Following the drops of waterfalls.

I was standing on the deck of the sailboat, watching the morning sunlight shimmer across the swells along Diamondhead beach.
Mornings here are the colors of a Spanish shawl.
Brilliant in every way; sometimes I wish the entire day could be a sunrise.
Standing there, I watched dolphins glide past the bow, I'm not sure how many - but at least thirty. They are sleek like oil, slipping in and out of the waves, undaunted by our boat.
It is an amazing morning.

I have this song stuck in my head today, by the Monkeys; its called "I'm a believer". I kept singing it over and over again.. but just the one line that goes, "...who.. do you love? Who.. do you love?" Except in my mind, I've been singing it differently; I sing, "..what...do you love?" What...do you love?".
Once I finished working on the sailboat this morning the song stayed with me on my bike ride, and then with me while I repaired my surfboard. Again and again, I kept singning to myself, "What.. do you love?" When you sing something one hundred times, you start thinking about what you are saying.. and you start answering yourself.

So I asked myself, "WHAT...do you love?".
The answer, which came spilling out of my primed mind.. was real.
In my head I started seeing images.. just tiny moments filled with faces and places, and days - the most beautiful things I have known.
What I love, what I love, what I love.


Drop everything, drop all your facades, and your ego, and drop your fear, and your pride, and your hate, and your impatience, and for a second rememeber the things that are REAL, that you aren't striving for, or chasing or anticipating.
What do you love?
You will probably be suprised.

I love warm, sunshine filled afternoons in our family's house in the early summer; I love the two fans that hum when you turn them on, and I love standing in the middle of that room and getting bathed in soft coolness.
I love talking to my twin brother, I love that he is bigger and stronger than me, and that I always have to try to be as cool as him. I love that he is my brother.
I love my sister's hugs, they feel honest and tender; in a world that has become fake - she is real, and I absolutely love that.
I love my dad grabbing me on the shoulders when I am sitting down and squeezing so hard it hurts.. it always makes me feel completely loved.
I love my mother's smile - if anything can make me smile, it is her smile - it is beautiful and warm and kind and genuine.
I love being hungry and smelling a homemade meal, knowing you will eat it soon.
I love driving early in the morning to the beach, before the sun comes up.
I love the taste of blackberries from the fridge.. when you find one that you remember picking, and you savor it, because you know where it came from.
I love my grandpa's stories, and how they are still funny - 100000 times later.
I love southern accents, and people that are simple, unpretenteous and have wrinkles that they earned.
I love hiking in through the Redwood forest, and touching the trees and imagining them as tiny trees, and listening to them breathe.
I love running into the ocean with a surfboard in hand and the feeling of the first wave that splashes over my body.
I love road trips, and driving with no place in mind; I love driving with Trent; knowing someone that notices the subtlty of beauty and who questions everything.
I love playing my few songs on the guitar and not being afraid of what people think.. I love making emotion.
I love how my grandma tells me, "Be safe and have fun... and if you can't be safe... just have fun."
I love taking photos... and knowing that if I had never been born, that moment would never have been captured.
I love the way I can feel paint through the brush.
I love being drunk and dancing until my feet hurt, and then taking of my shoes and shirt, and dancing until my body hurts, and then laughing until my face hurts.
I love standing in the middle of nowhere and roaring at the top of my lungs like a wild animal.
I love being unpredictible and freightning sometimes, simply because I can.
I love the way Josh talks about simple things.
I love the feeling of courage.
I love breaking rules for the sake of keeping my sanity and for the sake of chosing choice over complacency.
I love finding a waterfall, watching the drops fall, and following a single drop all the way down.. I feel like the drop was waiting for me to show up.. just so it could dive off gloriously to show off for me.
ETC...
...................................................................................................................................................
There is so much to love. Today,I remember what I love.
I cannot imagine knowing what I love, and chasing anything else.

What do you love? Really




(Andrew Tipton)

Elevator Coiceidences

This is my 9501 day alive.
Life takes amazing and strange paths, through countries, into rivers, across deserts, into elevators.
Elevators?
Yeah, that's right.. elevators.
I find myself moving from "Lobby" to floor 42 via elevator.
From the hills of Alabama, to the Nile River in Egypt, to Cains, Australia, to California, to Hawaii.. my life is a series of absolutely unpredictable events that, somehow, places me in an elevator with a person I don't know.
I have to stop a minute and wonder.
Wonder how these two lives collide.
Wonder how ME and THEY ended up side by side, in the exact same place, at the exact same time. Of all the places life could take us, we are both here riding in this metal cage, waiting for the door to open so we can end this uncomfortable silence.

I find it completely ridiculous that a tiny Asian woman and her 4 children.. and ME, can end up voluntarily in the same place. I find it completely absurd that a group of overweight Swedish tourists... and ME, end up in the same elevator, in the same building, in the same city, in the same state, at the same moment.
Our lives, perhaps opposites in every other way, perhaps opposed in structure and belief and pursuit - are somehow directed to the same intimate spot, at the same time. How curious.

