Gone gone gone.

I lose my words. I do so in a very literal sense. A journal, nearly full, has decided to leave my side. Disappeared somewhere between the relative safety of my truck seat and the chaotic rest of my life. It was a simple thing of paper and ink, but the ink formed a picture of the man in the mirror. The man is still there, but I wonder now; how he came to exist from the man he was before. How will I look back and learn from those experiences which I will inevitably forget?

 

Not all was lost. About half of it had been transcribed and stored for safekeeping in the cloud of the internet. I check the date on the last entry I typed, and see words of the changing year and snowfall. Six months of recorded thoughts and tumultuous emotion, which I won’t be able to read through in the years to come. It is not a big deal, I tell myself. They were just words, and there will be plenty more of them in the future.

Flounder

From a journal entry a few months ago:

“I need to flounder, but not in a pool of self neglect. I need to flounder in the ocean of supposed reality. I need to feel the vastness of the world around me as I question life, not just the confines of my own self. This is why I need to leave on a trip, to toss myself out into the wilds in order to learn to feel the world. To pop this bubble of self protection which I have formed so thickly around myself.”

Change

Another milestone. 200 journal entries transcribed and placed in the safe-keeping of the internet. I still have a few months worth of entries to type up before I will be current, and by then will be more yet to type.

 

I enjoy the process though. Reading through my own mind of the near-past gives me a small piece of perspective on the ways I am changing. By the comparison of then and now I see the small differences.

 

I feel blessed to be where I am at such a young age. Privileged to go through all this questioning now so that I may have some sense of things down the road. I feel as though I am in the right mind to face such trials in my life, right time, and right place. But I am also holding onto the knowledge that these things will change. The questions will change, as will the answers.

 

I will change. I will stop pursuing goals which, right now, seem so important. I will chase after things which currently hold no interest at all, or things which I may currently abhor.

This is the nature of my world. Perhaps not the nature of the world at large, but certainly mine. And this nature itself is subject to change as well. I cannot imagine that my world will work the same ten years from now. Perhaps not even a year from now. Perhaps not tomorrow.

Just a short break

I show up just in time to catch the last few seconds of a song. The regular Wednesday band is missing, and in their place stands a lone man. He wears a straw cowboy hat that is dirty from constant wear, and plays the guitar like he’s been doing it forever. He sings seemingly to himself, as though the audience doesn’t exist. It’s almost true.

 

The place is nearly deserted. Tonight’s turnout consists a few of the die-hard regulars who sit and chat with one another. The bartender yawns as he watches a baseball game on the small television behind the bar. I order, and he manages to get it wrong. Oranges instead of lemons. His mind is in a different place, and I don’t care enough to correct him.

 

"I’m going to take a short break, and when I come back my friend Dallas will be playing with me.”

 

It’s eight o’clock, and I sit and chat with a few of the regulars. I talk to a man who’s new in town. A doctor whom was born and raised in Iran, and will soon be opening his own practice in town. He says Prescott felt like home the first time he drove through. It’s his first night out, and he is loving life.

 

It’s forty five minutes before the Dave and Dallas duo take the stage. If that’s a short break, I’d hate to see a long one.

 

Dallas, playing the mandolin, adds depth to the guitar. They play songs that seem familiar, like I should know the words even though I don’t. I’ve never seen somebody play the mandolin and the sight leaves me mildly awestruck. He plays a different song entirely, and yet it picks up the guitar, fills the voids between notes. Maybe it’s just the fuzziness from the beer, but I am enraptured by the sounds. Ten o’clock rolls around entirely too quickly, and the music stops.

 

Time to go. My alarm clock will be going off in six short hours, and I still have some chores to do at home.

On Judgment

More randomness:

We are constantly in a state of judgment against others. We judge them against ourselves and against our ideals. We impose our desires on others and then shun them for not being desirous. How can they not want what is obviously so important (to us)? How can they be so dense as to not realize the paradise that awaits them if they begin to idolize the things that we do? Don't they see?

How could they not want to be successful? Rich? Beautiful? How could they not want a new shiny car? A house? Nice clothes? Who doesn't want to be surrounded by success?

 

It becomes harder to judge when you recognize this projection of yourself onto the image of others. You can no longer impose your paradigm onto the world at large, and by that loss your eyes are opened to the beauty of the individuals. Each person is beautiful. Each person is perfect.

Journal – Jogging

I let the cold wind buffet my bare skin before the sun rises. I take in all the smells of the lake and the trail. The cow pond poo smell, and the scent of motor oil in the dry creek beds I pass over. The odd twilight as colors begin to be revealed. They coalesce from that dark blue of night, and soon there exists vibrant green, pale orange, dark red.

Scrappy jogs ahead of me, then falls behind, sniffing the underbrush. Birds call out in surprise at our passing. Frogs croak out a welcome to daylight. A heron takes off from shore, no doubt preferring to avoid us. A deer too wishes to avoid us, as it bounds away with scrappy in quick pursuit.

The jog makes me feel alive. It gives so much more energy than it takes. The four hours of sleep will come back to haunt me this afternoon, but for now I am vibrating with life.

