A Problem With Modern Music

I used to be a big doom-and-gloom-er about modern music.  I'm not as bad anymore, because I've found plenty of examples of modern music that are worth their weight in licensing paperwork.  Industry joke for ya there.

However, certain faces of modern music have this one problem I just can't stand.  Much of it tends to be the indie music scene that is proliferating in many genres.  It's the issue of playing simple stuff and calling it "moderation", as if playing simple things makes one artist more tasteful and self-denying of indulgence than another.

Drummers happen to be another small ecosystem where this runs rampant.  For example, I'll talk to a drummer about how they play.  And they get off on this kick about how they like to play simply and not make waves, to play kind of understated and with subtleties you have to listen hard to hear...I have to choke back vomit.  Their whole tone will imply that they are superior because you have to TRY HARDER to appreciate their playing.  You have to FOCUS HARDER to hear their idiosyncracies.  Well, the first glaring argument I have is this:  You have the loudest freaking thing money can buy you, and you want to make LESS noise?

Then there's this aforementioned issue of moderation.  Moderation is a good thing.  You drink in moderation, you don't die.  You discuss politics in moderation, you keep a low blood pressure.  You tell poop jokes in moderation, your girlfriend's mom doesn't want her to dump you.

I feel that moderation in many things is good...but let me ask you this:  When was the last time you expressed yourself in moderation?  So it's not an issue of moderation.  It's an issue of playing what people want to hear.

I'll be bold enough to say these drummers who are way too good to be playing the way too bad parts they play are only doing so because it's what people want to her.  If they want to put THEIR instruments and vocals in a drawer by barely using them, they can go ahead.  But I'm going to be whaling on the drums behind them while they stand around and shift weight from one foot to the other awkwardly like they've got a poopy diaper.  Don't tell any future girlfriend's moms I told that joke.

So here's my thing:  indie hipsters, put on some pants that fit.  There's enough bassists barely playing their instrument, so leave drummers alone.  If you want a simple sound, that's fine.  We can play simple without it being some damned fashion statement.  I don't think I should always be hitting the crap out of things, just that if I'm not, it isn't some sort of superiority in my mind.  It's less activity and that's it.  It's not witty, it's not a social commentary on the understated energy of our generation, it's nothing less than "Didn't hit as hard that take".

< unbridled >

Love is a mystery cocktail.  How the hell do you make one?  Because it tastes really good, and I would like to know how to make one so I don't have to call upon some sort of divine bartender to scratch my itch. 

Jokes aside, I was thinking about this and I realize it is such a big deal love ever happens.  Because here's everything that has to happen:

Person 1 has to be attracted to Person 2 physically. 

Person 2 has to be attracted to Person 1 physically. 

Person 1 has to be attracted to Person 2 emotionally. 

Person 2 has to be attracted to Person 1 emotionally. 

Person 1 has to have the qualities that Person 2 wants. 

Person 2 has to have the qualities that Person 1 wants. 

Person 1 cannot make any large mistakes when they're first meeting and getting together.  Person 2 cannot make any large mistakes when they're first meeting and getting together.

  Person 1 has to be a person who is able to pursue what they want. 

Person 2 has to be a person who is able to pursue what they want. 

Person 1 has to still be what Person 2 wants. 

Person 2 has to still be what Person 1 wants. 

Person 1 has to like Person 2 enough to jump through stupid hoops like meeting parents and going to lame parties and get-togethers with their friends. 

Person 2 has to like Person 1 enough to jump through stupid hoops like meeting parents and going to lame parties and get-togethers with their friends. 

Person 1 has to jump through stupid hoops like meeting parents and going to lame parties and get-togethers with their friends. 

Person 2 jump through stupid hoops like meeting parents and going to lame parties and get-togethers with their friends.

I could continue on but you get it.  And I'm not even up to the engagement, which can be stuffed full of difficulties and more requirements.

I'm not too sure what brought about these thoughts, but overall it's just striking me as dumbfounding.  Each time I strike out with some girl I'm interested in, I understand more clearly that it isn't easy to make this whole connection thing happen.  Perhaps if I behaved more like a frat boy it'd be easier.  In that case, I'm glad it's difficult.

All part of an ongoing lesson in how to treat people properly when I finally see them come into my life.

The Everly Brothers Lied...

Update on flying the societal coop:

Things are going pretty dang well.  I'm kicking butt at my job, and accordingly have been given an opportunity to intern in the office of the company I work for.  Internships, in the words of my boss, are offered only to people who they are already interested in hiring, rather than traditional internships where you get a few months and then go on your way.

So, let's rewind a few months:  I decided not to go to college, and everyone started writing eulogies in case they were selected to preside over my imminent funeral.  "He was full of life, but just so dumb to try and do it his own way."..."He liked to play drums, but in the end, his inability to be content with the normal rhythm of life beat him to death."..."He was a lout who was too lazy to pursue a 9-5 job."



All of these good points, and all of them a bit underhanded or downright transparently bitter.

Computer-generated image, done by sophisticated scientists, predicting what I'd look like today.  (Image from mid-summer, 2011)



This post is inspired by two things:  A.)  My satisfaction at discovering I may be right about deciding not to go to college (by this I mean the right decision for ME, not for everyone.  And of course I'd be satisfied to discover I didn't make a decision that threw my life down the tubes as everyone theorized, so it isn't just childish satisfaction at knowing I was right...but there is a little bit of that mixed in), and B.)  My desire to point out to others that you can go and do it your own way.  Some people I've talked to have said things like "You're SOOOO lucky", and to them I say, "No I'm not.  I took a chance on life instead of playing it safe (again, not a blanket statement about all college students playing it safe, but had I continued at college I would have been playing it safe rather than going for my personal goals), I busted my tail for the work given to me and jumped on opportunities to take on more, I worked hard to learn the skills I need to do my job to the best of my ability, and I earned what has been given to me."


So, to summarize point B:  If you have a dream that does not coincide with your current path, go do it.  Because when you go for it with everything you've got, opportunities are more likely to present themselves.  And if you give those opportunities your all, things happen.  It isn't some game of roulette, it isn't some stroke of fate, it comes down to you working hard.  It's like that for anything.  If you aspire to be a doctor but stumble through college in a 40-proof daze, you're not going to reach your goal.  If your dream is 'x', 'y' doesn't matter as long as you pursue 'x' passionately.


Although I suck at math and science and am volumes more comfortable with things that can be tied to emotion, like writing, music, art in general, etc., I find that I'm very analytical.  Like, when I would co-write a song with old bandmates, I would ask questions almost like the scientific method:  What do we want to say here?  What are some common thoughts associated with these emotions?  And then I'd write it down in a list form.  I think the reason I do things this way is because complex things are always just a composite of many simple things.

So if your dream is 'x', you'll find that pursuing it passionately and presents opportunities that fill in the 'y's, but for demonstration's sake, I'll fill in a short and incomplete list.

X = own a designer fashion line


Y's
---
1.) Hone your skills at designing and producing clothes.
2.)  Find ANY AND ALL opportunities to experience the industry. (The retail environment, fashion events, TV shows, books, websites)
3.)  Hone your business skills according to what you see in step 2.
4.)  Assert yourself into more active roles in the clothing industry (take a job managing a boutique's selection, take samples of your work to fashion conferences, search the fashion industry for internships and opportunities)
5.)  If this line of work needs further education, get it.




Sure, most of those are easier said than done, but sitting here griping about the difficulty will get you nowhere.  And make note that many dreams do necessitate a college degree or further education...I'm not against college, I'm against people going just because they feel they have to.  If your dream includes it, do it.  You'd be dumb to not do it.


