"we're all on a plane. life is dangerous, and complicated, and it's a long way down."

Rather somber thoughts today. A little change of pace.

I was with my dad in the park today eating ice cream. My dad said "pile it on" to the kid at the counter, acting serious. The kid looked kinda scared and ended up giving us three scoops each.




Now I know this has very little to do with that, but it got me thinking. Kids believe anything. I know I did when I was younger. They have this unsullied, really beautiful ability to just take things at face value. They have so much trust. No skepticism, no suspicion. You can tell a kid that the Leaping Lizard flavor has real lizards in it and chances are they'll probably believe you. It took me a long time to get used to my father's ridiculous sense of humor and penchant for telling very, very tall tales.




For those of you who have read Sophie's World, you may remember a rather iconic passage about a rabbit. The theory is that the universe is rather like a rabbit, and people are the tiny insects, or dust mites, or particles, or whatever tiny business nestled in the rabbit's fur. As kids, we start out at the very tips of the hairs, but as we get older, we slide down into the comfort of the fur. The idea is that philosophers are still at the tips of the hairs, with the children and can see the outside, beyond the fur. They see the sky, the grass, the trees. They see the wonder of it all, and they never lose the purity of a child considering the world around them. They try to shout down to the rest of the world, but everyone is far too comfortable being nestled in the snuggly fur to bother with what those nut jobs up there are saying.





I'm not trying to be pretentious, and I don't pretend to be a philosopher. I am nothing of the sort. My bouts with philosophy have made me realize that. I'd be a terrible addition to a debate team, because I really can't pick up a debate about a subject that doesn't interest me, and chances are if you pulled one out of a hat I would only indulge you if I was terribly bored. (By stuff that doesn't interest me I generally refer to a lot of the older religious debate and some of the older philosophers' material. Newer stuff I can generally relate to. Basically, there's a large sector of philosophy that puts me to sleep.) Most of my thoughts are far from the elevated material of those esteemed gentlemen and women.




I somehow got myself rocketed about two-thirds of the way up a hair. I can see the wonder, sure, but I can see the ground below me, too. I can see how far there is to fall. The wonder frightens me just as much as it amazes me. I have somehow been shouldered with the ridiculous circular thinking that marks so much of the subject, yet it gets me nowhere and generally just stresses me out. I am ill equipped to be up here, and while it's interesting, sometimes I don't know how I feel about it.



The unconsidered life may not be worth living, but the peace of mind would be kind of nice every once in a while.

and I have no resolutions

I wish the world was flat like the old days
then I could travel just by folding a map
no more airplanes, or speedtrains, or freeways
there'd be no distance that could hold us back

-the new year

finally, you have found

Yesterday, I had terrible thoughts. I had poisonous, cynical feelings stewing under my newly chopped bangs and I was seconds from foisting them on you people. Seconds.

And then Escape came on on my iPod. And really, you can't be the least bit of anything but happy when you belt out the lyrics (because you can't do much of anything else.)

Yes, I like pina coladas. And getting caught in the rain.

I just didn't have the heart to continue exuding my venom. Rupert Holmes saved you all from something very terrible.



This blog is really almost nauseatingly optimistic, because I tend to write in it when I am happy, and doing happy things. I have been doing happy things lately, and I hope that continues, but I just wanted to let the world (the one that reads this, anyway) know that I do not have a serotonin imbalance that causes euphoria like that lady in Grey's Anatomy. Obscure reference aside, I have moods, like normal people. When I write, though, it's generally to spread my good feelings, (hopefully) spreading such loveliness among others.

Besides, why would you want to read a negative, critical, and generally angry blog, anyway?



I will be very briefly critical once today, and that is of a cultural phenomenon that has resulted in something known as the Cinderella complex. I'm not going to talk about it in the medical sense, as it is normally used. Pretty much every cultural medium has enforced this idea, so much so that it has infiltrated my brain, too, and I occasionally indulge in whimsical thinkings along its lines.

There's this idea of being saved. That some prince will come and rescue you, and in spite of the odds, see through your outer shell, and sweep you off your feet. I think the problem is that sometimes you can get all caught up in this fairy tale nonsense. The danger is that you come to expect it. And so you wait, and wait. You wait for Prince Charming, and in the meantime, you cultivate a treacherous set of expectations and a devastating inability to see past the end of your nose.

What the hell are you going to get done if you lock yourself in an ivory tower and wait for the one crazy exception to climb up your hair? Who the fuck climbs up hair? I wouldn't want a guy who had an affinity for using me as a gym rope. It's like fishing without a hook. It just doesn't make any sense. Love and life don't come served on a silver platter. You have to get out of your tower and actively pursue.

My point is, life is not a fairy tale. At least not in the way you think it should be. If you know that, you can revel in the little beautiful things in life, and in other people. If you expect everything to be all pie-in-the-sky and sparkly, the real world will be drab, and pale in comparison.

Wouldn't you rather have the fantasy pale to the reality?

if you're gonna get up, you might as well get up with me.

I think people would be a lot happier if they spent 5 minutes out of their day just sitting on a porch swing. No distractions, just sitting.

