
  SPEAKER_01: And I went to that service in a t-shirt.
• 41:47
  SPEAKER_01: The only thing on it was a hawk.
• 41:50
  SPEAKER_01: And barefoot.
• 41:52
  SPEAKER_01: And spoke at great length about what he meant to me.
• 41:58
  SPEAKER_01: And there he was in the sky.
• 42:00
  SPEAKER_01: And he's come back that way hundreds of times since.
• 42:04
  SPEAKER_00: And that knowing of that being him visiting in the same way,
• 42:10
  what I hear is it's the same knowing that he had of you when
• 42:15
  you couldn't see yourself.
• 42:18
  SPEAKER_01: That's right.
• 42:19
  It's a familiarity that can only be born of intense love and a
• 42:26
  long-term close connection.
• 42:31
  It's something that gives me comfort as a father who,
• 42:36
  you know,
• 42:38
  I'm 47 years old and
• 42:41
  That doesn't make me the oldest dad in the world,
• 42:43
  but I'm not the youngest either.
• 42:45
  And I am not bad enough at math to not be able to take my age
• 42:52
  and start adding numbers to it.
• 42:54
  SPEAKER_01: How old will I be when she's 18?
• 42:56
  SPEAKER_01: How old will I be when she's 30?
• 42:58
  SPEAKER_01: How old will I be when she stops needing me?
• 43:01
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I was now.
• 43:03
  SPEAKER_01: I still need my dad.
• 43:05
  SPEAKER_01: He's not even here anymore.
• 43:07
  SPEAKER_01: I worry about these things, but
• 43:09
  I know that I'll be able to be there for her the same way he's
• 43:14
  there for me.
• 43:16
  SPEAKER_01: And I am doing my best to spend every second I can showing her that,
• 43:22
  SPEAKER_01: showing up in ways that are complete and honest,
• 43:28
  SPEAKER_01: letting her see me cry when she needs to,
• 43:32
  SPEAKER_01: being strong for her when that's what's called for.
• 43:36
  SPEAKER_01: And also just opening her eyes to the natural world.
• 43:42
  SPEAKER_01: I don't want her to have to wait until she's in her 30s to find all this.
• 43:48
  SPEAKER_01: She's got it now already.
• 43:52
  SPEAKER_01: And I might not ever offer her a financial head start in life,
• 43:59
  SPEAKER_01: but I think this one will be much more valuable.
• 44:04
  SPEAKER_00: Absolutely.
• 44:05
  SPEAKER_01: to see that connection, to see that nothing really dies.
• 44:11
  SPEAKER_01: It's just transformed.
• 44:14
  SPEAKER_00: Tell me,
• 44:14
  have there been any really defining moments with the two of you
• 44:21
  being in the
• 44:21
  SPEAKER_00: natural world together?
• 44:25
  SPEAKER_01: Well, there's a couple that come to mind.
• 44:29
  SPEAKER_01: She, you know, when you have a baby, this is not
• 44:35
  SPEAKER_01: I'm learning it day by day.
• 44:37
  SPEAKER_01: I have no foundation for any of this.
• 44:41
  SPEAKER_01: I learn it as it happens.
• 44:43
  But there's all these things where it's like one day they don't
• 44:46
  do it and then they do.
• 44:50
  SPEAKER_01: And it's things I would never think about.
• 44:52
  SPEAKER_01: I know about milestones like walking, talking, things like that.
• 44:56
  SPEAKER_01: But there was a day that she had never pointed at anything.
• 45:02
  SPEAKER_01: And then one day she did it and
• 45:05
  SPEAKER_01: and there's everything after that.
• 45:07
  And I've always found great joy in the times when the moon and
• 45:13
  sun are in the sky
• 45:14
  SPEAKER_01: at the same time.
• 45:15
  SPEAKER_01: That sort of daytime moon.
• 45:18
  SPEAKER_01: And I don't know why.
• 45:20
  SPEAKER_01: It could be that there's an Eric Burden song,
• 45:25
  SPEAKER_01: Sun Moon,
• 45:25
  SPEAKER_01: where he says,
• 45:26
  SPEAKER_01: I have the sun on one breast and the moon on the other.
• 45:29
  SPEAKER_01: I always found that to be a powerful image.
• 45:31
  SPEAKER_01: But we were walking through the field and I was carrying her
• 45:36
  SPEAKER_01: And she just pointed.
• 45:40
  And I looked down her finger at what she was pointing at and it
• 45:43
  was the moon just
• 45:45
  SPEAKER_01: over the tree line and maybe its last five minutes of the day.
• 45:50
  SPEAKER_01: And it just brought me to my knees.
• 45:54
  SPEAKER_01: It seems like such a small thing, but it was really powerful.
• 46:00
  SPEAKER_01: And now you sit in the yard with her and it's just every bird
• 46:07
  SPEAKER_01: She shows me birds all the time that I don't know are there.
• 46:10
  SPEAKER_01: You know,
• 46:11
  I'm looking down at a book or whatever I'm doing and she points
• 46:17
  and I look up and
• 46:17
  SPEAKER_01: there's a crow,
• 46:19
  SPEAKER_01: there's an eagle.
• 46:22
  SPEAKER_01: We live in sort of a transitory space.
• 46:25
  There's fields because it's been used for agriculture and is
• 46:30
  being used for agriculture.
• 46:32
  SPEAKER_01: There's woods, but it's also right at the edge of salt marsh.