For me, my dream is to do something with music.  Play it, be in the business of it, pretty much anything.  My list is rather similar to the example list above.  Immersing myself in a band and how a band operates is what lead me to meet our band manager, who introduced me to my current workplace and helped me get a job there.  I've been honing my skills and opportunities are presenting themselves.  It's really not complicated.  If you want something bad enough, and put that desire into ACTION (Important:  Wanting a pony reallll bad never helped a little girl get a pony; saving money, clearing brush where a stable could go, learning the rules of horse ownership...now we're talking serious business), things are a helluva lot more likely to happen than if you sit and wish.


And THAT brings me to the title of this blog.  All you have to do is more than drea-ea-ea-ea-eam.  You have to go for it.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=il8mkeCuTuU

Like A Friend With Dividends

While I feel good to be back on the blog and writing again, I'm a bit disappointed that negative issues drove me back to it.  But my thoughts press on.

For awhile now, I've been pondering this thing called friendship.  When are friends friends?  When do friends stop being friends?  When is a friend a real friend and not a acquaintance?  Are these questions answered by increments of time?  By a list of deeds or lack thereof?

One part of friendship that particularly has been on my mind is the idea of investment and returns.  As in, what does each person put into the relationship, and what do they get out of it?  I know that sounds a bit harsh or removed from the humanity of relationships, but it's a different type of commerce.  For example, if one person invests a lot of time and concern into the other person, yet the other person rarely makes time for their friend, there's an imbalance of investment and returns.  The second person invests next to nothing and has a friend who is there for them all the time, trying to help them through hard times, and generally be in contact with them.  The first person spends a lot of time trying to be friends with someone who doesn't really seem to care about their efforts, much less offer themselves as a willing friend.

Since I like analogies and allegories, I was thinking about friendships as investments and other investment/financial lingo popped into my head to see if a deeper pairing could be made between the two.  I thought of savings bonds.  And I thought of the time I got a savings bond from my aunt, and was excited to go cash it for 50$ and buy some toy.  Then my mom explained that it's supposed to sit in the bank for a few years, and then it's worth its full value, and then after another few years, it's worth more, and so on.  Back to present day:  I realize some friends treat people like savings bonds.  And why not?  They're convenient and require zero-effort-investment, yet promise returns over time.  You just pop them in that bank account, and (optionally) can check in on them every now and then to make sure everything's going as planned, and in the end you get something fairly valuable the longer you can string it out!

 And let's not forget interest!  Everyone wants to get in on an account that has high interest.  People seem drawn to friends who are dedicated friends and have interest in the upkeep of the relationship.  Whether or not the interest is mutual across several accounts is a different matter altogether, however.  There's also a good amount of people who take the annuity route.  Annuities are like savings bonds in this situation, but just a bit more generous.  In order to keep an annuity friendship running, one person invests small amounts over time.  The money in that account busts its tail, making tons of money in interest for the account holder, and by the time the account holder is done and ready to cash it in, well would you look at that!  Very little effort and contribution - actually, just the bare minimum to keep the annuity from going under - and it pays off huge.  They end up with way more than they contributed originally.

I suppose after enough time of careless bookkeeping in a friendship, somebody goes bankrupt.

Easier Done Than Said

So, I have decided to stop the idea of daily blog updates.  This may be a 'duh' moment, considering this post comes a week or so after my last 'daily' blog post.  But here's the deal with that:

When I was writing blogs daily, I felt my posts just stunk.  Basically I ended up writing them in the last hour or two of the day, so I would feel rushed to write something.  But I dislike writing things if they can't help people in one of a few ways, like brighten their day by being funnier, or offer advice or encouragement, or what have you.  So, combining my time-crunch and content-crunch, I felt like I was compelled to make average crap into a bigger issue.  Now, I do often find bigger issues in average crap, but I've had plenty of time to mull it all over.  I don't feel like my recent daily posts have been pseudo-profound or anything, but it's just the discomfort of feeling the need to come up with something.  I like for thoughts to find me rather than for me to find them.

And that brings me to today's blog post.  I was on facebook earlier, and a friend posted something that ended with the phrase 'easier said than done'.  And I got to thinking about it, and I was combing through my imagination for situations that are easier done than said.  One that immediately came to me is my situation of choosing not to return to college and try to make my way to the city and get into the music scene there.  Depending on who you're talking to, it can be a pretty hard-to-verbalize feeling.  Especially if they just ask questions that seem to be designed to help me avoid total doom.  For example, "How will you get a good job?"  or "What are you going to do?"

Though I will not turn down an opportunity to talk about it (as those who know me personally or have read my blog enough know full well), it's much harder than just doing it.  To talk about it, I have to combine many personal feelings and thoughts into something another person can process.  So within my statements, I have to combine my flair for the unconventional, reassure them that I'm not just trying to be lazy or rebel, discuss my views on society and how college isn't right for everyone despite the fact it's somehow our "Golden Ticket", and then toss in my philosophical and faithful views on the meaning of life and feeling the need to go be somewhere else, meeting and helping people.

Or. I. Could. Just. Go. Do. It.

Another huge situation that is easier done than said is love.  It's why we're all told as boys and girls who hate the opposite sex because they have cooties, that we'll just have to wait to understand until we're older.  It's why people hate that lovey-dovey couple that hang out in public all the time, because no one knows their specific species of love but them.  I once heard that there is an insane number of separate versions of the common cold, and you can't be immune to a cold because there's so many different versions of it.  I don't know if this is true, but it is conducive to my analogy, so we'll consider it true.

Love is like the common cold.  Every single occurrence of love is different in some way from all others, either in big ways or small ways.  And even if you come through a wicked strong encounter with love, after that version has run its course, you eventually encounter another one.  And when you do, it's as infectious as the first version, second, third, fourth versions you encountered.

But back to the main point of this post.  Don't over-complicate things you know and feel inside by trying to verbalize them to someone who can't understand like you can.  I often can't explain things to my dad in a way that would make sense to him as strongly as it does for me, because he was born in a different time, raised a different way, has a different personality....endless reasons factor into the fact that any given person may not understand why you feel a certain way.

You can all probably come up with a situation that pertains to you that is easier done that said.  Especially if you're an adult now, the awesome thing is that you no longer HAVE to say if you don't want to.  You can just do.  I know people who are adults but still let their parents run their lives.  I don't mean to be morose, but what happens when parents die?  Decisions are up to the decider, and will be until the decider dies.  So look at it this way: Some things are easier done than said, and if you are the main person you consult for making decisions, you'll have the help of your closest advisor until the day you die.

I Am The Literary Sisyphus

I tend to be a creative guy, but I often hit peaks and valleys in my proliferation.

I'll go a month without writing a song or working on one of my fiction stories, and then one day it'll just hit me to start writing.  It can be hugely productive sometimes, like the time I doubled one story from about 20 pages in Microsoft Word to 40 or so after 5 or 6 hour of writing.  For the most part though, it takes away from my creation because I can go, as I said, a month and often longer between these spurts.

I'm pleased to say I'm currently standing atop the peak, and am dreading the statistically likely happenstance that I will trip on a rock and roll all the way back down into the valley, gaining layers like a human snowball, like in the cartoons.  The deal with the title is that Sisyphus was a guy in Greek mythology who royally pissed off the gods, so they punished him by making him push a boulder up a hill, and then every time he got to the top, he would slip and it would roll back down.  And he'd have to do it again, over and over and over again.  Here's a wikipedia article about him.

Today, I wrote the crap out of a song in like 20 minutes, and that never happens.  I even wrote some guitar for it!  Which I never do, because I tend to stink at trying to fit any words and music together.  I can write cool words, and cool riffs sometimes, but I rarely introduce them and try to set them up on a date like the mischevious mutual friend I am.

