Inner Views with the Nomads; Chris and Jacob

The store intercom paged Jesse in Grocery to come to aisle 11. I strolled up to the aisle to see my kid uncle Joe with an unfamiliar face that would soon become a new friend. Joe introduced me to Chris, a nomadic vivacious human being who radiated joy. Providence would have its way as Chris and his friend Jacob needed a ride to Seattle and my dad and I were headed to Seattle the next day to celebrate my Grandma’s 76th birthday. Arrangements were made, we picked them up along with there two baby pit-bulls, Marley dog and Halla at 7am on October 30th and headed north towards the Emerald City. They immediately blessed us with some doughnuts and it turned out to be an extraordinary drive and a beautiful connection was made by the grace of God as I innerviewed them and then they turned it around and innerviewed my pops and I. Unfortunately my tape recorder didn’t record the first half of the innerview so we only got about a third of the conversation that took place. They are beautiful people, nomadic travelers who live simple lives of faith. After my short encounter with them I jotted a short depiction in my journal ; Chris is a brooklyn born bundle of brio brillantly broken but blessed to bless and Jacob is some soft-hearted seattle sunshine soothing the states singing songs for every season of the soul. We join in with Chris and Jacob as they as talking about a recent story they lived when they were getting a ride in a van and they encountered a hurting girl…

Chris: yea rotten vulgarity, just unhealthy, just sadness like whoa dude she was just oozing ugliness

Jacob: fear and worry about whats going to happen. When we started playing music she was like…

Chris: She was like I need this, this is amazing.

Jesse: Were you singing some songs you wrote or some worship songs or…

Jacob: We sang some songs we wrote, and we sang some old hymns like ‘I’ll fly away’ and it just got lighter in there.

Chris: where are those dinner roles?

Jesse: oh we still got these donuts too. So how much longer… is this your life style now or you mentioned you want to settle down a little bit.

Chris: I sorta do. Its weird for me cause this whole trip Seattle has been the final destination and now we are about to be in Seattle…

Jesse: Where did you start at?

Chris: I met up with them in Denver. Seattle was our final destination and I was real excited to get there, but I kind of don’t want to get there. Like traveling with Jake and Simon, and Marley and Halla, it is so beautiful, it was such a bright thing for me like that I dunno… I forgot what the question was.

Jesse: Do you wanna settle down… is there your lifestyle or is this like a vocation?

Jacob: Seasons. I want to say I’m open to whatever God wants. And that’s what I’m aiming for. But obviously ya know all the struggles of life and stuff interfere with Gods will. Our wills are always fighting with Gods will. But yea I mean I’d like to be traveling, that’s were my heart is

Jesse: Its almost like… you tried other trades like carpentry and stuff but this is almost like a vocation for you.

Jacob: Yea God had me stationary in Seattle for roughly four months about two months ago.  I was working a painting job, my boss was pretty cool, the work was alright, it was something I could do I wasn’t bad at it. But it was just so I could learn how to love people who were different than me; one of my weaknesses. Being in the traveling culture  I like to be surrounded by travelers. Its hard to be surrouded by your average.. I mean the body of Christ is so diverse its more than just traveling kids, its people from all walks of life. So that was important for me to learn and I really didn’t discover that’s why I was there until after I left. I was like ‘oh, I really like these people.’ So yea seasons. God has us living in seasons.  I dunno maybe He’ll have me settle down for awhile. Right now I’m going back to settle down for a couple months and take a class at my folks church.

Jesse: Oh yea, what church is that?

Jacob: Its crazy cause its totally the last church I would ever choose to go to, its a Baptist church. Its like a big ya know…

Jesse: are they pastors?

Jacob: yea one of the pastors there kind of mentors me. The class is on healing from sexual abuse, so I’m gonna go take that then hopefully hit the road again. We’ll see what God has, I know God has put it on my heart to travel so I’m sure that this isn’t the end.

Chris: No way man, we got Mexico and Minnesota, and Ireland and France. (laughter) C’mon I hear there are trains out there in Europe. I’m gone.

Jesse: have you been to Europe bro?

Chris: no the only out of county I’ve done is I’ve gotten stranded in Mexico and Montreal. That’s it.

Jesse: So being on the fringes I guess or margins of society so you have a unique perspective of the country that the average person doing their 9-5 gig doesn’t have, how would you….

Chris- seduced by the image of reality instead of embracing reality.

Jesse- yea how would you describe, you were talking earlier about the state of New York, but how would you describe the state of the country. As Americans what are our biggest needs or what.. I dunno I’m interested in your guys perspectives.

Jacob: I think passion. I think our society is geared towards climbing a social ladder its capitalism ya know, its a big competition and that tends to isolate people from each other. And I think the biggest need is for people to learn… this is going to sound totally hippy but how to love. Ya know, serious. People don’t know how to love their neighbor because we are isolated from each other, we are in competition. We have walls put up to defend ourselves against our neighbor, whether they are next store or separated by actual political borders ya know. We are so absorbed by television…

Chris: we are gullible in a sense. We are seduced. I mean you see a guy, dirty, side of the road, sign saying I need a ride. First thought in your head is he could be a murderer, killer, dada dada

Jesse: dangerous

Chris: dangerous and there is fear. You see a homeless guy on the street with a sign asking for spare change you think alcoholic, not gonna do anything, dadada. We know in our heads more ads and slogans and like ‘I’m lovin it’, like music notes from McDonald’s better than we know each other and we’re so enamored in climbing this social ladder and we’re…

Jacob: we stopped having real life experiences, we live in this fantasy world that’s created by the media, ya know. I’m speaking in generalizations, people are at different levels of socialization but ya know you go home after work you turn on the TV…

Chris: and they manufacture consent.

