I just got home from playing handball in a parking lot against a wall of a local church. Exercise or any kind of physical fitness is an amazing counteraction to depression, even a walk around the neighborhood helps.

There was a barbed wire fence along the backside of the parking lot that seperates the parking lot from some kind sewer or drain runoff. We had three balls and each time the third one bounced over the fence id get on my bike and ride down to the end of the parking lot, around the corner and all the way down the sewage drain. Throw the balls back over the fence and game on. These are the kind of things I did when I was kid.

As I was riding back up the sewer drain for a split second I felt like a kid again. I looked down at my old skool black and white Vans on the peddles, my cuffed charcoal grey dickies and there I was. 12 years old pushing a dustin dollin baker deck in Geoff Rowley XL Vans down a sewage drain in Tustin, CA that we called “The Never”.

There’s always that saying people use when referencing childhood days, “not a care in the world”. I cant say I agree, I cared about how I dressed, I cared about my friends, and I cared about the Furious 5 at 9 on KROQ enough to make sure I didn’t miss it every night. I cared about a lot of things, I cared about getting good grades in school and not making projects that the other kids would laugh at.

I’m glad I can still find that part of myself and connect with it. I thought maybe over the years of drinking and heavy drug use I may have lost it, but its there. Its amazing to me how a smell, a song, an activity or a movie can awaken memories that way.

“you find things about yourself that you will soon forget. counting old friends left behind a jaded mind. you can never be in love until you learn to be alone. you can never achieve true happiness until you hang your head..”

Ønwãrd and Ùpwárd…