Me

[Updated on December 19th, 2012]

[click image to enlarge]

I'm Kantiki Jayamana Whateva... but you can call me "Whateva" for short. Alotta other names should go in there, but I'll pretty much answer to anything.

Since you've come to this site, and you've come this far, I'm assuming you are a traveler... or, at the very least, a lover of horizons. You're a connoisseur of stars and sunsets, a true collector of experiences, and a person who knows how to savor a moment for every little taste and texture. Welcome! I wish we were sharing a coffee right at this moment.

About me... yes, about me. Don't you find something funny in those "About Me" sections that are everywhere online? As if you could fit an entire human in all its complexity of love, pain, pleasure, fears, dreams, and hopes inside of a single page... or even into a single book. At the same time, you DO get a feeling for the person that they want you to believe... what they're selling to you... and what they're likely trying to sell to themselves.

I can almost hear the bittersweet voice of Maynard James Keenan singing the words: "All you know about me's what I sold ya!"

The immediate question: "Where to start?" And, once asked, the immediately following question: "Where to go from here?" I'm a traveler, a writer, a musician, a programmer and many, many things. But who am I today? I'm a traveler, but am I traveling? I'm a cook, but am I cooking? I'm a designer, but am I designing? I can be the many thousands of parts of myself that I am, but I can not express all of them in the very same moment. Although, come on, that would be entertaining if I could actually pull that off. But I can't. Hence the dilemma, as I face the same conundrum trying to explain any one part of myself... but all? No! I'll not write even 1% of "all" that I am. But those online "About Me" sections piss me the hell off and so I'm going to just start linking them here to this page. Allow me to entertain you with my little "1% of Tiki"... best when eaten with hot peppers and queso.

I've been a hitchhiker and a professional traveler off-and-on since June of 2000. You know how people tell you to save your money so that you can go on vacation? Yeah, about that... I'm not very patient... and my idea of a vacation is measured is not measured in weeks. It's measured in months or years. With almost no money, the choice was easy... and I became a hitchhiker. I found out real quick that hitchhiking is illegal in most of America. That's right. Your eyes don't deceive you. It's illegal to walk in America. I hope you're laughing. I was... AND, while hitchhiking's left me almost as penniless as the day I started, it's brought me a fortune in experience.

For those first four years, I was a holy man under vows while studying various religions... and under many masters. It was a lot of fun wearing monk's robes while singing to The Doors at a bar in Seattle. I like meddling with the world. It's fun! I started really writing when I started traveling, then developed my own script, then my own calendar, then took on apprentices, and... finally... retired. I should've died a few years ago, so everything at this point is all extra credit. What would YOU do if death passed you by twice? One thing I do not really do anymore is worry about the little things.

I love life, and I don't invest much time in those who don't love life. If a peep is at least open to the possibility of loving themselves and loving life, then sometimes that's enough. Despite all my fancy words and passions, I'm still just a monkey pretending to be a human... at least when the curtains are up.

Wow... if you're still reading... I mean... I can go on.

I smoke, I love wine, I drink coffee, and I'm shamanistic in my drug usage. I've lost myself in vision quests and I've used drugs to fine-tune my senses while studying various martial arts. There was once a day when I was against drugs used "recreationally", but I've come to use them outside of my spiritual practice on special occasions. Of course most of these are illegal in America also. I swear, the farther you move away from a television in a living room, the faster everything becomes illegal in your life. I do not really watch television, and I'm addicted to being outside, so pretty much everything in my life at this point is illegal... but hey, it's not a normal life and it's definitely never boring, so it's worth pissing off a few police officers along the way.

I love a creature called "The Daughter of the Wind", the one and only LiLi Via, ma belle gitane. She could well have good reason not to even want to see me, but it doesn't change the desire in my heart. I'm polyamorous and passionate as all hell. Any moment I can have alone with the Daughter of the Wind is a moment I'm going to take. That's just the way it is.

I'm absolutely obsessive! I am not "a little bit obsessive", I mean abso-frakking-lutely! When I hear a song that I love, I listen to that song on repeat for hours... sometimes days... sometimes weeks. There is zero exaggeration in what I'm telling ya. It's pretty common to have a laugh when friends ask me to change a song after I've been blasting it for a week or more. Some songs that I love are a permanent part of every playlist. Other songs fade away and get deleted. Now... ask yourself: "Am I just talking about music?"