• 46:36
  And there's a lot of back and forth traffic with the birds in
• 46:41
  the mornings and in
• 46:42
  SPEAKER_01: the evenings going back and forth from the places they sleep,
• 46:46
  SPEAKER_01: the places they feed.
• 46:48
  SPEAKER_01: So a lot of times they're just they're only there for a second.
• 46:51
  SPEAKER_01: You know, they got somewhere to be.
• 46:54
  And she's just really great at alerting me to their passage,
• 46:59
  which is nice.
• 47:01
  SPEAKER_00: So she is purely observation.
• 47:04
  SPEAKER_01: It's yeah.
• 47:06
  SPEAKER_01: And that's another thing that I've really enjoyed.
• 47:13
  SPEAKER_01: From the very beginning, I've carried her on walks through the woods.
• 47:17
  SPEAKER_01: I've carried her to the marsh for the sunrise with me.
• 47:23
  SPEAKER_01: And in the Lowcountry, we have these oaks that are hundreds of years old.
• 47:31
  Just beautiful trees with so much presence,
• 47:34
  so much knowing in their bones.
• 47:36
  SPEAKER_01: And as soon as she was able to touch,
• 47:39
  SPEAKER_01: to use her hands to touch,
• 47:41
  SPEAKER_01: I would take her to these trees and let her touch them.
• 47:45
  SPEAKER_01: And right away she took to it.
• 47:48
  SPEAKER_01: And now when I walk through the woods, she will reach out.
• 47:53
  SPEAKER_01: She'll make me stop so she can touch a tree.
• 47:56
  SPEAKER_01: And it's just, it's,
• 48:00
  SPEAKER_02: It's everything.
• 48:02
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 48:03
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 48:04
  SPEAKER_01: I feel her watching me the way she watches the world around us.
• 48:11
  SPEAKER_01: And I want.
• 48:13
  I want that example to be one I can be proud of,
• 48:16
  but also one that will be useful to her.
• 48:20
  SPEAKER_01: And it encourages me when I see some of my habits,
• 48:24
  SPEAKER_01: my reverence for the natural world show up in her,
• 48:27
  SPEAKER_01: even at 13 months.
• 48:29
  SPEAKER_01: It's a real gift.
• 48:32
  SPEAKER_01: And it's one I'm glad I got to live long enough to see.
• 48:36
  SPEAKER_00: Mm-hmm.
• 48:38
  SPEAKER_00: And you have,
• 48:39
  SPEAKER_00: from what I have discovered through your poetry,
• 48:43
  you have had these amazing connections with kids that have came
• 48:50
  through your life.
• 48:51
  SPEAKER_00: Kids of friends, kids of, they show up in your poetry.
• 48:55
  And the way that you're able to actually capture without
• 49:01
  oversimplifying that
• 49:04
  ability of children to be able to come to the natural world and
• 49:10
  experience awe is
• 49:13
  SPEAKER_00: what really,
• 49:15
  SPEAKER_00: those moments in your writing have
• 49:18
  SPEAKER_00: really connected with me.
• 49:20
  Because we talk all the time about going back to a child's mind
• 49:24
  and going back to
• 49:26
  being able to tap into those things that we carried with us
• 49:30
  from birth that get
• 49:31
  SPEAKER_00: written out of us as we age.
• 49:34
  But the way that you're able to not lose that deep wisdom that
• 49:41
  children are bringing is lovely.
• 49:44
  SPEAKER_00: You're not ever simplifying it.
• 49:46
  SPEAKER_01: I've found them to be
• 49:49
  I could talk for hours about the kids that have come into my
• 49:52
  life seemingly just
• 49:54
  SPEAKER_01: out of nowhere and just taught me,
• 49:59
  SPEAKER_01: held me up in ways that I would never have imagined possible.
• 50:04
  But one thing I found really early on in my attempts to live a
• 50:09
  life that I could be
• 50:10
  SPEAKER_01: proud of,
• 50:11
  SPEAKER_01: that I could tolerate spiritually,
• 50:14
  SPEAKER_01: was that they weren't interested in my story.
• 50:19
  SPEAKER_01: There was no, okay, well, where'd you go to school?
• 50:23
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, well, what are you doing with that degree?
• 50:25
  SPEAKER_01: Well, how much money do you have?
• 50:28
  SPEAKER_01: It was none of that.
• 50:29
  SPEAKER_01: It was how present are you in this moment?
• 50:34
  SPEAKER_01: Do you listen when I speak?
• 50:36
  SPEAKER_01: Do you care about what I say?
• 50:38
  Will you engage in play and make believe or more importantly,
• 50:45
  will you engage in complete truth?
• 50:49
  with me when I need that in honesty do you sugarcoat things do
• 50:54
  you lie to me
• 50:55
  because I'm a kid those are the things that are important to
• 50:58
  them they're not
• 50:59
  interested in what mistakes I made last year and I found that
• 51:04
  to be incredibly
• 51:05
  reinforcing one of the first places I lived on Johns Island was
• 51:11
  just a beautiful
• 51:13
  SPEAKER_01: place surrounded by water they actually have kids nature camps there
• 51:18
  SPEAKER_01: But the daughter of the property owner, she was eight at the time.
• 51:22
  SPEAKER_01: And we just immediately became close friends.
• 51:27
  SPEAKER_01: And this is a child who,
• 51:29
  SPEAKER_01: like my own daughter,
• 51:30
  SPEAKER_01: was immersed in nature from birth,
• 51:34
  SPEAKER_01: was given the freedom to play in the woods,
• 51:36
  SPEAKER_01: to climb trees,
• 51:38
  SPEAKER_01: to trust her intuition,
• 51:40
  SPEAKER_01: to talk to animals.