We'd probably have world peace, honestly. Because how can things not be right when you have a porch swing? How can you not be perfectly at one with everything?

Try it. It'll change your life.

I want to go to Egypt, read heiroglyphics, explore ancient tombs, get whisked away by a scruffy man, and ride into the sunset on a camel.

Sadly, we can't have everything we want, can we?

My father and I are exactly the same when we're drunk. We try to say sober things, but we lose our trains of thought a lot, giggle for no reason, and speak really slowly.

My fuse is getting short. I think the general rule should be a week with parents, tops. You just need a break after a while. Maybe the reason I get frustrated is that he's a lot like me. I feel like Rachel in Friends when she says she was trying so hard not to be her mother that she ended up like her father.

Blood is pretty damn thick. It clots sometimes.

I have theories on selflessness, fishing (and titles), Cinderella complexes, food, and beauty, but I will share those when I am feeling more articulate.

I come home in a week. I can not wait.

it's not a cross, it is a choice

"Time…time

Won’t leave me as I am
But time won’t take the boy out of this man."

dreaming of the osaka sun

My more recent pictures bore me, so we're gonna go old school and pick some classics. They don't really have anything to do with the writing...but that's the fun of it, no?

Maybe I was a little harsh on the whole camping business. The whole waxing nostalgic thing takes me a while. Some parts of it were kinda cool.

Looking in the mirror for the first time in five days, you honestly don't recognize yourself. You kinda forget what a mirror is. You poke your face and the reflection pokes back...but you half expect it not to. What time is it? The sun says it's 4. I just caught a fish: it's lunch time.

District 9 was unbelievable. I cried. You may ask what kind of retard cries in an alien movie, but this was one of those films that actually had a really legitimate and moving message. The part where he makes her the flower at the end was what got me.

Moral of the story: I'm an incredible sap. But really, it's genius. And the baby alien will melt your heart.

I'm ripping through my Dad's CD collection and it has a lot of gems. Emmylou Harris, The Cowboy Junkies, The Doobie Brothers, Natalie Merchant and, of course, Miles. I typically don't do much of listening to albums the full way through, since my collection has a lot of holes. It is definitely something that I love, though, so having this much access to complete pieces of artists' souls makes me incandescently happy.

On the music note, David Barclay's show on KSDT is really something else. This kid is a baller.

I wonder if chimeras have more psychological difficulties than the general population. You'd think they might; not only the problem with knowing you had a missing twin but the fact that you have two sets of DNA might just cause problems from the beginning.

It would be interesting to look into that.

(This thought was of course brought on by an episode of CSI.)

Gordon Ramsay is definitely one of my favorites. His appearance on Rachael Ray (the only reason I would watch...otherwise I am not a fan) melted my soul. He is adorable. Their family has a "swear jar" and every time he drops an F-bomb the kids glare accusingly and he has to pay up. It makes sense given who he is, but that image is just precious.

Enough TV rambling! During the summer I catch up on everything I miss during the year (meaning all the reruns on the Food Network, CSI, and lots of Looney Tunes). Thus it occupies much of my thoughts.

I am so relaxed I feel like I am made out of noodles. I'm like one of those toothpick-marshmallow sculptures that you make in preschool where you pick off the incredibly unsanitary marshmallows while the teacher isn't looking. Your sculpture ends up about half the size you started with.

But really, I walk around in a sleepy, contented reverie these days.

Welcome to summer: for reals.

these little embers

I wonder what it would be like to be a beetle, trundling around.

But really. Maybe there's something really fabulous about being a beetle, and we just don't know it.

We might be seriously missing out, people.

Today I was on a bike ride with my very out of shape puppy and it started raining. Not LA misty sad-excuse-for-rain, but real, fat, sloppy droplets. I thought about it and it occured to me that I hadn't actually been outside, getting wet, caught in the rain since a very memorable moment around this time last summer.

I kept biking, occasionally opening my mouth for raindrops and getting very happily wet.

Now I will probably catch a cold. But playing in the rain? Worth it.

A lot of people name their dog Buddy. But has anyone ever named their dog Pal? I kinda like it.

I love the paint section of hardware stores. They make me so happy. The little strips with all the colors on them? I love looking through them and picking my favorite shades. My future house will be a shitshow of color, but I don't care, because I can't think of anything that would make me happier than having a kitchen bathed in Rise N Shine and a living room in deep Rhododendron. And Rum Sunrise for the outside, perhaps?

There are some really awesome jobs out there. Picking songs for movie soundtracks. Taste testing. Picking the names for paint colors is one of those really awesome careers where you don't care if you live in a cardboard box...because your job is ridiculously awesome.

Anyone know how to get into that kinda gig?

on insects and insanity

I HATE camping.

Okay, so maybe it's more of a hate/tolerate relationship, or maybe I was just with the wrong person (a parent). But really, why the fuck anyone would want to sleep on a rock and eat fried spam and ramen is beyond me. The only benefit is that when you come back, you're thankful that you're bored in a house rather than outside with copious insect life.