I obsess over friends, over lovers, over great drinks and great food, over books, and over movies. Anything worth doing is worth obsessing over... and that includes a woman's body. Obsessed! I often need to be called off, as I can spend hours caressing and feeling and drinking in a body. #Addict4Life

If you don't get it yet, I communicate with touch. I hug, I shake hands, I claw, I connect!! My "personal bubble" ends at about one-centimeter under my skin. Of the five languages, "touch" is by far my dominant language, with "Quality Time" as my second language, "Words of Affirmation" as my third, then "those other two languages" almost non-existent in my repertoire. I'm more of an animal than a human. Rawr! If you take my favorite songs off repeat, there will be a violent frakking backlash. Happy times! But not happy times if you're the poor peep trying to fiddle with the repeat button. That'll get a peep killed.

How about I include weaknesses WITH the strengths? Afterall, every strength comes paired with a matching weakness. It's a law of nature.

One of the languages I do not speak is "Gifts". I know, I know.... any long-term travelers who are reading this are nodding their head in agreement... while, from the opposite side, anyone still stuck inside a high-consumerism culture is shaking their head in disagreement. Most people who give me gifts are shocked when I tell them that gifts are paper weights to me. Let me spell it out one more time: H I T C H H I K E R. My world is inside of me, or inside other people, or inside the Internet on my iPod, or it needs to fit into a backpack. With a backpack, I look at everything in terms of the space it takes and how heavy it is. If you don't get it, that also means that I rarely give gifts. When I DO give a gift, I usually create the gift myself, because it needs to be very personal to the person and to me as well. When a gift becomes a symbol, then it is truly something special.

You can add "gift days" at the same time--days like birthdays, Christmas, and all the others. On a side note, I actually run a 24-hour hunt for Santa Clause every year... and, in revenge, NORAD annually uses one of my photos when they are following the old elf at the same time. One of us will die in this war. And me? I'm not placing my bet on the elf. He's going down.

Where was I? Ah, yes, a question: "What ACTUAL significance does a gift have if it is given on a day when you are expected to give a gift?" To me, the only demonstration in that action is obedience, and it demerits the true magic of a gift given spontaneously and given with meaning that is significant to both giver and receiver. So I leave pre-programmed gift days like these to the populace at large, while I celebrate a more spontaneous lifestyle. It is one of many places where I cause friction with society and with many who are around me. I'm weird, I'm deviant, I'm difficult, and I cause more than a little friction simply by existing. If I could shut my mouth and just hide who I was, it'd be easy going for the world around me... but I'm not. I'm loud and expressive. It's more fun that way.

I hate the cold and love the dark. I love the heat and hate the light. I haven't found a place hot enough for me. Fact: I hope to one day die by fire. What many people call "warm" is what I call "cold". I refer to a breeze in the desert as "a cool gust", and I'm serious. Think heat! Think very, very frakking HOT and you just might--maybe, just maybe--be near to what I call warm. The cold drains my energy quickly, then it tries to force me to sleep... but with heat, I can stay awake for days and I will have energy to go even longer. Lol, ok, and then pass out on my keyboard or on a park bench or even sitting up in a chair. When sleep DOES take me, it's quick and very often it's without my consent.

My night vision is good enough to pick out the shape of the leaves on trees under the dark of a new moon's night. I've practiced lucid dreaming since the Spring of 2001 and I love the world of dreams... but I hate sleep. I hate sleep to the point that I've researched what part of the body triggers the feeling of needing to sleep... in the hopes that I can one day have it surgically removed from myself. Here's hoping that I don't have to be the one holding the scalpel. Cross your fingers.

I am a TERRIBLE long-distance communicator. It's normally one of the first things I tell a peep. On the other hand, I'm an incredible communicator face-to-face, and I love the magic of conversation... the energy! I love a good debate, a great argument, and an intense fight. I'm pretty damned radical in my beliefs and lifestyle, and many of my favorite tribe members are those who disagree with me and will fight me honestly about it. Love it! But at long-distance? Sometimes weeks will pass without a reply, a few times have even been more than a year. The best reason to send an email or pick up the phone is to get together for real! Touch, touch, touch...

Where there's hate, you'll find love right behind it. I hate sleep because I love life... and sleep is nothing less than a thief to me. To hell with sleep! This is war!