And I've been working also on my brainchild, that story mentioned above.  Old-timey readers of my blog might remember that I once had sections of it posted here.  But, all arrogance aside, I'm proud of its potential and don't want everyone being able to see it!  If you'd like to read a draft so far and be one of my proofreaders, drop me a comment and I'm sure we can work something out.  By that I mean I'll likely email it to you to read, if I know and/or trust you.

I'm really itching to get back to my writing of fiction, so I'm keeping it short this time.

I Almost Already Blew It, Forgive Me!

It's true!  I almost forgot to post a blog today.  But I saved it, roughly 5 hours before the day ended.  Phew.

I have a post about forgiveness and, in brief, how withholding forgiveness can be as hostile as the action that brings about the conflict.

It's called I Swear I Never Meant For This.  Check it out, it's one of my blog posts about important things and not about funny things.  But it's worth thinking about, if I do say so myself, so don't let the un-funnines scare you away.

Well, in that post, I say that one of the few times I've cried from happiness was when I was told I was forgiven for something, though that forgiveness later proved to be untrue.  I continue on to say that while I thought it was legitimate, it made me feel great, like I was able to escape my ugly human nature, if only for a little while.

I don't like revising things because I have a typo or because a link is broken, or something like that.  And even more, I wouldn't like to revise something because I felt that what I said was not in line with how I really felt, since that might mean I abused my blog as a place to hurl insults or unfair thoughts that I didn't truly think, but simply spewed because of then-current frustrations.  But, I have a taste of a new need to revise, and it tastes sweet.  Like this might taste:

The new need to revise is because the circumstances have changed.  My information is out of date, and needs a makeover.  Today I was contacted by the person who played a part in that situation where I thought I was forgiven, but wasn't really.  Turns out, time has changed some things.  And I am, in fact, now fully forgiven.  I feel again like I've been able to escape some ugliness of my human nature.  It was a wonderful gift to receive, this line dropped by an old friend to tell me that I was no longer held in ill regard by them.

I don't challenge, or dare, or command you, because those all contain potential negative connotations.  I recommend you extend the gift of forgiveness to someone you're holding out on, so you can give something that can be matched by few other gifts.  And if you're being held out on, hold on a bit longer.  Your redemption may come yet.  I certainly didn't see it coming in this life.

A Daily Dose, Hopefully! But Probably Not.

I am going to attempt to post something new on my blog...

EVERY

SINGLE

DAY!!!!!

Knowing me, I'll probably fail within the first few days, but in the very least, this non-binding self-contract will perhaps drive me to write 4 blog posts a week or so, which would be nice!

I'd like to steer away from the blog posts that just kind of update you on what I did today or what book I'm reading or things like that, just because it's not my style.  I'm a bit too longwinded for that.

To begin this blogsapalooza, I will talk about my job.

I've taken a new job with a place called Music Industry Workshop, a company based out of Chicago.  Check the link!

And what I do, is hang out at Guitar Center stores, because the place I work for has a partnership with them, and I tell people about our programs, courses, and free clinics we offer.  So throughout the course of my workday, I meet anywhere from 50-100 new faces and get to talk to them a bit about their goals and aspirations, and it's a really fun job.

I'm a big blogger for dreams.  I think that at a certain point in everyone's life, they come to a juncture where they either pursue their dream or they abandon it.  I'm here to try and dissuade everybody from abandoning their dreams.  There are some cases where I think dreams are better off abandoned, like if you're becoming a parent or needing to work three jobs or something like that.  But for the most part, I'd like to see a world where people pursue their dreams more often.

Working at my job I get to see all sorts of people who are pursuing, in some degree, their musical dreams.  Everyone from the group of guys who play in a band together, shopping for some new stage equipment, to the guy who's 50 years old, buying some recording equipment because he's decided it's time to put his originals on wax.  Or plastic, or hard drive. You know.

It's a good work environment for someone like myself who is kind of feeling the pressure to either go for my dream or give it up.  It reminds me that it's all very real, and a decision will have to come sooner or later.  This is good I think, because it can be very easy to regard your dreams as unreal, truly as just 'dreams'.  And if you just think your dreams are imaginative wisp clouds, you'll spend as much time talking yourself out of grasping for them as society does already.

And P.S., I'm abandoning the song lyric title rule.  I've spent, in some cases, as much time deciding on a befitting title as I have on the post it concerns.  If one comes up in my noggin, I'll take it, but otherwise, I'm going to keep it simple.  Back to the basics, if you will.

Have You Any Wool?

I've had a pretty good week, spending much of it with family members.  Two cousins came to visit, and one of them looks up to me alot and takes a corny sense of humor well, so I try to hang out with him as much as I can when he comes in to town.

In his absence from his last visit, I forgot how things usually go when he is in town.  It only took a day or two to remember how stressful it can be when he is around.  Not because of him, but because of the way he is treated.  He's constantly being treated like a child, though he's going to be a sophomore in high school, and if people treated me that way at that age I would've been flipping tables over in frustration.

He's had some troubles in the past with attention deficit disorder, and because of this, it seems like the family treats him like some sort of mental patient.

So it is with this current experience in mind I remember the concept of a black sheep.

I have before felt this way, and can understand the sort of isolation that comes from it.

What I want to ask is how families all over the world can manage to ostracize their own flesh and blood, when the person they isolate is often flocking to them to be sheltered from the world that is telling them they are flawed, freaks, and frustrating? (And any other word that starts with 'f' to fit my love for alliteration)

It both saddens me and enrages me at the same time.  It's hard to know how to act with a blend of these feelings.  I suppose for now, I will just ask each of you to find the outcast in your family, either literal or figurative, and be sure they know that at least one person will not be counting them out next time they come around.

Call It Torture, Call It University

So, I've really done it now.  I've taken a step towards living out some of the ideals of my older blog posts.  (See 'No One Here...But Me and God' from November 2010, 'Dream Until Your Dream Come True' from January 2011, and 'Accroches Toi A Ton Reve' from May 2011)

Lately I've just felt like I was going through the motions to go back to college, and for all the wrong reasons.  I don't want to go back to school right now.  I feel as though I need to go check out some more of the world before I jump into the rat race to make all sorts of money for debts and payments I don't even have, and for a family I don't see anywhere near in the future.

There are people who, I think, feel like I'm just lazy and want to try to be different just to be difficult.  But really, what better time than now to go pursue something else?  Nothing's tying me down, and knowing life's unpredictability, it might not be very many years before there are responsibilities and committments which could limit my ability to go do what I want.  Not that I will resent it if/when I'm married, but it's just that I ought to go do my traveling and world-seeing now before it's too late.

So I went through with it.  I have ceased the enrollment process at a community college around here, and am hoping to move out sometime soon.  Out of the community I've known my whole life, and into a place where I feel like there's something to be had.

There's tons of people who are telling me that it's a bad idea to do what I'm doing.  I respect those opinions.  The bottom line is just that I have no desire to go through it now (and this isn't a question of laziness, it's a question of 'it's my choice to make and I made it'), and I'm not going to waste my own money or have money wasted on my behalf on something I don't want to be doing.  Maybe after a year or two, all this sabbatical will do is give me a newfound appreciation for school.  And if not, then I bet that I'll have found something I'm perfectly content doing if it's enough to dissuade me from going back to college to fulfill my societal role as a brick in the wall.