• 51:42
  SPEAKER_01: And her judgment about me, of me,
• 51:48
  SPEAKER_01: became so important.
• 51:50
  SPEAKER_01: And I would come home from work and she'd be there waiting for me.
• 51:57
  SPEAKER_01: There was one time I came home and she was standing in my parking spot.
• 52:01
  SPEAKER_01: And she said,
• 52:02
  SPEAKER_01: I just started to walk to the back to the woods,
• 52:05
  SPEAKER_01: but the birds told me you were almost here.
• 52:07
  SPEAKER_01: This was a nine-year-old then.
• 52:10
  SPEAKER_01: She had names for some of the trees out there.
• 52:13
  SPEAKER_01: But what I found with her was that
• 52:17
  The way she saw me was based on how I treated her,
• 52:22
  how I showed up for her.
• 52:25
  SPEAKER_01: Was I willing to let down the mask of adulthood?
• 52:29
  SPEAKER_01: Was I willing to be wrong?
• 52:34
  SPEAKER_01: Was I willing to be goofy?
• 52:36
  SPEAKER_01: Was I willing to do things I was bad at?
• 52:38
  Her favorite thing to do is to make me dance because of how bad
• 52:42
  of a dancer I am,
• 52:44
  you know?
• 52:46
  SPEAKER_01: She didn't want to play soccer with me,
• 52:49
  SPEAKER_01: which I was pretty good at,
• 52:51
  SPEAKER_01: or,
• 52:52
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 52:53
  SPEAKER_01: watch me draw pictures or anything that I had any kind of skill in.
• 52:57
  SPEAKER_01: It was, let's have a dance contest, you know?
• 53:00
  SPEAKER_01: Let's...
• 53:04
  One of the greatest honors I ever received was recently,
• 53:08
  and that was when she chose.
• 53:11
  SPEAKER_01: This child was eight when I met her,
• 53:12
  SPEAKER_01: and on her 16th birthday,
• 53:14
  SPEAKER_01: she spent it driving her car to my house.
• 53:20
  SPEAKER_01: These are relationships that I hope go on forever.
• 53:25
  SPEAKER_01: There are children of my friends that I'm equally close to.
• 53:31
  SPEAKER_01: that just see me and they see me because they are smart,
• 53:37
  SPEAKER_01: because they have intuition that hasn't been dimmed by the world,
• 53:41
  SPEAKER_01: but also because I let them.
• 53:43
  SPEAKER_01: I've just decided,
• 53:45
  SPEAKER_01: well,
• 53:45
  if I don't have anything to hide and I don't hide the few
• 53:49
  things I'm embarrassed about,
• 53:51
  SPEAKER_01: that's the way for me to live.
• 53:54
  SPEAKER_01: By doing that, I've had to eliminate most of what I would be embarrassed
• 54:00
  to admit right it's like if you're going to live openly you
• 54:03
  can't really have
• 54:05
  secrets not not the kind of secrets i used to carry and that's
• 54:12
  why i'm so open
• 54:13
  about my own failings current and past because if i know that
• 54:20
  i'm going to admit
• 54:21
  SPEAKER_01: these things i i want it to be a short list or as short as possible
• 54:27
  And I would prefer that the things be in the past and the more
• 54:30
  distant past with
• 54:31
  SPEAKER_01: each passing day.
• 54:33
  SPEAKER_01: It makes them easier to talk about.
• 54:36
  That was a really long answer to your question about how long
• 54:39
  I've been writing.
• 54:40
  SPEAKER_00: I really love your answer.
• 54:43
  SPEAKER_00: And I really, I could sit and talk to you for days.
• 54:46
  SPEAKER_00: I just want to ask you questions.
• 54:48
  SPEAKER_00: I want to ask you questions and sit back and listen.
• 54:50
  SPEAKER_01: I started writing as a way to express gratitude for all this,
• 54:54
  SPEAKER_01: for the things I was seeing in nature,
• 54:57
  SPEAKER_01: for the ways that
• 54:58
  The children I was encountering and some of the adults were
• 55:02
  starting to respond to
• 55:04
  SPEAKER_01: the person I had decided to let myself be.
• 55:08
  SPEAKER_01: To that openness, to that vulnerability.
• 55:12
  SPEAKER_01: And I hear that word a lot.
• 55:15
  SPEAKER_01: But when I use it, I mean it in a complete sense.
• 55:20
  SPEAKER_01: I'm going to offer you my throat.
• 55:24
  SPEAKER_01: I'm going to give you the ability to hurt me.
• 55:28
  SPEAKER_01: if you choose to do so.
• 55:30
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm just going to roll the dice that you won't.
• 55:32
  Part of that is a little bit of knowing that there's very
• 55:36
  little anybody could do
• 55:37
  SPEAKER_01: that hasn't been done to me already.
• 55:39
  SPEAKER_01: I won't bore you with the stories,
• 55:42
  SPEAKER_01: but I've been hurt in a lot of ways,
• 55:44
  SPEAKER_01: physically,
• 55:45
  SPEAKER_01: psychologically.
• 55:47
  SPEAKER_01: After a while, it's less scary.
• 55:49
  SPEAKER_01: The scariest thing was admitting it was possible.
• 55:54
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm past that.
• 55:57
  SPEAKER_01: I don't need to project invincibility.
• 56:01
  And would you find that it's less scary living in a complete
• 56:06
  sense of vulnerability
• 56:08
  SPEAKER_00: and offering your throat than to live the other way?
• 56:13
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, it is.