I'm a vigilante who's somehow managed to keep a clean criminal record. As I'm usually walking around in the middle of the night, I end up seeing the worst parts of humanity acting out from their own pain to bring suffering to other humans. I finally understand why other people can look away when they see this. They have children... or a wife or husband... or others who are dependent on them. But I don't... and I'm the one who can't turn away. It would kill me... at least the part of my "self" that matters.

I walk fast. Fast! The only place where I'm not being told to slow down is Manhattan. I'm high energy and I'm constantly "the last man standing" at parties. The negatives are that I forget how much other people need to rest, or I push other too far, or they get annoyed because I prefer to stand instead of sit. You could say I'm a difficult person, and you'll often find me pacing back and forth when I'm thinking over a problem.

I speak English and Mexican, and I can get around in Italy, France, and Japan with what pieces of those languages I can muster and butcher at will. I speak tech jargon, ghetto vulgar, and a handful of other sub-languages. I speak more than ten computer languages, having taught myself my first programming language at the age of eleven. I was a criminal hacker up until '99, then dropped the "criminal" part of it (for the most part) just before the turn of the millennium. I know what button turns a computer on and gets it all hot and bothered. And the funny part? I've found humans have very similar buttons. BEEP!

I don't believe in "grown-ups", and I can't help seeing this whole civilization thing we've got going here as a rather humorous game of charades being played out across the entire planet... or is that "playground"? These peeps are still playing the old playground games of King of the Mountain, Tag, and Hopscotch... 'n they don't even see it as a game. Gotta say though... it's the only game in town... and I do love to play.

I'm an INTJ Aries Yin Firesnake who's official unbirthday is April Fools Day... who entered this world from my mother's womb in the Gregorian year 1977ce. I celebrate weddings and divorces, but don't celebrate births nor mourn deaths. On rare events, I'll celebrate someone's birthday or mourn a death. Exceptions. The main Gregorian holidays I celebrate is Halloween. I rarely keep track of that calendar anymore, preferring instead the Lunar calendar. I'm a nocturnal creature who pays heed to sunsets and sunrises instead of clocks... to the changing of the seasons instead of months.

I place God above myself, then I place art between God and me as a buffer. After me, my heart jumps immediately to women and to "The Seven" that I call my family. Then comes my tribe, my friends, my blood, and my acquaintances... and then the world. Some peeps don't like knowing the hierarchy... or where they stand... or both. Me? I wanna know right where I stand. Besides, dishonesty can engender such rage in me that my own reaction is to be honest at all costs. But even I have my lies, and I'll straight lie to a cop or a politician any day of the week. They're the cockroaches of civilization as far as I'm concerned.

My universal spirituality is that of Animism, the oldest religion on the planet. My personal spirituality is Solipsism. My relative spirituality is Taoism. My temporal spirituality resemblances reincarnationism, although it's been refined a lot along the way... . whenever I've had the chance to test it against reality. My politics, while most resembling Libertarianism, amounts to two laws:

A. The Law of Non-Infringement: No person may act against another person or their property without that person's unforced consent, and without deception.
B. The Cumming's Razor: No law may be passed against a citizen, or a class of citizens, unless it is applied to all citizens equally.

I openly tell even my friends who vote for either of the two "classic" political parties that I consider them accessories to rape and murder. Politics and government are easily the most disgusting aspects of human nature. I have problems with authority and systems of control. When there is no good leadership, I make a terrible employee. I make a much better leader. But there is a good reason that some of my best managers have kept me as friends in their lives. When given a good leader, I am insanely loyal and an unstoppable fighter, and it is the same dedication I give back to teams when I am the leader.

I was raised alongside three wolves. The Danish clan that gave me my first surname is the Clan of the Wolf, and my first given name is the Israeli tribe of the wolf. Ever since being raised with them, most other dogs have been an insult to the intelligence and power of the creatures that I was raised with. As such, I don't like most dogs. I hate dog-masters who are irresponsible with their pets... and, as a hitchhiker, I've had to face down my share of dogs that shouldn't've been at risk of meeting me in the first place. It's funny how much more intelligent wild dogs are when compared to the creatures raised by humans. And after wolves, I've never met a coyote I didn't like. I like cats and I love rodents. True story. Snakes and spiders both have an understanding with me... and a mutual respect. Them'z good peeps.