Not that everyone who goes to college is just a drone...I just feel that at this point, where I'm at now, if I were to go to college even though I didn't want to, I'd just be shuffling along and acting as I feel I'm supposed to.  And the awesome thing about life is that you don't have to act the way you're supposed to.  Society has plenty of opinions on what we're supposed to do.  Go to preschool, go to kindergarten, go to elementary school, go to middle school, go to high school, go to college, get a job, get promoted, get a car, get a house, get a wife, get a kid, get a promotion, get a vacation, get another kid, get another car, get another wife, get promoted, get a retirement, get a grave plot.

Or, you can go do what you want.  I'll let you know how it feels when I've had more time to flesh it out.

Maybe When You're Old Enough

CAUTION!  I'M TOO YOUNG TO HAVE THOUGHTS ABOUT WHAT I'M POSTING!  APPROACH WITH CAUTION, AND I WOULD APPRECIATE ANY WORDS OF CONDESCENSION AND/OR INTIMIDATION THAT CAN HELP ME FIND MY PLACE IN THE HIERARCHY OF LIFE AGAIN!

People seem to be very fixated on who has the right to have certain views.  Because in this day and age, it's so true; if you haven't experienced something firsthand, your views can not qualify.

Bull.

Funny...I've always felt like my personal involvement in a situation has only clouded my impartial judgment as a whole.  This is why girls who've been mistreated might tell a friend to stay away from all boys, though that friend may be missing out on a very generous and loving man who would have been a better spouse to them than anyone else.  Or why a consumer who had a bad experience with a product will tell their friends to stay clear of that company, though they may have just had a defected product because it was dropped once during production.

Here are some examples I've witnessed or been the target of.

You've never been a woman, so your views on abortion don't matter.  How dare you meddle in things you'll never have to live with?

You've never had to support a family so your desire to do something unconventional that you enjoy as a career is a result of never having responsibilities.

You're not old enough to have gone to a concert of the band you're listening to, so you don't even know the music.  You're not fooling me, trying to look all vintage.

You've never had to be a parent, so your views on parenting don't matter.  Who gives you the right to say you wouldn't do it my way?

 ---

And here are some examples that should be applied if everything were that way.

You've never been in Casey Anthony's shoes, so your opinion on her guilt doesn't matter.

You've never been in an elected office, so you can't vote intelligently.

You've never met a terrorist, so your opinion that they are dangerous is judgmental.

You've never been poor, so it is wrong of you to think that someone stealing to feed their children should be treated like regular thiefs.

In fact, this sentiment..."You don't have the right because you've never been ________" goes against everything I and my blog stands for.  Because if we can't have views on parenting before we're parents, does that mean we should stay in the dark, only cracking the door open and seeing the light when a kid falls into our laps?  How will we have any time to consider what kind of parent we want to be?  Won't we just have to parent by instinct through the way we were raised?  Parenting may very well be the most important subject on Earth, and you mean to tell me that we can only study as we're sitting down to take all of the tests, with no breaks in between?

Apply this to the idea that we can't vote intelligently since we've never been in office.  Goodbye democracy that means anything.

Hell, apply the idea of "You don't qualify to have statements on this" to any subject, and we are destined to be walking through life with our hands in our mouths.  This will accomplish two things - you won't be able to speak very well, and your hands will have that weird spit smell, therefore no one will ever shake your hand.  You see, preparation for supporting a family starts long before you're married and a parent.  And parenting is well-suited to be thought out well before the child is born.  Abortion is an issue that effects human life, and so everyone is concerned.

The only credence I will give to the absurd idea of qualifying to talk about things is this:  It can be hard to understand factors, other than how we want to do things, that come up in a situation if we've never been there.  But does my inability to grasp the fear that a woman who wants an abortion is feeling make me unqualified?  If it did make me unqualified, then the real gist of abortion is all about the mothers and their emotions, right?  It has nothing to do with my views on stopping a human life from coming into fruition, because if it did, then I would be entitled to have a view, as a human being talking about humans. 

I have news for everyone reading this.  You are confined to think about only that which you have experienced.  Snuff out your imagination, cut down your sense of preparing ahead of time, slaughter your concern for world affairs, forget that anything happens except what has fallen into your immediate surroundings.  Don't learn from your elders, because that is pretentious.  Don't you dare see someone else do something you disagree with, and make a note to try to do things differently.  Don't care about history repeating itself, because history is just a list of committees, battles, and dead guys.

I compel you: resist the urge to think about how to handle parenting issues, fight the feeling to weigh job offers ahead of time, flee the scenarios in which you might say "I should remember to NOT act that way."

No.  I can not stress it enough.  When you're told that you are too young, too inexperienced, too old, too poor, too rich, too white, too black, too skinny, too fat to speak or think about something, it usually says more about the person who is telling you than it does about you. Those who came, saw, and crumbled write off our disagreements as ignorance or arrogance because we've never been there.  I disagree, because to assume this means that we must feel what someone feels, with our hearts, before we can think about it with our brains.  The brain and the heart rarely play ball together...more frequently they operate like North and South Korea.And this would put us all knee-deep in a thick and smelly situation.

And a small note about my blog and brain in general:  When I blog about something or say something, I have more thoughts about it than that event which brought it into my head.  This post is not the disgruntled stab at someone who told me to shut my mouth one time.  My blogs are composites about things I've been juggling over spans of time, not always very long spans of time, but certainly longer than the immediate situation that you think I'm griping about or reacting to the emotions supplied by it.  And even if I was just griping, I'm well within my capabilities and rights to do so.

When You're A Stranger

Lately I've been spending alot of time in Chicago.  In the last week, I made three visits to do some job training for a position I'm taking at a business called Music Industry Workshop.  

A quick rundown on the company:  Music Industry Workshop is a community resource and vocational school dedicated to building up the Chicago music scene.  They offer courses in Recording/Engineering, Music Business, Digital Music Production, Live Sound, DJ Mixology, and Music Video Production, as well as other specialized courses for advanced students.  On-site is a professional recording studio that's been used by artists like Kanye West, Britney Spears, Smashing Pumpkins, and many more big-label artists, and all the way down to the most amateur of musicians (I recorded here with my band before we broke up!)  Aside from offering courses and studio resources, MIW is a huge link in the chain of Chicago music networking.

Link here!

So anyhow, I've been into Chicago a lot lately, and I've learned some pretty interesting things.  I'm not just talking about having my first Chicago-style hot dog that actually came from Chicago...

or realizing that subway trains have, on average, many more attractive girls than the trains I ride to the city from my home in Northwest Indiana...

 A photo analogy:

I've actually had some pretty cool human experiences in the last three trips.

The first job-related trip I took, back in the beginning of July, was spent mostly trying to find my way to my destination and not get hit by a car or angry native.  But after awhile, I became a bit more comfortable in my environment and began to interact with the world I was in, no longer just passing through like a migrant bird. A humorous example of this happened on the subway.  The train was packed, and the only way I could stand and not crash into people every time the train slowed or sped was to stand directly in front of a seated businessman, with my arm reaching up to a rail to the left of him. 

Coulda been worse...

But the situation was a bit awkward because I was several inches from him (and everyone else around me), and my arm was raised so that my armpit was like a foot and a half away from his head.  I said to him, "Don't worry, I double-applied my deoderant this morning, so we should be good."  To which he replied, glumly, "Good thing."

A less humorous and more meaningful experience happened on the way back to my hometown one evening.  I was in the train, which was also packed so I was standing near the doors next to several other people.  One guy, named Mike, was standing in our cluster and began to talk to me about something, I can't quite remember what.  And at first I was a bit more interested in the conversation being over, so I could get back to my magazine.  Then I remembered back to my work training earlier in the day:  My boss was talking about how my job goes against what we were taught as kids, and that is "DON'T TALK TO STRANGERS!"  He then said, "You know, the grown-up world involves a lot of talking to strangers"  and as I reflected on this in author-mode and not worker-mode, I realized that the world is full of strangers and to not talk to them because we don't know them is a pretty thorough death sentence in terms of reaching your socializing potential.