• 56:15
  SPEAKER_01: Because one is a lie and one isn't.
• 56:19
  SPEAKER_01: The problem with lying is you have to keep doing it.
• 56:22
  You got to do it over and over and over all the time and it
• 56:25
  gets more and more complicated.
• 56:27
  SPEAKER_01: The lives overlap.
• 56:29
  SPEAKER_01: You lose track.
• 56:29
  SPEAKER_01: You lose your place.
• 56:31
  SPEAKER_01: While I was good at it,
• 56:32
  while I was good at sort of keeping that whole thing sort of
• 56:37
  floating in the air on
• 56:38
  SPEAKER_01: increasingly wobbly stilts,
• 56:41
  SPEAKER_01: I always just wanted to come down.
• 56:42
  SPEAKER_01: I didn't want to keep that going.
• 56:46
  And to come back to that earlier point of the only way I could
• 56:51
  do that was if I
• 56:53
  SPEAKER_01: found a way to live where,
• 56:55
  SPEAKER_01: for the most part,
• 56:56
  SPEAKER_01: I don't do things I'm ashamed of.
• 56:58
  SPEAKER_01: As long as there's that element of,
• 57:00
  SPEAKER_01: well,
• 57:01
  I can show you 80% of my life and then I got to have this
• 57:05
  little private thing
• 57:07
  SPEAKER_01: that's my dark secret.
• 57:10
  SPEAKER_01: I'm not capable of sustaining that kind of life.
• 57:13
  SPEAKER_01: As thrilling as it may be temporarily,
• 57:17
  SPEAKER_01: it eats at me in ways that are extremely harmful and weakening.
• 57:22
  SPEAKER_01: That is a vulnerability that I'm not comfortable with.
• 57:27
  SPEAKER_01: I am comfortable with saying there are ways that I'm weak.
• 57:32
  SPEAKER_01: There are ways that I can be hurt.
• 57:35
  SPEAKER_01: There are ways that I am uncoordinated, unexperienced.
• 57:41
  SPEAKER_01: That I can tolerate.
• 57:42
  SPEAKER_01: What I can't abide is a dishonesty within myself.
• 57:48
  SPEAKER_01: A pretending.
• 57:50
  Because what it does,
• 57:51
  what I've found about the honesty is it sharpens for me what I...
• 57:56
  SPEAKER_01: do care about.
• 57:58
  SPEAKER_01: And those things,
• 58:00
  SPEAKER_01: the things that are important,
• 58:02
  I fight for to the death and I would not want to be on the
• 58:07
  other side of that fight.
• 58:10
  I'm entirely comfortable in my ability to defend myself and
• 58:14
  defend the people I
• 58:16
  SPEAKER_01: care about because of the foundation.
• 58:20
  SPEAKER_01: When it was all a lie, there was always this fear of like,
• 58:23
  somebody's going to find out and it's all going to go away and
• 58:26
  I'll lose everything.
• 58:27
  SPEAKER_01: And, you know, I try to not get too comfortable.
• 58:30
  SPEAKER_01: The only thing that's constant is change, right?
• 58:33
  SPEAKER_01: But some things really are forever.
• 58:35
  SPEAKER_01: I saw that when my dad died.
• 58:38
  SPEAKER_01: What I learned from his passing was not a lesson in impermanence.
• 58:44
  SPEAKER_01: It was a lesson in forever, in eternity.
• 58:49
  SPEAKER_00: Do you say that love is that basis?
• 58:54
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 58:56
  SPEAKER_01: You know,
• 58:56
  SPEAKER_01: we've got these principles,
• 58:59
  SPEAKER_01: sort of fundamental laws of nature,
• 59:02
  SPEAKER_01: the conservation of mass,
• 59:04
  SPEAKER_01: conservation of energy that tells us,
• 59:07
  SPEAKER_01: or even the idea that every drop of water on earth has always been here.
• 59:12
  SPEAKER_01: There's no new water.
• 59:13
  SPEAKER_01: It's all just changing.
• 59:14
  SPEAKER_01: Today it's a cloud.
• 59:16
  SPEAKER_01: Tomorrow it's inside you.
• 59:17
  SPEAKER_01: The next day it's being drank by a plant, whatever.
• 59:21
  All of those things,
• 59:22
  the sort of dry scientific side of them,
• 59:26
  you know,
• 59:27
  it's interesting.
• 59:27
  SPEAKER_01: It's like a little mind game.
• 59:29
  SPEAKER_01: But when you add love to that equation,
• 59:33
  SPEAKER_01: that's when you get to be able to make statements like,
• 59:36
  SPEAKER_01: well,
• 59:37
  SPEAKER_01: nobody dies.
• 59:38
  SPEAKER_01: Nobody really leaves.
• 59:40
  SPEAKER_01: The ways that
• 59:42
  we imprint on each other have a permanence far beyond our
• 59:46
  physical forms i've seen
• 59:48
  that in my own life with people that have gone on to the other
• 59:52
  side and i sometimes
• 59:55
  get little glimpses of it from the other perspective i mean to
• 59:59
  hear from you a few
• 1:00:02
  minutes ago to refer to poetry i wrote three or four years ago
• 1:00:07
  i can remember being
• 1:00:09
  SPEAKER_01: the pandemic and
• 1:00:10
  sitting in a little John boat in the pond and just reading
• 1:00:14
  poems into my phone and
• 1:00:15
  SPEAKER_01: putting them on the internet and thinking,
• 1:00:18
  SPEAKER_01: what am I doing here?