I was raised vegetarian. I'm not a vegetarian anymore, although I don't often choose meat if I'm ordering for myself. Sushi is the only flesh-based food that I actually crave from time-to-time. When diving a dumpster, you don't get much of a choice in what you're having for din-din. You go with what's still good to eat and what won't kill you. Also, I have friends who's cooking puts the food at restaurants to shame. One of these friends is so good that restaurants bid on him every year to see which restaurant will "win" him for that season. When any o' these peeps cook a meal that has meat in it, you can be godddammd sure I ain't sayin' "no". But... because I wasn't raised with pork... I don't have the enzymes to digest it. Instead, my body rejects it as a poison. It's not pretty. No fine dining on swine for this little Tiki.

My clothes are torn to all hell, my pants are too short, and there are more holes than there is "cloth" in many of my clothes. Jumping off of trains, climbing mountains, and sleeping with the elements is NOT at all gentle with clothing... and I am very slow to replace them. On the rare days when I DO have money, the first things to jump into my mind and heart isn't to go shopping for clothes. Should a day arrive when money is something I actually have, I'll personally design and create some serious clothes for myself along "dark carnival" lines of fashion... but, ink and piercings would be coming sooner than a day for clothing. Gotta have priorities... and I do NOT have enough ink on me. Fact!

I had my first asthma attack on my sixth birthday, then began suffocating on a farm that was more than an hour's drive from the nearest hospital. They were able to bring me back to the world of breathing, but they found that I'd developed more than two-hundred allergies to the world around me. No matter whether on our farm or in the city, I was consistently sick for the next sixteen-years. In '99, shortly after I decided to make cigs a permanent part of my life, I had a little get-together with God in the Eye of the Infinite. As an atheist at the time, it was a rather disturbing experience. My allergies and asthma never came back after that day. I couldn't really go back to atheism either... not after that little bitch slap from the sky.

I produce electronic music: trip-hop, downtempo, ambient, cinematic, glitch, dubstep, breaks, drum and bass, IDM, and more. There will actually be an album released from me in tandem with the first "Landlore" book. Along with the lyrics, the album should invoke the traveler's spirit via the medium of music. I began mixing and remixing techno a year after I started hitchhiking, then began producing music when I was signed to a label in '05. Interestingly enough, the label was founded by someone who came from the streets like I did. I go thru more than a gig of free songs, demos, and prerelease cuts every week... and keep at least ten of those songs weekly. Contract mixing has kept me alive since Autumn of 2008, and I have more than eighty original productions to one of my names... and I'm not even sure what a B-note is. I'm an audio engineer and a technician... not a musician.

I love every type of music... and that's a dammd lie! Modern country gets a violent reaction outta me. Peeps who know me have heard me call country "surrender music". I can't stand a good two-thirds of what peeps call "pop music". I didn't even really get into music until my teens, and never considered becoming a musician until I fell in love with electronica. Go fig.

I began drawing when I was four. Since then, I've taught myself 3D rendering and graphic design. I've tried my hand at photography for the past few years, but I'm still an amateur. Drawing has been with me the longest. My study of anatomy in martial arts (and study of architecture and biology in personal studies) has added greatly to my talents. Machines were my first love... where my greatest talent still lies. As a transhumanist, machines are where I feel closest to divinity and to the human potential represented by technology. Humans stopped being human when we discovered fire. Since that time, we have gained more and more power to change ourselves and the world around us. Whether it will be for the life of the planet or the death of the planet remains to be seen.

I failed geography class... but I've long since memorized maps to entire cities. Funny how that works out.

I don't believe in Good and Evil. You can throw Right and Wrong in that same pile while you're at it. When I was just a child, a human replicant by the name of Roy Batty taught me that there's no such thing as a "good guy"... and that no one is "right". The gravity of this lesson extends to myself. Being freed from any notion that I am the righteous one, I've been able to adapt to see many sides to a story. My entire map of the human psyche is based on what values the mind holds, and then how those values are prioritized into opinionation. It's fairly easy to map a person's value systems and find the hinges where they'll make their basis of good and evil. Just because I value personal power, responsibility, individuality, freedom, and accountability doesn't make it "right", although I keep an eye on my mind. The mind is quick to judge others based on these values... and so it needs to be reminded that there are other perspectives that are just as valid.