So, back to Mike.  He said something about the train being packed, and I said "Yeah, I should have seen it coming with Lollapalooza and everything", and then we got into talking about music.  He shared a bit about his nephew who plays guitar, and I talked about disliking Nickelback for their lack of important things to say, except for the token "Peace, Man" song everyone writes, that one "If everyone cared, and nobody cried" song or whatever.

We chatted for a bit, and the lady across from me was uncomfortable with the conversation, because Mike was just a little different.  I think he may have had a social disorder or something, but I didn't see that as any reason to not continue talking to him.  Across the landing we were all grouped on, another lady watched the conversation and made coy faces that implied she had thoughts about Mike, and she occasionally turned and whispered things in her husband's ear.  I think overall, the whole group was confused by the thought of two perfect strangers meeting and talking like friends from the get-go.  I daresay that it is unusual, but so is winning the lottery, and no one has anything bad to say about that.

During the conversation with Mike, I talked about how the city was so full of people but might as well be empty because everyone keeps their eyes down and their mouths shut.  And I hope the people around me, who were so unsettled with talking to strangers, heard that thought clearer than our thoughts on Nickelback or PS3 vs. Xbox 360.  I have another scenario which illuminated more the isolation in the city, but I'll get to it in due time.

Towards the end of our conversation, which covered Shania Twain, The Beastie Boys, Metallica, Lollapalooza, Mike's nephew, my old band, my dreams, his career, and more I've forgotten, Mike was preparing to leave the train, and he said to me: Well, maybe I'll see ya on the train sometime?

I think Mike knows all too well the isolation of the city, though he lives in the 'burbs and commutes in.  Add in the blissful fact that he is unique, and he probably encounters the coldness of his surroundings more than a man in the Arctic. A few times throughout our conversation, Mike backpedaled when I would say something that disagreed with his statements.  He seemed to be very tense throughout our talk, and I think that this could be due to people not wanting to talk to him.

I really hope I do see Mike again on the train.  It was really cool meeting a guy 10 years my senior, but always my equal, and talking to him about things that mattered, things that didn't, and just getting to know someone in general.  I entered that train car a stranger among 150 strangers or so, and before Mike disembarked, I was a stranger among 149 strangers and 1 friend.

On that same train ride, I shook awake a drunk and passed-out man who had been asleep "for the last six stops or so" according to the teen couple sitting behind him.  The girl told me this as if it was funny.  'Six stops or so' could easily have put him 20 minutes past his home.  I kind of addressed the people gathered around me, and said "Well we've gotta wake him up, if he's passed out, he could get picked up by the cops at the end of the ride."  No one had anything to say about it, so I shook him out of his sleep, nervous he would be mad and punch me or something.  

He jolted awake, inhaled sharply, and sat up with bloodshot eyes, certainly taken aback at the handful of people gathered around him (we were waiting for the doors to open so we could leave).  He thanked me, and then the teen girl who told me how long he'd been out said in a sarcastic voice "How sweet of you", as if I should have just let him stay asleep and get arrested.  On my way out, I noticed another two people passed out on each other, and as I spoke to an older man that it was his duty to wake them up because I had to go, he didn't make eye contact or say a single thing.  I hope they got off the train alright despite the utter complacency of their fellow man.

 And on my most recent trip, yesterday, I met even more people!  Immediately after arriving, I met Luke from Greenpeace, who shared some very impossible-to-determine statistics about how plants burning coal for electricity directly lead to the death of 46 Chicagoans a year.  Not much to say there, but it was cool to be on first-name basis, and he seemed unprepared when I said "Nice to meet you Luke, I'm Evan."  He also seemed surprised when I said "Thanks Luke, have a nice day".

I also grabbed lunch at a local place on Fullerton Ave., called Branko's, right by DePaul University.  It was just me and the owner inside when I got there.  She was very kind and patient with me while I decided what to eat, because it all sounded so good.  I decided it was high time I had a Chicago dog that was actually from Chicago.  She was one of those ladies at restaurants that says "Hun" and "sweetie", and that tiny restaurant was very clearly where she felt at home.  I sat down at the counter-style seating along the wall, and staring me in the face was an article about the restaurant from the newspaper.  Her father started the restaurant after moving into the country, either in 1986 or 1976, though I can't remember which.  After he passed, the lady I met took over.  The store had even been recognized as an honorary partner of Vienna Beef products, and I read that they only choose one per year.

Towards the end of the evening, I was walking back to my train station and decided to take a crucial detour to get Dunkin' Donuts.  While in line, I met a man who played guitar professionally, and would be taking part in one of the only tango operas at The Cultural Center.  He seemed uncomfortable at first but soon warmed up to me, even though my inital question (What kind of guitar do you have in that case?) led to other questions that showed him I knew precious little about guitars.  We didn't get on first-name basis, but nonetheless it was nice to meet someone new and talk about something that is very real and near to their identity.

The detour to Dunkin Donuts was crucial because without it, I would not have walked the route I took to my next stranger, Alan.  I saw Alan sitting on the big road that runs right in front of The Bean...Lakeshore Drive or maybe Michigan Avenue.  He was shaking a cup, asking for change.  In a tragic juxtaposition, the change I was going to give him was trapped underneath my iPod and headphone wires, so I made a fuss about how hard it was to get my change out.  I told him that I only had a few minutes to spare, but would like him to give me a 2 or 3 minute rundown of his story.  A few sentences in, I realized he wasn't drunk and garbling every word, as I've experienced with several other homeless people.  I also realized there was no need to be standing in front of him, separate from him, and sat down next to him, on the one water main cap that he wasn't occupying.  We sat and he explained to me why he was where he was.

Funny...they almost look...human.

He told me he lost his job, and now tries to raise enough money to go to a shelter nearby, where you can bring 18 dollars to get 18 hours of shelter, a bath, and a warm bed.  His son is 12 and doesn't understand what it means to be homeless, so he has to recuringly explain to him that he is having a tough time, and is not (as his son thinks) spending time with another family, being someone else's dad.  Every so often, a homeless ministry group that he is involved with will have a special on baseball tickets, and he said he sometimes saves up enough to buy a few tickets at 2 dollars apiece, and with 25 dollars given to him by the ministry group, takes his son and some friends to a baseball game.

 

I had smelled a poor person before, someone who doesn't have access to bathwater or shelter, in the Dominican Republic.  Alan had a very faint smell, but it wasn't overwhelming.  Not far beyond a subtle version of an athlete post-practice.  Other than that, Alan was more normal than I am.  We talked for about 15 minutes, and sometimes he would stop mid-sentence to deliver his plea for assistance: "Spare some change for the homeless okay thank you, have a lovely evening."  He often moved seamlessly from the greeting to the farewell because people walked by at that speed and said nothing to him.  Sometimes he would toss in personalized statement, like "You ladies look beautiful this evening" or I think he said something about a little boy's cool shoes.  I told him that if he keeps up the compliments with the ladies, he might end up with a date.  He chuckled a bit and said "Man, I can't afford no date, women like to be wine and dined."  Too true, Alan, too true.

Midway through our conversation, I looked down into my hand and saw the last bite of a donut.  I realized I'd been eating a bowtie donut the whole time, not even thinking anything of it.  I apologized and said that if I'd have thought more about it, I'd have given it to him.  He said "nah, it's alright, you were hungry".  I was in awe of his understanding nature.  I thought aloud, "Well, yeah, but me hungry and you hungry are two completely different things."  I still can't believe the good fortune I have to know food and shelter so regularly that I can eat food in front of a homeless man who said "Naw, it's okay, I ate this morning."  This morning?!  If I hadn't eaten since that morning, I'd be walking right to a restaurant and buying myself some food with the disposable cash I have.  Alan isn't so lucky.