• 1:00:22
  SPEAKER_01: Why am I doing this?
• 1:00:23
  But because I didn't have an answer,
• 1:00:25
  it was sort of permission to keep doing it.
• 1:00:27
  SPEAKER_01: Nobody was paying me.
• 1:00:28
  SPEAKER_01: Nobody expected it, certainly.
• 1:00:31
  SPEAKER_01: I hadn't promised it to anyone.
• 1:00:33
  SPEAKER_01: It was just, here, you can have this.
• 1:00:38
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you for doing that.
• 1:00:39
  SPEAKER_00: But that was going to be my next question.
• 1:00:41
  SPEAKER_00: When did you start putting these poems out into the world?
• 1:00:44
  SPEAKER_00: So did you start doing it more during the pandemic?
• 1:00:48
  SPEAKER_00: Did you do it before?
• 1:00:49
  SPEAKER_01: It was during the pandemic times.
• 1:00:54
  SPEAKER_01: There was a small bar on Folly Beach, actually, called Chico Feo.
• 1:01:01
  SPEAKER_01: That is a 100% outdoor affair.
• 1:01:02
  SPEAKER_01: The only
• 1:01:05
  SPEAKER_01: inside part of this bar is their bathroom.
• 1:01:08
  SPEAKER_01: It's all outside.
• 1:01:09
  SPEAKER_01: It's basically just a courtyard.
• 1:01:10
  SPEAKER_01: So if the weather's bad, they have to close.
• 1:01:14
  But I was sitting at that bar one night and talking to a man
• 1:01:20
  who's now a dear
• 1:01:21
  SPEAKER_01: friend of mine,
• 1:01:22
  SPEAKER_01: but he was a retired English professor.
• 1:01:25
  SPEAKER_01: And we were talking and he says, well, you sound like a writer.
• 1:01:27
  SPEAKER_01: Do you write?
• 1:01:29
  SPEAKER_01: And at that time I had written three short poems.
• 1:01:32
  Very short poems at sunrise,
• 1:01:35
  just sort of kind of like beach observational things.
• 1:01:39
  SPEAKER_01: And I let him read them.
• 1:01:41
  SPEAKER_01: I had them on my phone.
• 1:01:42
  SPEAKER_01: And he says, well, you got to read this stuff in public somewhere.
• 1:01:46
  SPEAKER_01: At that time, I didn't even know there was such a thing as an open mic.
• 1:01:51
  SPEAKER_01: I had no concept of that as a phenomenon at all.
• 1:01:57
  SPEAKER_01: And he sort of explains to me,
• 1:01:58
  SPEAKER_01: well,
• 1:01:58
  SPEAKER_01: there's just places,
• 1:01:59
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 1:02:00
  SPEAKER_01: sometimes you can go and you don't have to be anybody famous.
• 1:02:03
  SPEAKER_01: You can just, if you have something, you can read it.
• 1:02:04
  SPEAKER_01: And there's people there that like that kind of thing and they'll listen.
• 1:02:08
  SPEAKER_01: And he says, well, you've got your phone out.
• 1:02:09
  SPEAKER_01: Let's see if there's anything coming up.
• 1:02:11
  SPEAKER_01: And this was like a Wednesday night.
• 1:02:13
  So we type into the search engine,
• 1:02:15
  you know,
• 1:02:16
  poetry open mic,
• 1:02:17
  Charleston,
• 1:02:18
  South Carolina.
• 1:02:19
  Well,
• 1:02:20
  two days later was going to be the first night of the first
• 1:02:24
  Charleston Poetry Festival.
• 1:02:26
  SPEAKER_01: that they were kicking off with an open mic.
• 1:02:30
  And it was being held at an art gallery where several friends
• 1:02:34
  of mine had studios
• 1:02:36
  SPEAKER_01: at Redux Art Gallery.
• 1:02:37
  SPEAKER_01: My background in college was in studio art, painting and sculpture.
• 1:02:43
  SPEAKER_01: It just felt like a safe place.
• 1:02:48
  SPEAKER_01: And the timing was interesting.
• 1:02:51
  SPEAKER_01: And he says, well, there you go.
• 1:02:53
  SPEAKER_01: You're going to go read?
• 1:02:54
  SPEAKER_01: And I told him I would.
• 1:02:56
  And that was early in my sobriety,
• 1:02:59
  but at that time my word was literally all I had.
• 1:03:04
  SPEAKER_01: That was it.
• 1:03:05
  And I had already developed the habit of only making promises
• 1:03:09
  that I intended to keep.
• 1:03:10
  SPEAKER_01: So I told him I would and that meant I had to.
• 1:03:13
  And so I went and I read my three little poems and it was a
• 1:03:19
  good long list of
• 1:03:21
  SPEAKER_01: people reading and they had an intermission.
• 1:03:24
  SPEAKER_01: And I was the last one before the intermission.
• 1:03:27
  SPEAKER_01: And at that time, I was still smoking cigarettes.
• 1:03:30
  SPEAKER_01: And I finished my poem,
• 1:03:32
  SPEAKER_01: pretty much walked straight out the door to the sidewalk,
• 1:03:36
  SPEAKER_01: smoking a cigarette,
• 1:03:37
  SPEAKER_01: just heart pounding.
• 1:03:40
  SPEAKER_01: And this really sweet couple,
• 1:03:42
  SPEAKER_01: they were in their 70s,
• 1:03:45
  SPEAKER_01: came out the door and walked up to me on the sidewalk.
• 1:03:48
  SPEAKER_01: And the woman said, would you mind reading that third poem again?