So maybe it wasn't that bad. But there are definitely some things I take issue with. Like bugs.

Insects are the one aspect of nature I have real trouble with. And let me tell you, the bugs up North were fucking weird. I seriously didn't have a problem with spiders before this trip, but boy, I practically had to ask for a straightjacket. They are everywhere, and they live in creepy communal webs where they make little sacks to keep things alive in them and when you hit a branch with them dozens of them fall into your canoe (and if you sit in the front like me, that's bad news). I don't think I saw the same kind twice. Big ones, furry ones, striped ones, spotted ones, even a teensy tinsy one that was highlighter yellow (?!) Someone who's into that kind of stuff could probably spend a lifetime studying all the bugs up there. I am not and would probably go insane.

And the mosquitoes, god the mosquitoes. I have always had issues with needles, so bugs with needles on their faces are automatically on the hit list.

The only bugs I can handle are the ones that eat other bugs. This means hornets are my best friends. If you stay still and don't swat at them (I mistook one for a horsefly and tried to kill it, ending in my sprinting in circles around the campsite for several minutes until it lost me) hornets memorize your body and will literally pick the flies off your arm like big sluggish war airplanes or something.


The real war engines of the insect world, and the coolest bugs out there? Dragonflies. These things look so much like aliens it's hard to believe they're not miniatures. When they land on your shirt they cling to you, cocking their heads to the side and look at you kind of quizzically, as though they're contemplating your character. They come in every shade of green and blue, from neon greens and turquoises to deep forest shades. The most amazing thing is the way they fly, like crazy helicopters--backwards, forwards, with hairpin turns and stopping in a heartbeat. How the hell do they do it? Watching one hatch and harden is definitely a miracle of nature.

At any rate, they eat mosquitoes out of the water when they're adults, and baby mosquitoes when they're nymphs. They don't bite unless provoked, so really--what's not to love?

And now a pressing question.

Do you ever wake up and feel like you're coasting?

For me I get these frightened, almost panicked moments where I suddenly get a very Truman Show-esque feeling, like everything that's going on around me isn't real, like I'm suspended over an abyss, like something is not right. Something shakes you out of your day to day reverie. You realize that in this moment, you're living. Your life is ticking away, and what are you doing with it?

So I must ask the question: how do you handle your mortality?

I don't have an answer (this seems to be a common theme, sadly) but the most satisfying one I have come up with (though it isn't really that satisfying) is that you suck it up and just enjoy it. Make sure that you're always enjoying yourself, and if you're not, fix either the situation or your attitude. Because what else can you really do?

Not saying that we should race through life, though. Whenever I get the feeling that I'm coasting, I tend to go through a frenzied period where I try to put my life on fast forward. After a while I pause for a second, smooth down my hair, realize that I'm crazy and kick back with a slice of cheesecake in my favorite spot wherever I may be (I have a favorite spot everywhere I go) and I think about it. I let it go round on the conveyor belt of my brain for a while, and when I get nowhere, I generally move on with my business as though none of this moment of chaos ever happened. I realize that if you go too fast you miss what's right in front of you. So I try to reach some semblance of being okay with the whole issue and resuming trying to enjoy life, as fleeting as it is. Instead of thinking about it, I realize I should be doing something about it. Because damn, if the seconds are ticking away, shouldn't you be using them instead of worrying about not using them?

You may be wasting your time, but you should at least try to waste it well.

That was a generally inconclusive bit of rambling--I know I've addressed the issue briefly before, but these are my thoughts as they stand now (and they are a little more complete). It also makes me seem a little crazy. Oh well.

That's all for today.

p.s.

I think my next destination is jamaica. (or perhaps the dominican republic to visit malva.) at any rate, somewhere in the caribbean.

I don't even have to ask. I already know it's a good decision. :)

I need you so much closer

so it is raining here in calgary. torrentially raining. and the best part is, the weather had been beautiful until I got here.

but really, it's not so bad. rain just makes me really sleepy.

all this thunderstorming gave birth to some questions. why is lightning zig-zagged? you'd think that if it was trying to make its path the quickest one to the ground, it would shoot straight down like a laser. and is it possible to outrun lightning? can you dodge it?

I found the family cookbook I had wanted from the reunion last year. I think I might pull a Julie and cook my way through the hallowed family recipes.

I noticed the other day that every forest has a unique smell. the forests in poland tend to be sweeter, with more of a cedar taste to them. the ones here in banff are bold, cold, fresh pine that stings your nostrils when you breathe it in. Sequoia has a lighter touch, a softer smell of aging wood. The deciduous forests in California are more loamy, thicker. Each one is unique, kinda like a fingerprint.

I am stoked to head out to the farm and get in some good fishing. (I don't even really like eating jackfish, but it's the sport that counts, I suppose.)

I guess you could say that this is my real holiday. the previous chapter of this summer was more of a mix of the two. this is pure, unadulterated, simple being completely unproductive to society. I love it. I love the thoughts that run through your head on a 10 hour hike, when you're la-dee-da-ing through the forest with nothing to entertain you but your own musings.