Jacob: they manufacture consent. That becomes peoples reality and their existence. Its just like a cyber existence ya know.

Chris: A close friend of mine was arrested, I won’t say where but it made the news. What happened and what hit the news was so amazingly different. The news made him a violent crazy, dadadada. When he was celebrating one day and got beaten up by the cops. Like another… I was in a protest, ah I’m very much an activist, I’m very much a political activist. I was born on November 7th, my birthday, it doesn’t have to do with anything else but it happens to be on election day. The Mexican agrarian revolt. Like a lot of things happen on that day oddly enough.

Jesse: ha ha ha. Its in your blood.

Chris: But I was protesting… for me I don’t believe in Columbus day. See I’m very weird on the subject. I take both sides. I like to play devil’s advocate as well. I was protesting Columbus day. I feel that it celebrates….we tried so hard in the civil rights movement to get rid of segregation and stuff like that. The civil rights movement was such a beautiful movement and now to this day we are still celebrating Columbus day, where what Columbus brought to this country was genocide and trans Atlantic slavery and imperialist and we are going in complancency every year like yea! yea! whew! lets do a parade Italian pride. I’m not against Italian pride. Go ahead and be Italian. I’m a hundred percent Irish. Go Irish. Go Hindu. Go whatever. I don’t care. But don’t celebrate murder. Why? We are trying so hard to put love into this country and this is what we do? So I was a non-violent protester right, I was preceded to have my hand broken by a police officer, escorted into a bus and all types of stuff. We were treated like animals. They fed us twice. Did not let us use the phones, nothing.

Jesse: Dang

Chris: the news said, ‘wild violent protesters hit the streets.’

Jesse: and you guys were just non-violent?

Chris: you know what we did? We sat down in a circle singing Hallelujah holding hands. That’s what we did. And we were violent crazy… the media… and its brilliant, they are awesome, they’re so smart. They can convince this by saying this and we say hey yea that makes sense, right on. What this country needs is to turn… I was going to use foul language but you know what I decided against it. Our country needs to turn the TV off. Turn it off. Unplug it. Take a baseball bat to your direct TV. Direct action not direct TV. Like there is so much more important things to life than what happened on that sitcom. Go outside and say hello on your neighbor. Give fifty cents to a homeless person. As a nomadic person myself, I dunno when I’m going to get my next cigarette, I don’t know when I’m going to get my next anything.  I got fifty cents in my pocket, somebody asks me for change, you better know that twenty five cents, half of what I have… and I’m not some business man that is climbing this ladder to get to a higher position so I can have more control over these little people to make myself feel better. The country needs to turn the TV off. The country needs to love each other. Our country needs… so much. And its really disheartening sometimes. When you realize that there is an excess of over a billion cops. And I’m not against police but if we would love each other we wouldn’t need cops. Really. We have cops for protection of property and social control. When a black officer arrests an individual who is a non-violent protester that is doing something that is almost a part of the civil rights movement then breaks their hand for no reason. What is that? Its amazing to me that you find community in the ghettos. and in the places that we are all working so hard to get rid of and get away from. That’s where you find community. I mean you find community with these… in Colorado there is these dirty anarchist that do the food not bombs every week. That hold each others hands and play music and let people stay on their couches and have home gardens to feed more people to do more. They do free bicycles and all sorts of stuff. And they don’t have the means of anything. What do they have? They have the heart to give. They have the love to give. And you can’t find that in the guy who has the forty acre farm that’s growing all this wheat just to sell the wonder bread. We need a lot. We need a whole overhaul.

Jesse: A revolution of sorts…

Chris: I sorta believe in revolution. I’ve already been through it. I won. I went to war and I won. Like yo I decided and I’m done. I’ve had my revolution. That’s all it is. If everyone decided… if you like Bush in office, you like Bush in office. If you don’t like Bush in office, there you go, you won. Okay your done that’s it. If everyone decided not to vote… what’s the point of voting between two evils? Like if you look at political history Republicans and Democrats have the same idea. They do. Come on its obvious. Ya know. If everyone just separated… Whoa all the sudden its election time, lets see who votes and no one voted. Guess what? who is the majority? A people should not be afraid of its government a government should be afraid of its people. The people are empowered. And we’re amazing and beautiful once we realize that. Just who knows what we need to do to realize that. Who knows?

Jesse: That’s good man. Good stuff. You’re very passionate about that Chris that’s cool man. One last question. Just ah, what do you guys want to be known for when its all said and done. What would you want on your epitaph?

Jacob: He was patient, He was kind. He wasn’t self seeking, he wasn’t rude. He wasn’t Jealous…

Jesse: I Corinthians 13?

Jacob: Yep, I Corinthians 13 would do it. That’s what I would like.

Jesse: sick, that’s beautiful.

Chris: I have a very odd sense of humor. I would like… so many different ideas come into my head. What would be really fun like ‘name withheld. Information withheld for national peacekeeping.’ (laughter) Or ahhh, I dunno, ‘died at sea killing giant octopus.’ (laughter) Like I don’t need an epitaph, I don’t.

Jesse: maybe not an epitaph but like those closest to you would describe you this way.  man Chris was…. this was the message he embodied.

Chris: that was one weird dude. (laughter) He said some stuff. And he smelled kind of funny. I don’t care. Let them think about it when I’m gone.  I don’t want to think about that. I’m to busy being passionate and I kind of really want these signs with thumbs up crossed out. (laughter) I want want of these no positivity signs. I want to put it in my kitchen. You can’t have a positive kitchen. Its not allowed. No positivity in the kitchen.

Jesse: Alright thanks bros. That was a real encouraging interview. Definitely.