• 1:03:53
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm thinking, well, they're older.
• 1:03:54
  SPEAKER_01: I talk quietly.
• 1:03:56
  SPEAKER_01: I probably mumbled my way through it.
• 1:03:58
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe they didn't hear it.
• 1:04:00
  SPEAKER_01: And they were really short.
• 1:04:01
  I mean,
• 1:04:02
  it might have taken me three minutes to read all three of them,
• 1:04:04
  you know.
• 1:04:05
  SPEAKER_01: So I said, sure.
• 1:04:06
  SPEAKER_01: And I pulled it out of my pocket.
• 1:04:07
  SPEAKER_01: I read it again.
• 1:04:08
  SPEAKER_01: And when I finished,
• 1:04:11
  SPEAKER_01: she kissed her husband on the cheek and said,
• 1:04:15
  SPEAKER_01: thank you for reminding us why we fell in love.
• 1:04:19
  SPEAKER_01: And then they went back inside.
• 1:04:20
  SPEAKER_01: Wow.
• 1:04:21
  SPEAKER_00: Wow.
• 1:04:22
  SPEAKER_01: And I was just like, oh, okay, this is why I'm here.
• 1:04:29
  SPEAKER_01: That was the moment I realized,
• 1:04:33
  SPEAKER_01: okay,
• 1:04:33
  SPEAKER_01: maybe I'm writing these things down because I'm grateful,
• 1:04:36
  SPEAKER_01: because I want to remember,
• 1:04:38
  SPEAKER_01: because I want to remind myself every time something beautiful happens,
• 1:04:43
  SPEAKER_01: I don't want to forget it.
• 1:04:45
  Next time I spill the coffee or the next time I wreck the car
• 1:04:48
  or lose a job or whatever,
• 1:04:51
  SPEAKER_01: the next pseudo tragedy is in my life.
• 1:04:55
  SPEAKER_01: I need to have a way to preserve all this in my unreliable memory.
• 1:05:01
  SPEAKER_01: I want to make note of it and be grateful for it.
• 1:05:04
  SPEAKER_01: That was my motivation at the time.
• 1:05:06
  SPEAKER_01: But that night I realized just like I need that other people do too.
• 1:05:12
  SPEAKER_01: And it can be helpful to hear it from somebody else.
• 1:05:17
  SPEAKER_01: You know, whether you are a person that,
• 1:05:20
  SPEAKER_01: that writes or that has these experiences or this same mindset or not,
• 1:05:25
  SPEAKER_01: to hear it from someone else,
• 1:05:26
  SPEAKER_01: there's something in that shared experience,
• 1:05:31
  SPEAKER_01: that recognition,
• 1:05:33
  hearing your own heart and someone else's words is incredibly
• 1:05:38
  powerful because
• 1:05:40
  SPEAKER_01: those are the kind of moments that you can,
• 1:05:43
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 1:05:43
  SPEAKER_01: when you're experiencing divine or even merely the sublime,
• 1:05:48
  SPEAKER_01: You can feel incredibly alone.
• 1:05:50
  SPEAKER_01: You can feel like, how could anyone else ever see this, feel this?
• 1:05:55
  SPEAKER_01: And same with bottomless pain.
• 1:05:57
  SPEAKER_01: It can feel very isolating.
• 1:06:00
  But to hear it out of someone else's mouth and to feel like you
• 1:06:06
  aren't the only one,
• 1:06:07
  SPEAKER_01: there's something really powerful in that.
• 1:06:11
  SPEAKER_01: And it felt
• 1:06:12
  SPEAKER_01: It felt like a trust had been placed in me.
• 1:06:15
  Like,
• 1:06:15
  okay,
• 1:06:15
  well,
• 1:06:16
  maybe this is why,
• 1:06:17
  you know,
• 1:06:17
  maybe I'm out there in the woods.
• 1:06:19
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe I'm out there at sunrise to save my own life.
• 1:06:22
  SPEAKER_01: But the reason I can put it into words is maybe it'll help somebody else.
• 1:06:27
  SPEAKER_01: So I tell people now,
• 1:06:28
  SPEAKER_01: I write for myself,
• 1:06:29
  SPEAKER_01: but I read it out loud and I share it for other people.
• 1:06:35
  SPEAKER_01: And that's when I was hooked.
• 1:06:37
  SPEAKER_01: From that night forward, I just...
• 1:06:39
  SPEAKER_01: I'll write something and very often within three minutes of finishing it,
• 1:06:44
  SPEAKER_01: I just sort of put it out and it's like,
• 1:06:46
  SPEAKER_01: there it is.
• 1:06:47
  SPEAKER_01: It's yours for free.
• 1:06:49
  SPEAKER_01: You can read it, not read it, whatever.
• 1:06:52
  SPEAKER_01: I've never been paid for any.
• 1:06:53
  SPEAKER_01: I was paid $50 one time I did a reading.
• 1:06:57
  But other than that,
• 1:06:59
  it's just,
• 1:07:00
  okay,
• 1:07:01
  if you want,
• 1:07:01
  if you'll have me,
• 1:07:02
  I'll do it.
• 1:07:03
  SPEAKER_00: And it was that sense of shared humanity that,
• 1:07:06
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 1:07:07
  SPEAKER_00: before we started recording,
• 1:07:09
  SPEAKER_00: I was talking about having very early success with poetry.
• 1:07:13
  SPEAKER_00: And I was kind of thrown into the academic side of poetry.
• 1:07:19
  SPEAKER_00: And there were so many rules.