All throughout our talk, he kept saying, "But it's okay, I do a lot of praying, and I believe that God is good."  As I shook his hand before walking away, he took a few seconds to close his eyes and thank God for bringing me to him and helping him out.  That was kind of humbling.  And I hope the passers-by registered what they saw (as more than just a weird pair of guys): a 20 year old white kid, by most definitions rich, grasping the hand of a 40 year old black man, homeless, and by most definitions a disgrace, each of them with closed eyes and downcast faces.  I must say, the way we were standing, with eyes closed and faces down and hands held, made me feel as though something powerful was happening that moment.

Back to his statement that he believes God is good and such...I've met people before who have had it really rough, yet they praise God more than me, someone who has it quite well.  And I essentially realize now that it isn't some profound indicator of their personal strength, it's a profound indicator of the mysteriousness of God.  I feel somewhat as though it makes sense - me doubting God and Alan praising him unconditionally.  When have I ever been outside my sphere of control?  When have I ever had to rely on others to exist, when no other person on Earth wanted to help me?  Never.  And therefore, I have never been able to see God in my life devoid of the filter of a cushy life.  Maybe times that God did something for me, it just seemed natural...because things often work out for me because I have opportunities. Alan isn't afforded the kaleidoscope of generous extended family, secure shelter, and well-meaning parents through which to view the blessings that come to him.

All throughout our talk, people walked past and some double-took the situation, maybe wondering if I was a rich kid sitting with a poor guy, or if I too was a poor guy.  Probably 50 people walked by, and none of them gave him anything, no change, no nothing.  Only one responded to him like a human, a pretty girl who apologized for not having any change.

I parted ways with Alan, and stepped down the stairs to the train station smelling my hand.  My preconceptions about homeless people are so strong that I kept smelling my hand, expecting it to have some foul odor or be dirty, but it was neither of those things.  I'd shaken hands with a perfectly regular human being, just one that we like to typecast as a failure when we discuss them with friends, and maybe, a slim percentage of us, show compassion or feel compassion for when we see them.

I left the city with lots to think about.

My last few days to the city have taken me closer to humanity, the noun and the adjective, than I usually am.  Some people retract when you get closer to them, and some lean in.  I guess where I stand is here:  The world is made of strangers, several billion of them.  To spend our time leaning away from the strangers, and therefore world, is to isolate ourselves and limit our lessons learned to the people we are dealt in our immediate area.  The most I ever learn about life comes from people, and I feel confident as I say that you'll miss out on some crucial lessons if you just lean away from the Mikes, Lukes, Alans, Branko's ladies, Professional Guitarists, Drunk Passed Out Dudes, and Businessmen With Your Pit In Their Face.

It isn't a matter of being socially graceful or not, so don't give me the whole "I'm not a people person" thing. It's just a matter of wanting to commune with fellow man enough to ask to.

Paper Towns by John Green: A Book Review

I was recently turned on to John Green through a series of encounters with his name and face.  I heard a raving recommendation of his acclaimed novel "Looking For Alaska".  I then heard another raving recommendation, as well as nearly-equal raves about his other works, "Paper Towns" among them.  But for some reason, I still didn't react to the news about the witty and emotionally blatant author.  Enter John and Hank Green's video log series "Brotherhood 2.0", a year long effort (which has now continued into a series 4 years running) to make awesome videos and correspond with each other several times a week.

I came across a link on facebook to something about 'Nerdfighters' and was, needless to say, curious.  Many a video, many a laugh, and many a relation later, I thought it was about time I get one of John Green's books.  And I highly recommend checking their webseries out, as it is awesome.  And for those of you who have just finished alphabetizing your book and CD collection, or maybe who have just finished taking inventory of your household's collection of plastic Walmart bags, or anyone who needs something new to take up great amounts of time....there are nearly 900 videos, most of them 3 minutes in length.  I wish I could consult Brotherhood 2.0's resident mathematician and State Representative Daniel Biss (just watch the show, you'll get it), but if my feeble calculations are correct, that is 2,700 minutes, or 45 hours, or 2.875 days of hilarious, witty, thought-provocative video.  So you should check them out. Start at the beginning too, January of 2007!

Anyhow, the book and subject in question: Paper Towns.  After a quick trip to the library in which I discovered "Looking For Alaska" was missing, though on record as being "available", I went home with my first John Green book, "Paper Towns".  Also, while I was there, I had to sign a paper because I was now an adult, and hadn't used my library card in like 6 or 7 years.  I got home from becoming an adult in the library's eyes, and set out reading the book.

Fast forward about 9 hours, and after many an interruption and short break, I had finished the 305 page book.  I do believe that is the fastest I have ever read a book in my life, trumping the six-day completion of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, which I would say counts for something.

The book was really just a solid work of literature all around: opaque where it needed to be, like some static characters, setting and environment realism, etc., and spongy where it needed to be: development of the main character, moments of harrowing truth and inspiring thoughts, and an open-book look into the main characters' emotions and feelings for the girl who makes the novel possible, Margo. 

The book offered a not-too-polished look at what high school may be like.  Swearing is present, and some characters have a certain affinity for the sailors' tongue, while others do not, which is a grand way of painting the vocabulary that takes place inside secondary schools.  I've read other teen books where the author paints every character as a pottymouthed pimply barely-post-pubescent, and others where the teenagers behave as angels.  John Green writes from the perspective of the teens, rather than the norm: the author's perspective of teens.

Here is a brief synopsis of the story, abridged from the inside jacket: "Quentin Jacobsen has spent a lifetime loving the magnificently adventurous Margo Roth Spiegelman from afar.  So when she cracks open a window and climbs back into his life... - summoning him for an ingenious campaign of revenge - he follows.  After their all-nighter ends...Q arrives at school to discover that Margo, always an enigma, has now become a mystery.  But Q soon learns that there are clues - and they're for him.  Urged down a disconnected path, the closer he gets, the less Q sees the girl he thought he knew."

I have a pet peeve with book and movie reviews, and that is the fact that they seem to think a review should be 9 parts description and 1 part reflection.  I disagree.  I'll tell you next to nothing about the storyline, besides what is said above.  And here is why:  Many people are so used to only choosing to absorb literature that is somehow trailblazing or vanguard in it's subject matter, and only then when it has received extensive attention from the reading world.  It's not that super original storylines or popular series are bad, but if you only want to read stories about a boy who goes a magic school, or a girl who falls in love with a vampire, or what have you, you will miss books like this.  This book is set in the suburbs.  It has to do with a boy liking a girl who is spunky, confident, and hard to understand.  A mystery presents itself, and the story is off to the races.  Nothing about this book's conception shouts "I"VE NEVER BEEN CONCEIVED!"

But that is why this book succeeds.  You've seen these characters and places and storylines because you have lived it.  At one point or another, you knew the annoying best friend who is still your best friend despite all of their shortcomings.  You've met the girl or boy who you are infatuated with but understand very little about.  You've tasted the drama of a school rife with drama and intrigue.  You've felt the need to drop what everyone else is telling you to do, because you have to do something for yourself - and if you haven't, you've experienced the thrill of imagining it.

And amid all of the very real highschool moments, John Green introduces things many of us may not have experienced in our teenage years, but wish we had.  There are some rather profound truths stated in this story, about the way of life we live, and the paths we all shuffle along with the music we all shuffle to.  The reason this book is different than other teenage fiction books is because it doesn't settle to be a book about love and mystery, and call it quits knowing it can sell copies.  It aims higher, to have you leave its pages with more than a story of high-school drama and heartbreak.