Downstairs, I watch as a small group congregates outside the elevator, waiting for it to take them to their desired floor. I wonder what draws us together, to all enter this tiny box together, to be so close for a few moments and say nothing.
Their stories consume my brain.
I imagine the lives that each person lives.
The businesses that they are escaping from.
The retirement that they are enjoying.
I imagine their families and their pets, and their houses.
I imagine why they are here.
Why they chose this hotel, of all hotels.
Why they arrived at "THIS" particular elevator, at "THIS" particular moment.
I imagine what they are thinking.

I say hello to a person; and for a moment our life-lines touch. We were running SO close to each other, and now we have met. From 10,000 miles apart, to this exact (very compact) space. We were drawn by forces that we could not control, and could not escape.
A person from Japan, and a boy from Alabama have just met. I can't help but laugh. I can't help but be absolutely astounded by the complexity of life's situations, by the brilliance that pushes us toward one-another.

If we could see life, we would see lines all running parallel. Lines running all over the world, with their own ideas and concepts and loves and families - and SUDDENLY they cross.
The stories buried in the intersections of elevators fascinate me. Fascinate me. Fascinate me.
Ding... Well, this is my floor.
Peace.





(Andrew Tipton)

Il bel far niente

"The more exquisitely and delightfully you can do nothing, the higher your life's achievement." E. Gilbert.

At times, pleasure seems elusive as a ghost; slipping between our fingers and our thoughts even as we scream for it.
Where is pleasure? What is pleasure? Have I touched it? Am I riding the ambitions of others?
I slow my motion.. thump..thump....thump in my chest my heartbeat slows down - down the match the rhythm of this incredible day; it slows to match the rhythm of the sun sinking across the ocean, it slows to match the sand that I feel against my face, it slows.. it slows..... it slows. My steps slow down, my thoughts slow down, and I am aware of where I am again.
I remember what it is I LOVE about being alive. Forgetting the hustle and the confusion; forgetting to worry for a moment and to take myself so seriously. "What was it I enjoy?" Remember pleasure.
I find myself standing in Kualoa, Hawaii, watching rain blow across the eastern mountain range - the grays of clouds, the blues and the sparkles of sunlight glistening through the grays.

Everything else on the planet fades into a blur of undeserved. I set my backpack down, take off my shirt, and stretch my back.. I stretch my arms and sigh.. - This is pleasure. So quickly forgotten.. lost in my own predisposition to "DOING" something. The tangle of activity that strips truth from my hands. I open my hands and look down at them, they are callused and brown. I look up into the sky, raise my arms, and wrap my fingers around the sunshine, letting its beams streak into my squinting eyes.
Standing on the beach, I imagine our planet 10,000 years from now.,. I ask myself.. "Now, tell me, what is worth your time?"



(Andrew Tipton)

Tattoos on my mind

If your daily life seems poor, do not blame it; blame yourself, tell yourself that you are not poet enough to call forth its riches; for to the creator there is no poverty and no poor indifferent place.

..and one says to oneself: no, there is not more beauty here than elsewhere, and all these objects, continuously admired by generations and patched and mended by workmen's hands, signify nothing, are nothing, and have no heart and no value; - but there is much beauty here, because there is much beauty everywhere.
Rainer Maria Rilke

Sometimes I wish I could forget things.
I wish I could forget how to be an ass-hole. I wish I could forget the pain that I cause people; the pain they cause me that makes my heart leak tears ever so often. I wish I could forget the taste of black-berries, so that they would be new and incredible every single time I ate one. I wish I could forget words people have said - the simple statements that forever haunt my brain. I wish I could forget perverted photographs. I wish I could forget that I will probably be alive tomorrow. I wish I could forget how old I am. I wish sometimes.. I could forget the truth that I have learned.

There are tattoos on my mind. These inked-in scars that grind against my skull.. visions of incredible places and early morning raindrops and painful screams; the best and the worst of everything - all eleborately, permanently scribbled onto the back of my imagination.
Even dreams are there - I can remember dreams. That is mysterious.
The mystery of existence is stunning.


(Andrew Tipton)

Chasing Koalas

you have been on my mind all day. I hope you are well and I hope life is stunning. I hope you are about to chase yourself to somewhere amazing! I went out last night and surfed in the waves off of diamondhead - it was 12am and about 10 other guys were out there as these huge waves came rolling into us - the moon was out, and you could see these black swells looming towards the shore. Once I got up on my board, it was this mad rush of motion, tearing across this huge black ocean with only the moonlight and the noise of the surfboard against the water... it was stunning. I laughed for a second because I know you would have LOVED that experience! Your energy makes me a better person. I love that we are brothers and that I can say that.

I wish we could experience each others days, wouldn't that be amazing.. I want to know your tuesday, I want to know what you thought about and what it felt like to walk through the park I want you to feel my saturday and know how my muddy hike through the jungle felt. I want to know why you smiled at 7:33 in the morning. I want you to know why I was running like crazy at 12:29. I want to know why you play music. I want you to know why I love to throw burning logs and own a mountain bike.

I love you bro, I can't wait to see you again soon. Let me know how the van is working out.. and how many new songs you have written? I have been listening to Indian song on my computer, the people next door love that song.. I mainly play it for them ;) Lets chase koalas soon. Lets dance around campfires and call to imaginary gorillas that lives in tree houses. Lets get hurt a little. Lets get comfortable and cozy before dreaming insane dreams about our sisters giving birth to sons. I miss your face and mostly your smile and laugh.




peace&freedom to my friends

-Andrew Tipton