I go into the wilderness.
I write about what I find.

"It will be about 7-10 business days before the part comes in," says the man, early 30s, assisting me. I stare at him for a moment — "7-10 business days?" I have a business to run — a letter to write! I reckon he doesn't quite understand the equation so well known: time is money. Anticipating my anxious rebuttal, he continues: "We'll give you a call when it arrives."

Well if the days up until now have taught me anything, it is that time – or, rather, the measurement of it – is something I never should have begun to respect.

---

Over the years, I have held many jobs. Most, I have walked out on. The remainders, I have been fired from. I am not ashamed to admit it – I often get fired. Some, for reasons I can comprehend: once, I cut every piece of lumber wrong when I was building and roofing my first porch, and, after the first job, having secured my free tool belt, and hammer, I never was invited to return. Others, for too many reasons that often make sense.

Carpenter, as an occupation, can of course be considered the least typical of your typical jobs. Even so, on one golden 102° South Carolina afternoon, a few weeks after walking out on my last blue-collar job – as a result of a heated exchange on heated asphalt over work in a shop that was never cooled by air conditioner – I needed money.

When I was younger, I – as many people who fail to secure typical employment do – routinely spent my time employed working at the local surf shop here in Charleston.

And though unemployment has often called forth some deeply ingrained desire to consume very little and instead spend days floating alongside the beach (though inevitably soon drowned by the desire to nap), American Express holds – unfortunately – no such belief.

And so, with credit card debt accruing interest at perhaps 28.99% or 29.99% APR as a result of my first ever trip to New Zealand, I sought a job at the fourth of four surf shops (both in vibes and sales) in town.

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In that shop, I rarely found paying customers – let alone, simply … people.

More often than not, I filled the emptiness of solitude with hours of meandering, often around the parking lot. But when inside, surf films such as Torren Martyn's Calypso (memorized line by line; spoken words are few) and a stack of magazines had their grip on me.

And one afternoon, in that stack of paper, lay one Surfers Journal, with a pretty blue wave on the cover. Out of pure boredom, I scroll through the pages; scrolling, after all, should be an inherently tactile experience. As photos of incredible waves and board short and surf resort advertisements speed past my eyes, one page's graphic caused me to reverse course: a line drawn hollow barrel of a wave, sun setting, and an ocean that melts into the essay that is bound to prevent me from ever wearing a watch.

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My only brother, Heston, was 18 months younger than me. He was never someone, to my great admiration, to be bound by worldly timelines: he was studying the Bible in Latin in college while not yet having graduated high school, while working near-full time installing fences, for instance. Of course, that pales in comparison to his choice to ignore the timeline of most lifetimes, having taken his own life when I was 18.

What followed was absurd: receiving the call in Idaho, driving to Montana, returning to Spokane to fly home, trying to move my parents into a hotel room, and, of course, organizing which bedroom materials the crime scene cleanup company would dispose of as biohazard – most notably, a pair of Vans Old Skools w/ Velcro, which I had loaned him, were never to be seen again, until last month, when, in New York, after my wedding, I walked into the Vans store and purchased a pair of them, which I wear as I write to you.

But if you have been around after someone dies, you may have found, just as I have, that the dead can't help but linger – if not spiritually, then at least in memory. And no greater examples come to mind with Heston than both his stubbornness – which manifest itself, for the last time, in a box of ashes that would not be opened, and, as such, with crowds beginning to approach in this public park, we, as a family, decided to launch into the marsh to never be seen again – and his disdain for the world's expectation of time, which would make its final appearance on a phone call with none other than his crematorium.

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It was a blisteringly warm, boringly mundane summer day in the surf shop when I happened to flip past, only to immediately return to, Norris Eppes' Surfers Journal essay Melt That Clock. It is well worth your making a free account to read, because though Eppes' disdain for clocks and our conception of time centers around overhearing someone in the lineup off the Florida coast ask around for the time, his insight delves far deeper.

Time, we can safely say, exists in two forms today. First, the time which binds the barista who made my Cubano moments ago. Behind that counter, she stands. She, unknowingly, unwittingly, and through no fault of her own, has made a deal shocking to her great great grandparents: for however long she explains to me the ratio of sea salt to raw sugar in my drink, she receives an agreed upon amount of money.

But to her ancestors, such an agreement would have seemed absurd. Instead, they would have measured their day not in the second-hand of a clock, but in the experiences acquired, or required: the shoemaker was not paid by the hour, but by the pair of shoes made; travel time was not measured in hours or miles, but in the amount of meals one would make along the way.

Perhaps that is why this email is a day and a half late.

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"When will he be ready for pickup?" my father asks the gentle lady on the other end of the line. We are sitting in a nasty hotel room, as few in town allow you to bring dogs. But the day of my brother's death, there was little time to find a nice place, as much as simply a place.

"You can come by in 7-10 business days," she replies.

My mother and I immediately make eye contact and break into laughter. My father and sisters attempt to hush us – but the absurdity of the situation is too great. In a moment so surreal, when my family's world is in collapse, in the aftermath of my dead brother and in the absence of any obligations beyond our immediate world, the realities of time come to a head on a hotel bed in North Charleston.

There is no squaring to be done: on the phone are two realities attempting to communicate, co-existing yet infinitely unaware of the other.

---

I slide my laptop to the edge of the table, grab it by the corner, and lay it in the waiting arms of the man who promises me a relatively-timely repair. For someone who has spent 5 years now chasing freedom both from the dollar and from the clock, it has taken very little for me to become entirely terrified of an entire week where time, against my will but with my deepest longing, will never equal money.