• 1:07:20
  SPEAKER_00: There were so many rules.
• 1:07:22
  SPEAKER_00: It was all the reason why I wrote poetry was being slowly stripped away.
• 1:07:28
  SPEAKER_00: And your words brought me back to poetry.
• 1:07:32
  SPEAKER_00: That sense of shared humanity,
• 1:07:34
  that sense of being able to put words to these things that
• 1:07:39
  don't quite have words
• 1:07:40
  and these beautiful experiences and harsh experiences that we
• 1:07:44
  all as humans share
• 1:07:47
  SPEAKER_00: these emotions.
• 1:07:49
  And there is an intimacy to your writing that it's like a bomb
• 1:07:56
  for the world.
• 1:07:58
  SPEAKER_00: And you have brought me back to poetry.
• 1:08:00
  SPEAKER_00: And we're, we're kind of getting to the end of our conversation today.
• 1:08:04
  And I want to truly just sit here and ask you questions for the
• 1:08:07
  next six hours.
• 1:08:08
  But I,
• 1:08:10
  do you have,
• 1:08:11
  do you have a poem that you could share with us today?
• 1:08:15
  SPEAKER_01: I brought a few and I,
• 1:08:17
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 1:08:18
  SPEAKER_01: it's funny as,
• 1:08:18
  SPEAKER_01: as we've been talking,
• 1:08:19
  SPEAKER_01: I've thought,
• 1:08:20
  SPEAKER_01: thought of a few that I,
• 1:08:22
  SPEAKER_01: I think the one I'll read,
• 1:08:24
  SPEAKER_01: I wrote this one,
• 1:08:25
  SPEAKER_01: when,
• 1:08:26
  We were living out at Edisto River and it was a very difficult
• 1:08:31
  period of semi-homelessness.
• 1:08:33
  This was a house that was sort of loaned to us while we were
• 1:08:37
  looking for a place to live.
• 1:08:39
  SPEAKER_01: We moved maybe five times in six months.
• 1:08:43
  And this little house had a dock and I would sit on that dock
• 1:08:47
  and just hope,
• 1:08:49
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 1:08:50
  SPEAKER_01: just hope I would figure it out,
• 1:08:52
  SPEAKER_01: be able to make it work somehow.
• 1:08:54
  SPEAKER_01: find somewhere to live where there would be plants and water.
• 1:08:58
  SPEAKER_01: But that river,
• 1:09:00
  SPEAKER_01: unlike the tidal creeks and rivers that I am more accustomed to,
• 1:09:06
  SPEAKER_01: it's water that flows continuously one direction to the ocean.
• 1:09:10
  SPEAKER_01: It never stops.
• 1:09:11
  SPEAKER_01: It never changes.
• 1:09:12
  SPEAKER_01: There's no tide.
• 1:09:14
  SPEAKER_01: It's just always moving.
• 1:09:16
  And the only thing that changes is how much of it is there with
• 1:09:19
  the rainfall.
• 1:09:20
  SPEAKER_01: And it can get
• 1:09:21
  SPEAKER_01: really small and quiet or really big and powerful.
• 1:09:24
  SPEAKER_01: But I learned a lot from that river and the people out there.
• 1:09:28
  But one of the things that I definitely was able to do while I
• 1:09:32
  was on the Edisto
• 1:09:33
  SPEAKER_01: was to connect with the child that I once was.
• 1:09:38
  SPEAKER_01: And being there,
• 1:09:39
  being on that river made me feel strong in ways that I had not
• 1:09:45
  recognized in myself
• 1:09:47
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm grateful for that.
• 1:09:48
  SPEAKER_01: But this sort of, it's not a premise.
• 1:09:52
  SPEAKER_01: It happened.
• 1:09:52
  There was a morning I was on that dock and was thinking about
• 1:09:56
  myself as a child and
• 1:09:58
  SPEAKER_01: how often I was afraid.
• 1:10:01
  SPEAKER_01: How often I didn't trust my body, my own strength, my coordination.
• 1:10:06
  SPEAKER_01: How afraid I would have been on that dock.
• 1:10:09
  SPEAKER_01: to even think about jumping in the water by myself, nobody around.
• 1:10:13
  SPEAKER_01: But anyways, I'll read it for you now.
• 1:10:16
  SPEAKER_01: It's called John Boats.
• 1:10:18
  SPEAKER_01: And I really want to thank you for this conversation.
• 1:10:21
  SPEAKER_01: It's been really nice.
• 1:10:22
  SPEAKER_01: And I'd like to do it again sometime.
• 1:10:25
  SPEAKER_00: I would love that.
• 1:10:27
  SPEAKER_01: So here we go.
• 1:10:28
  SPEAKER_01: John Boats.
• 1:10:30
  Just before the storm,
• 1:10:32
  downriver,
• 1:10:34
  come a line of John Boats running for the landings.
• 1:10:38
  SPEAKER_01: and everyone sunk low with men beer drunk and three quarter belly,
• 1:10:43
  SPEAKER_01: one hand fat and indifferent on the throttle of their Johnson 15s.
• 1:10:49
  SPEAKER_01: I've found me a home.
• 1:10:53
  SPEAKER_01: Wind rips the river and bends the trees howling and laced with thunder.
• 1:11:00
  SPEAKER_01: This is the voice of God where she's gone mute.
• 1:11:05
  SPEAKER_01: While others made friends,
• 1:11:07
  SPEAKER_01: I sat with books and water.
• 1:11:12
  SPEAKER_01: That boy still lives somewhere inside me.
• 1:11:18
  SPEAKER_01: But this morning I wake with a body I can trust.