The pulse of the world

Random excerpt from the journal:

I look out my window again, but the red rock is gone. In its stead stand thousands of acres of rolling yellow grass. At first I am saddened by the loss of those rusty rocks, their color gone from my view. But then the breeze blows and I see as it spreads out across the land. I stare in amazement as the yellow menace which has taken over the beauty of red rocks becomes one giant moving mass. In unison with itself it seems to embody the pulse of the world. Bend, straighten. Dance, sway. Why? Just because it is better than standing still.

Pulse, breath. Pulse, breathe. Pulse, live. I breathe deeply, hoping to take in the philosophy of the grass by taking in the breeze which moves through it. I don't know if it works, for it smells the same as all the rest of the air. I hope its vitality seeps into my bloodstream. I hope to bend and sway, dance and straighten.

The nature of reality

as defined by a Science Fiction author.

 

Warning: have time and an open mind when sitting down to read this.

(via)

Breaking that funk

Decided to read through old journal entries to help get out of the rut. The memories were fresh enough that I could still recall the moment of the writings, the feelings and thoughts running through my mind.

 

Walking in the snow:

… So instead I dance through a white curtain, I smile at the sky and try to catch pieces of this moment on my tongue. I try to savor all that is here around me in the present. I choose to ignore the future cold that might take me over, just as I choose to ignore the bites left by snow storms gone by.

Another journal entry

*Yeah, I journal about cooking*

 

Cooking again. Allowing the kitchen to take me over. I become a ghost within it. A whisper within the cacophony of sizzle and spice. I listen, but do not speak. The food does all of the talking, and it does so in a language that I barely speak. I catch a word here and a phrase there. I try to piece together the conversation, but it often eludes me.

When does the sizzle become a scream for help? Where is the border between perfectly caramelized and irreparably burned? Where lies the boundary of a meal that teases and excites the taste buds before it falls into a meal that passes without notice? When does fork tender turn into mush? These are the questions that the food is trying to answer for me, if only I could understand.

If only I could decipher the slang, then I think that this would all click into place, and a master of the kitchen I would become. Perhaps it is simply a matter of spending more time with the locals. Perhaps all that is required is an inquisitive mind and a supreme amount of patience.

If that is the case then I worry that I will never become that master, as I seem to so rarely have the time to dedicate to learning this language. That I will forever be the cook who speaks broken English.

Life is a journey

*A journal entry while riding in the backseat to 'Grandma's House Cafe', somewhere in Arklahoma with Dad and Suzy*

 

Jesse Cook plays out of the car's speakers as the freeway miles bump their way behind us. The music sounds unfamiliar, but I know all the songs. I hum along to them as the car hums along the road.

 

 

In the distance, both ahead and behind, the gray gloominess blocks the view of distant wonders. It strikes me that life is very much like driving. There are times in your life where the skies are clear and it appears that you can see everything. Your past and your future stretch out far before you, yet seem close enough to touch. Sometimes you will grasp the grandeur of this view, and sometimes you will take it for granted. 
 

There are times when the path is less clear. Like the gray skies now the view becomes clouded. The future is something unknowable, and the past seems to lose its relevance. All you can see is that which is close to you. Days, weeks, maybe months. Time constricts around you, and all you can do is get by.

 

Then there is the darkness. Those spans of time during which the sun's illumination is gone and we are left with only the thin strips of our meager headlights to illuminate the way ahead. These times force us to look at ourselves critically. Do you stop and wait for the darkness to fade? Do you choose to follow the guiding lights of others along their paths? Or do you choose to follow your intuition, trusting your judgment based on what your headlights show?

 

Just as in any road trip, there are times in life where you make a wrong turn or when a convoluted route turns into being lost. When all the signs are there, but you can't make any sense out of them. When we end up driving in circles looking for a landmark to show the way. Here a sense of helplessness often overwhelms us as we question all that we are and all that we have done to get us to this very point. Eventually we either find our way or choose a new heading, but always we continue on.

 

Within this journey we perceive a destination. That place which we are traveling towards. On some trips we realize that this destination is not all that we had hoped it would be, and so we must choose a new direction to point towards. On other trips we realize that it is not the destination which really matters at all, but instead it is the act of journeying itself that impacts us.

 

Invariably all journeys will have their potholes, their breakdowns. These can range from minor inconveniences to deal-breaking setbacks that change the course of the journey entirely. Over time we learn to recognize these, and slow down when they occur. Take the time to diagnose and fix the problem properly before carrying on towards our destination or else it will only break down again. We learn to be careful, and avoid hitting the same potholes in the future.

 

Sometimes, when we look back on a journey, we see only those potholes, or perhaps we remember only our arrival at the destination. Sometimes we remember only the fact that we did indeed travel. Sometimes it is the people that we meet along the way that stick most steadfast in our memories. All journeys though, whether big or small, long or short, make an impact on us. They change our definitions of who we are and of the world around us.

 

Eventually there will be times of rest, moments of motionlessness, destinations which we linger at after arrival, but there is always another journey ahead. Always more miles that will bump by underneath your en-route to something else.

 

I hum along to the songs, which I have known all along, as those miles bump their way behind me now.