John Green stands unique in a genre of books that aims solely to superficially pique the interest of teenage girls, and hold them captive for the 10 dollars it costs so that may be set down and on their way.  Much like lunchroom bullies, many other teen fiction books come up out of nowhere every so often, can not be avoided, and shrink back after receving their small fee, attacking again once enough time has passed...this way, the attacks are infrequent enough that the reader doesnt change their route through the lunchroom.  John Green is like the secretly nice guy in the group of bullies, who grabs you, asks politely for a few bucks so that the others won't think anything weird is going on, and will then give you a great story that contains deep philosophy and entertaining events, expertly blended and in perfect doses.

You know, that kind of bully?  Maybe you never met that type of bully.  I didn't either, but it was nice to imagine him for the sake of analogically depicting John Green.

John Green doesn't get an 'A' for effort, like so many other authors who try to write in the view of characters ten years their minor, or more.  He gets an 'A' for execution.  It is all very real, and all very close to the heart.  Aside from that, the fact that my dwindling book-attention span was snapped into shape is a testament itself to the book's quality.  I plan wholeheartedly on reading his other works, and strongly encourage you to investigate John Green more for yourself.  Whether it is through his books or his videos on youtube's 'vlogbrothers' hit series - as both are portals into his persona and thoughts on life, and I think investigating one will just lead you to the other one anyhow - I believe you will not be disappointed.

Blame Me! Blame Me!

I have been thinking alot about parenting lately.  I was having a discussion with a friend about another friend and some choices they had made as a parent.  The first friend kept saying things like "Well, they tried everything!  They asked for advice, prayed, tried spankings, tried time-outs, tried this, tried that, and nothing worked."  And the tone of these statements implied that the friend was without fault because they had tried everything.  Regardless of the effectiveness of the methods tried, they at least tried everything. 

I was thinking more about how the situation all affected the child.  I apologize for using such vague terms and roundabout explanations, but as it turns out, parenting is touchy and it wouldn't serve well to be talking in the open about all this.  But yes, I was more concerned about how it affected the child; the child wouldn't grow up thinking "Well, mommy tried everything", the child would grow up thinking based off of emotions that were felt in response to the way the parent handled things.

I know that as I grew up, situations and conditions that weren't favorable contributed to the way I was raised.  My mom often used to have a short temper about some things, and I now know that this had to do with alot of things beyond her control that stressed her out.  But even though I can acknowledge it now, I can't go back and un-feel the way I felt growing up, scared and often resentful towards her because of the angry bursts she would have.  Sure, my mom tried all she could, but I know how it made me feel then and how that has affected me as I've grown up.

Many people raise children based off of how they were raised.  This is pretty logical, as it is something imprinted in us and regardless of if it was good or bad, the most we've ever learned about parenting was from our parents, so we tend to go that way about raising children.  But why do so few people ask the next question, "And how did the way I was raised make me feel and affect me and my family's relationship?"  I think the lack of this question being asked is partially responsible for people abused as children to abuse their kids.  They learned, painfully, how their mom or dad responded to certain things, and because the imprinting was so strong, they seem powerless to change.  In a similar fashion, we've all heard someone explain their negative behavior with the statement "It's just how I was brought up."  I agree that this is a real reason for behavior, but too often people say it and think they now have some free pass to avoid changing because they were raised that way, and that's how they'll always be.

To momentarily diverge more than I already have, let's talk about the idea that you can't change how you were raised.  I think it's total bullcrap.  If I was like the rest of one side of my family, I would go around looking for fights and arguments, I would be enamored with the life of alcohol and drugs, I would blame everyone else for problems I caused, and I would mindlessly follow that which the most authoritative source at the present instance was saying.  I did in fact used to be like that.  I still have a hard time with keeping cool in an argument or discussion when the other person says something that I interpret as an attack.  But I'm consciously working on it, and over time, I've progressed to the point where I can stay calm with someone screaming at me, if the situation is right.  So the whole, I was raised this way, so it's just how I am and I can't change...that whole deal is garbage. 

So, back to the situation which spawned all of this.  I've heard it multiple times, the whole "They tried everything" as if it excused the bad direction they took when they were frustrated to find that none of the 'everything' amounted to anything effective.  A few questions beg to be asked when it comes to parenting.  Are we just supposed to cover all our bases and hope the job was done right? And if it ever seems the job wasn't done right, do we really want to sit back and say "I tried everything", content to know that we have covered our own butts?  Or do we want to stand up to the inevitable frustrations and not just cover our bases, but raise our children the way we would have liked to be raised, feeling loved constantly but also taught what we need to know about right and wrong?

Parenting is a frustrating thing and it is going to be stressful.  There's no way around that.  But I do not at all think that being stressed out will be a good excuse for me to become one of those parents you see in public who shout and yell at their kids, desperately trying to pretend they actually lovingly disciplined their children back when it counted.  I can't say I won't slip and sometimes yell at one of my children or be less than patient, but some people just make it a habit.  Sure, they once upon a time tried advice they heard from a pastor's wife, and they also tried that new parenting fad about how to discipline.  They tried everything and just couldn't find a way to do it.  They are considered to be without fault by most people, but it still stands that their child is affected by it all. 

All These Places Have Their Moments, With Lovers and Friends

A preface written after I wrote the post:  I had the darndest time coming up with a title that fit my sometimes-adhered-to rule about song lyrics!

Short of having a better sleep schedule already in place, I did everything I could to get a solid night of sleep.  I took melatonin supplements, I double-dosed Sleepytime Tea, stretched out before bed, and allowed myself to slowly fade to fatigue while watching an episode of Swamp People on netflix, in the dark but for the laptop screen.  10:30 rolls around, I'm tired.  So I go to sleep.  And I'll be several monkeys' uncle if I wasn't awake at 2:26 this morning.  Awake, alert, and rolling around in bed like an angry gator trying to escape the clutching hook I had swallowed that is known as "not tired anymore", I was hopelessly unable to sleep.  You'll notice that my analogies and writing devices are directly affected by shows and movies I watch, books I read, and music I listen to.  Hence, I watched Swamp People and am comparing my sleepless self to an alligator.

I gave up trying to fall back asleep around 3:30, and then surfed Netflix on my laptop for something to watch.  I found Titan A.E., an animated movie from the early 2000's I'd say.  It was a sci-fi flick, decent enough, but it all felt very rushed and underdeveloped.  The twists veered too quickly to let any of the shock sink in.  The main conflict, searching for a spaceship the protagonist's father hid, which can create a new planet for the dying human race to call home, seemed stretched too thin for lack of other interesting sub-conflicts.  In addition, the creator(s) was/were ambitious enough to have a collection of different species and galaxies, but none of the cultural information is explored, leaving me feeling like someone at a zoo who didn't know the names of the animals and discovered in frustration that no signs were posted.

So, this very decent movie took me up to around 5 a.m.  I was considering grabbing some McDonald's breakfast and coffee and driving to the lake to watch the sunrise, but decided I'd be too rushed to make sunrise if that was my plan.  I remember last minute the small establishment that has been the subject or setting of some previous posts, Northside Diner.  I pulled in to the parking lot, and headed into the restaurant with the only book that both interested me and was in my car, The Great Divorce by C.S. Lewis.  An interesting side-point:  Many students can attest to this phenomenon, but it is odd that an otherwise excellent book can be made dreadful simply because someone is telling you to read it.  It doesn't have anything to do with rebellion or defiance. Rather, I think that something about art demands you seek it on your own to get anything out of it.  You can lead a horse to outstanding philosophical allegory, but if you try to make him read it, he'll just look at you like "What the hell, I can't even read, and it's not any easier with you setting up periodic evaluations and reading quizzes."