• 1:11:23
  So I walk him to the dock and we dive in the dark water
• 1:11:29
  together and swim like
• 1:11:32
  SPEAKER_01: rides across to a sun-soaked beach
• 1:11:35
  SPEAKER_01: and lie there on our backs and wait for dragonflies to land on our toes.
• 1:11:43
  SPEAKER_01: This, I tell him, is what men do.
• 1:11:50
  SPEAKER_01: That's John Douglas.
• 1:11:52
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, thank you.
• 1:11:54
  SPEAKER_01: You're very welcome.
• 1:11:56
  SPEAKER_01: It's my pleasure.
• 1:11:58
  SPEAKER_00: What's coming up next for you?
• 1:11:59
  SPEAKER_00: Are you gonna be giving a reading anywhere soon?
• 1:12:02
  SPEAKER_00: Where can people find you in Charleston?
• 1:12:06
  SPEAKER_01: The easiest thing to do is find me on Facebook or Instagram.
• 1:12:10
  SPEAKER_01: It's just Jason Andrew Chambers.
• 1:12:13
  SPEAKER_01: Anytime I have a reading or whatever, I'll usually share it there.
• 1:12:16
  SPEAKER_01: That's where I share most of my poetry.
• 1:12:18
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm going to link that so people can find it in the show notes.
• 1:12:23
  SPEAKER_01: I do have,
• 1:12:23
  SPEAKER_01: and this will be the first place I've announced this,
• 1:12:27
  but we're doing a house show at the place where we live on the
• 1:12:33
  flower farm.
• 1:12:35
  SPEAKER_01: On April 13th,
• 1:12:37
  SPEAKER_01: I'm going to read some poems,
• 1:12:38
  SPEAKER_01: and our dear friend Bailey Bigger,
• 1:12:41
  SPEAKER_01: who is a singer and songwriter from Arkansas,
• 1:12:46
  SPEAKER_01: who's recently moved here from Nashville,
• 1:12:48
  SPEAKER_01: is going to play some music.
• 1:12:50
  And Bailey is a phenomenal musician,
• 1:12:55
  and she's someone that I've interacted with in a...
• 1:13:02
  SPEAKER_01: just from a place of deep respect and love for her writing.
• 1:13:07
  There's a lot of overlap in the things that we care about and
• 1:13:11
  the things we choose
• 1:13:13
  SPEAKER_01: to write and talk about.
• 1:13:14
  SPEAKER_01: And I think it's gonna be really beautiful.
• 1:13:19
  SPEAKER_01: Her good friend, Claire Allen will be joining us playing the cello.
• 1:13:22
  We're gonna put some chairs and blankets out by the pond and do
• 1:13:27
  like a little
• 1:13:28
  SPEAKER_01: daytime house show outside.
• 1:13:32
  So that's April 13th in the afternoon and there'll be more
• 1:13:35
  details forthcoming.
• 1:13:38
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I thank you so much for sitting down with me today.
• 1:13:43
  SPEAKER_01: It's my pleasure.
• 1:13:45
  SPEAKER_01: And again, thank you for having me.
• 1:13:46
  And if anybody,
• 1:13:50
  I'm very open about who I am and where I'm at and what I'm doing.
• 1:13:55
  And anybody ever hears this,
• 1:13:58
  sees this and wants to reach out,
• 1:14:00
  I'm always willing to talk.
• 1:14:02
  SPEAKER_01: As long as you're patient and you're not particular about the answers,
• 1:14:05
  SPEAKER_01: you can ask me any question you want.
• 1:14:09
  SPEAKER_00: Well, this has been an absolute delight.
• 1:14:13
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you so very much.
• 1:14:15
  SPEAKER_01: You're very welcome.
• 1:14:16
  SPEAKER_01: I hope you enjoy your day.
• 1:14:19
  SPEAKER_00: Some conversations don't really end when you stop recording.
• 1:14:23
  SPEAKER_00: This was one of those for me.
• 1:14:26
  SPEAKER_00: Jason Chambers isn't just a poet.
• 1:14:28
  He's a modern bard whose words help us see the map back to
• 1:14:32
  ourselves and the world around us.
• 1:14:35
  SPEAKER_00: His work is about presence, about being here now and paying attention.
• 1:14:41
  SPEAKER_00: If you want to hear more from Jason,
• 1:14:43
  follow him on Facebook and Instagram at Jason Andrew Chambers
• 1:14:48
  and check the show
• 1:14:49
  SPEAKER_00: notes for links to his work and upcoming events.
• 1:14:53
  SPEAKER_00: If this episode resonated with you, share it.
• 1:14:56
  SPEAKER_00: Tell a friend.
• 1:14:57
  SPEAKER_00: Post about it.
• 1:14:58
  SPEAKER_00: Help spread the word about Relatively Stable.
• 1:15:02
  These are the kinds of conversations that grow when they're
• 1:15:05
  passed from one person to another.
• 1:15:06
  And if you want to hear more,
• 1:15:09
  make sure to follow or subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.
• 1:15:13
  SPEAKER_00: Jason Chambers,
• 1:15:14
  SPEAKER_00: thank you for this conversation,
• 1:15:16
  SPEAKER_00: for your words,
• 1:15:18
  SPEAKER_00: and for the reminder that poetry isn't just something we read.
• 1:15:21
  SPEAKER_00: It's something we live.
• 1:15:24
  SPEAKER_00: I'm Kim, and this has been Relatively Stable.
• 1:15:28
  SPEAKER_00: See you next time.