I came into this life looking for only a few significant faces and objects. I've found most of 'em... except for three. One of 'em will go unmentioned. Another one is a half-man, half-jaguar shapeshifter that was born high in the Andes Mountains two-thousand years before the Christ. He's been alternatively called a demon and a god. I lost his trail just North of what is now Mexico City. I get the feeling that this one won't be wrapped up by the end of my current life... but I keep asking people if they've heard any myths (or even modern stories). One of his most recent names was Balaam... 'n I've got a hunch that he's somewhere in or around the city of Las Vegas.

The last of the three is a woman. I can't give you her name. That's a part of how we'll recognize each other. The world has changed too much to use cities and other landmarks. Whereas I've tracked down (or just bumbled into) many of my other cross-life friends and family, this woman is a missing piece that I long to have back.

I plan out my life in the long-term and often across lives. I'm not a big fan of schedules, however, and I like to give myself a LOT of room to breathe and to explore. Some points are clearer than others, but the pattern plays out much as I envision it. In this current stage, I've already wrapped up work on the Abedic script and calendar. They'll need some more work in the next life, but I'm already living by their current manifestations. The invention of computers definitely made some of the changes to the calendar much more easy... far easier than the chisel, slab, and stone I was using the last time I worked on it. I can't believe how quickly things are changing now... and I also can't rely on the hope that there'll even be computers when I wake up in the next life.

I'm a piper and an illusionist. If anything, I should tell you to run. But, if I really thought you would run, I wouldn't've saved this piece of information for so late in our story. We both know that telling you to run would've had the opposite effect, securing your place here with me. Nonetheless, you've been warned. There is more you should know. You see, I believe the illusions, and this is the most dangerous type of illusionist. But the world of humans no longer remembers the magic of pipers, nor the enchantment of words. So come, love, dance with me. We'll play on the peaks and dive off of ledges... and we'll remember the touch of the world that was forgotten.

It's at this point where I find myself pausing and asking: "What else? I know I'm more than this." But I'm not anything more in this moment. These are the surface qualities within me here in this space and time. They'll change in a few hours. I've held well over twenty jobs, have contracted, consulted, laid cement, built houses, worked for both major computer manufacturers (as well as some of the top gaming firms), and I don't watch television nor play video games. I don't own a phone and I operate almost entirely via the Net, either that or face-to-face. If it ain't online, then it better be personal! I prefer the personal. Did I mention I communicate with touch?

I'm from the tribe of the desert. I spend most of my time with artists or entrepreneurs, and from nearly every walk of life, with friends who come from the street AND friends who come from families of privilege. Every individual should be given a chance to shine. As a musician, I spend a LOT of time in the Live Music Capital of the World--Austin, Texas--and many in my tribe are musicians. But in any given day, I could be talking with photographers, or politicians, or activists, or gypsies, or models, or hippies, or lobbyists, or engineers, or web designers.. . I have a public life that includes thousands of people in that life... and then I have a private life with a tribe of only a little more than a hundred people... but a tribe that is spread out across the world for most of the year.

And even with these incredible heartfires who form my tribe, there are some times when I just want to be alone in the world... and I am known to put on my bag and hitch out of a city at a moment's notice... off in search of the mountains, or the jungle, or the ocean, or especially the desert... or just riding the winds in any direction. I make no claims to stability... and on the rare day when I say sometimes is a permanent part of myself, I mean it. With how much of myself is changing and transient (in almost every sense of the word), it is easy to recognize the parts of myself that are permanent. They stand out glaringly like a bright red dot in a field of blue.

If you've been paying attention, maybe you noticed that I am proud of even the things I call "weaknesses". I'm quick to turn weaknesses into strengths, or to cut them out when I find them... and I am definitely proud of who I am as a creature. But there is one weakness I'm not proud of, and I'm working on it at this very moment... integrity. Actions follow words. I actually cleaned this up before, but it rooted its ugly head again in the spring of 2011. I'm working on cleaning it up all over again... and fucking cut this shit out of me. But I'll leave these words here until I've gained strength in my integrity again... step one is to stop over-tasking myself and trying to do too many things. I've already taken that step. Now I'm watching my words and telling peeps immediately if there's anything I say that I don't think I'll be able to act on. I've got this... and I'll cut it the hell out of me with the quickness.

I'll likely add to this as the moment changes and as time unfolds.

You can find me online in a few different places. I live three separate lives under three primary names. Sadly, none of my lives tend to enjoy sleeping... so I'm constantly sleep-deprived. Until later, then... cheers, lovelies!

About.Me: Tiki Online
About.Me: Jaya Online