Well, now that my saddle was off and the crop no longer threatening, I discovered that the story is awesome.  I found nearly every page to contain a line that made me chuckle with discovery, pleased with the thoughts applicable to life that I was reading.  I wished I had a highlighter so as to call to attention some really great sentences for my next read-through, or to build a small almanac of relevant thoughts and brain-teasers for future moments I might feel I was getting dumb.  My favorite of the lines I read was "Good, as it ripens, becomes continually more different not only from evil but from other good."  And that was from the introduction, not even the story.  It is still a thought I am very much pondering, and I hope I am not falling victim to the common syndrome where students of great authors and thinkers see a thought that challenges normal thought, and adopt it as genius solely because it is different.  I don't think I'm doing that though, because the idea feels very relevant to my thoughts that there are mulitple ways to do good...becoming a protegee of one method of doing good may have you looking very different from a protegee of another form of benevolence.  The clearest example I can come up with is the difference between a Christian humanitarian and an atheist humanitarian.

While I waited for my food at Northside Diner, I moved through chapters pretty quickly but decided to stop moving onward because I want to chew the material over slowly.  Whenever I go to George's Gyros, a hometown eatery, I eat too fast because it is so good that I get that pain just below my chest while my stomach tries to keep cadence with my mouth and fails.  I didn't want to turn Lewis into lamb on a pita, and have decided to do a few chapters at a time, and then wait some time.  Anyhow, my meal was delicious and filling, and I must have drank a good 6 or 7 cups of coffee because it's one of those places where the waitress fills your cup up every 3 or 4 minutes, regardless of how much progress you've made on that cup.

Steve DePung, and I'm still unsure about the last name's spelling, was there again.  He's the guy I talked to outside of the diner in my first post about the diner and its underworld status.  I heard his signature cackling laugh, jolly like Santa Claus but with a tobacco-worn growl, only once or twice because I was earlier and he later this visit.  I left about an hour after arriving, and decided to head to Coffee Creek Watershed Preserve, a 10,000 acre wilderness gem popping up at the edges of an otherwise suburban area.  I pull into the streetside parking, noticing that only me and two other cars have come so early to enjoy the sounds and sights of nature, a nature which was awake before any human there had hit the snooze button.

I walk uphill to a small spot overlooking the large pond that is the face of Coffee Creek Watershed Preserve.  It has a pretty honking big nose, a 30-foot high pillar of water which flows when the season is warm enough and hypnotizes me any time I watch it.  This particular overlook used to be very special to me.  The hill, as I remember it, was emerald green, with a few trees near its top.  Under the tree that sits most central on the brim, I once upon a time spent hours with a girlfriend.  I sat down on the bench that didn't used to be there, just opposite the side of the tree we used to lay.  And I looked out, back and forth, from the pond fountain to the hazy blue and purple-ish clouds in the sky, or perhaps it was more grey in color.  If it was grey, it was a comforting grey, not really a morbid one.

I stood up, and turned around, moving to the spot where I used to lay out a sleeping bag, unzipped, and look back and forth from the night sky and the face of someone I cared about, finding both equally expanisve and wonderful.  It felt really weird, because if I was standing there perhaps 3 years ago to the day, I might have been standing on top of the blanket, looking down at a younger and in-love me.  I moved on, noting not for the first time how the hill was covered in comforting yellow wildflowers, hugely more abundant than they were those three years ago.  I move around a small portion of the preserve, sticking to the trails and boardwalks very near the street.  I saw the spot where I first told that person that I loved them, and a spot where we walked, and I could see through a break in the woods a spot where we lay one time, late at night, sitting up to discover we were surrounded by a herd of deer that sensed us to be no harm.  On another occasion, at that same spot, I pretended I wasn't scared at seeing two dogs stalk us from a distance, so that I could walk her and I back to the car without scaring her any more.

Mid-reverie, I stopped by a stream to temporarily be a tributary to the creek, for which the park is named, while I went pee.  And after the barrage of memories, now more sweet than bitter, I thought to myself that it was a shame I had purposely gone so long without visiting because of the loaded past.  And I got to thinking that I needed to keep myself from bringing future romances to places I found to be fantastic because if anything went south, I'd be waiting a long time to let the place separate itself from the memories.  Then I had another thought, and changed my tune.  It did stink that the wilderness preserve was off-limits for awhile because of what I had come to associate it with, but then I thought about it some more.  Places can be special in appearance and such, but the majority of what makes a place special is the memories made there.  If I were to guard Coffee Creek Watershed Preserve and never let memories be made there that might one day be bittersweet, I would just be wasting the place.

Plus, I thought about how much of a bummer I would be as a boyfriend if I shyed away from nice places because I wanted to keep them clean of emotions and experiences for the future.  "Oh, let's not go to the beach to see the sunset, I may regret it if we break up" just doesn't seem like something that make a girlfriend feel very special.  At the core of my philosophy, I think that Earth is simply a platform upon which we share experiences with other people, learning and teaching as we go.  It isn't here to be sheltered from the sting of stale smiles, it's here to be used.  I'm not an fan of physically polluting the Earth, but I'm an advocate of polluting it with our experiences.  When we make memories somewhere, we leave a mark on it inside our heads and hearts, until a landscape can become akin to a garbage dump with stacks of old times and days gone by.  But rather than this being a junkyard of the past, with unsavory towers of smashed cars and heaps of trash, it's like finding a box with childhood memories, sorting through them one by one and feeling transported back in time.  Some people can become jaded and hesitant to let people into certain parts of their lives for fear of the damage it could do later on.  But I say bring it on, because in my case, had I just let Coffee Creek sit there uselessly so as to not have it marred by a few years of regret, I'd have been wasting an invaluable source of memories rooted in happiness.

Something else stuck in my mind too: the hill we used to lay on was now covered in many more wildflowers than I can recall.  And I am admittedly over-romanticizing this one, but bear with me.

I looked down at the exact spot the sleeping bag used to call home, and thought that if things hadn't changed, the flowers might not be so prevalent there because they'd always be trampled and pressed down on by us.  And our frequent arrivals and departures might have led to a path to the top of the hill being bare too.  It almost seems like the hill has grown out of something negative to be better as a hill, like I grew out of something I was devastated by to become better as a person.  I also thought of it a bit as how rangers at national parks will do controlled burns of vegetated areas; the burning and destruction of what exists leaves the ground rich and ready to rebuild even stronger vegetation. 

Two years ago I would have lamented that the spot beneath the tree forgot our names and faces, and compared that to how I wished things didn't end between us.  But now, I see that in our absence, the hill has flourished, just as in her absence, I have slowly but surely flourished too.  It has nothing to do with her inhibiting me in particular, but she was simply the one I learned a hard lesson from, that all things must pass. 

I returned to my car, cresting the hill to see that the street was now pretty full of cars and I was outnumbered by joggers.  They gathered at a picnic table by my car, and looked at me as if I was weird for coming out there so early if not to jog.  I got in my car, and drove away.  Not even a full hour had passed, but the thoughts that came in that short amount of time made it feel like I had just made up for the three years I stayed away, matching minute for minute, to be caught back up again with my old friend.

I am aware of the effect waking up early has on my blog, and more basally my thoughts and life.  Not much happened today, I mean actually HAPPENED, yet just going somewhere instead of staying indoors and eating cereal for breakfast leaves me on the receiving end of an outpouring of thoughts and life ponderings.  I'd like to say the strong correlation between having interesting things to say and waking up early will convince me to get up earlier all the time, but I think it is still very much a work in progress.