A Wrinkle In Time

I think I put this in a post sometime back in August or September but it’s even more relevant now. So, repost! Reddit would have my head.

And the world cannot be discovered by a journey of miles, no matter how long, but only by a spiritual journey, a journey of one inch, very arduous and humbling and joyful, by which we arrive at the ground at our own feet, and learn to be at home.
- Wendell Berry

I’m also IN LOVE with this song right now:
Little Talks by Of Monsters and Men 

I Truly, Honestly, Sincerely Love Life With Every Ounce Of Loving Capacity I Have

It’s weird and difficult sometimes but the beautiful moments/days make the unpleasant stuff so insignificant.

I saw Matt last night for the first time in 2 months. And I realized I feel absolutely nothing toward him. I knew I didn’t love him anymore but I thought I might show up and feel hate because that’s what I’ve been feeling since we broke up and he started being super immature about the aftermath. But honestly, I got there and had no ill feelings. I’m not sure if he was upset that I was there but it seemed pretty normal. Awkward but normal. I think things are going to be ok.

I still can’t go to sports when he’s there and I totally respect that the mutual friends don’t think it’s a good idea. But thankfully, tonight he can’t make it so I get to go and everything is feeling close to normal again.

Ed was randomly back in town so I saw him last night at Bootleggers. Whenever someone comes home and/or when almost everyone is there, it feels nearly exactly like how life used to be. Before Matt and I broke up and even before everyone moved away. 2008-2010 will forever be some of the best years of my life. I’m not sad that time changed things because I’m definitely looking forward to all the upcoming years of my life but it is kind of upsetting when I think about how much I loved that phase. Life was really nearly perfect back then.

I also love love love having random days off in the middle of the week. I get so much done. Today was a gorgeous day. October might be my second favorite month behind July. No, actually nothing can beat summer so June and August take 2 and 3. But October is definitely 4th.

And even though I anxiously/compulsively check the mail every day hoping to see a letter from Alabama, I think I’m becoming more and more ok with moving to Utah. With such an awesome plan B, it almost doesn’t matter anymore. I mean, I’m probably going to cry my face off if I don’t get in and may feel less happy about plan B if that reality happens. But for now, I’m just kind of in one of those “whatever happens, happens” states. Especially when Mary sends me e-mails that end like this:

…and we can dance around the apartment relishing in our freedom from the East and all the glory that belongs to the West.

She missed her calling as a poet/novelist. You can blame Wendell Berry. She never used to be like this. Apparently A Timbered Choir: Sabbath Poems is the greatest thing ever. She quoted the intro in one of her recent e-mails as well.

These poems were written in silence, in solitude, mainly out of doors. A reader will like them best, I think, who reads them in similar circumstances–or at least in a quiet room. They would be most favorably heard if read aloud into a kind of quietness that is not afforded by any public place. I hope that some readers will read them as they were written: slowly, and with more patience than effort.

Holy FUCK, that’s incredible. Definitely next on the list. The number of books on my “to read” agenda is an exponential curve. It can never be conquered. I have yet to come to terms with the fact that there just aren’t enough life hours to read everything I want. The thought makes me too sad. Even if I only read, slept, and ate, there still wouldn’t be enough time. Curses, time!

Another thing that’s incredible: Ashes & Fire. I used to be kind of sad that Ryan Adams doesn’t make music like he used to. It’s more mature now and I like wild things because I’m wild. But honestly, Ashes & Fire won me over in every day. I cannot stop listening to it.

However, today’s album was White Blood Cells. Before I left the house, I found this random plain white CD in my trunk of stray things and I thought it was Clap Your Hands Say Yeah and I immediately decided it was perfect for today so I got excited and popped it in as soon as I got out of the car. Then I was pleasantly surprised to hear The White Stripes. Best surprise ever. Granted, both albums would have been great to listen to today but it had been so long since I listened to a White Stripes album in it’s entirety that I’m actually really really happy this turned out the way it did. I’d forgotten how goddamn incredible it is. And this is weird because I was totally listening to Hotel Yorba on repeat a few days ago. Proof: this post.

The alt-country blog is a lot more difficult than I thought. It’s hard to have a blog that’s so specific and focused. Good learning experience though. I’m hoping to finish up another post today or tomorrow at the latest. I’m just concerned that nothing I write will be good enough or anything that I’m actually proud of. Like this blog doesn’t matter because it’s just haphazard blithering. But I want that one to be a legitimate project. We’ll see what happens. I think I just need to sit down and write and not care and be happy with the results. Being a perfectionist sucks every day. I’m crazy successful at life because of it. But it sucks. Double-edged sword.

It is a fact often observed, that men have written good verses under the inspiration of passion, who cannot write well under other circumstances.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

I hope that’s true. Because alt-country is definitely my #1 thing right now. Ralph Waldo Emerson will never steer you wrong, I swear. Everyone is always like “Thoreau is so much better.” Disagree. I mean, honestly, they’re both great so I don’t know why you have to take a side. It’s like the pop/soda thing or the ranch/bleu cheese thing or the Sheetz/Wawa thing or any of that. Why make it an issue when they’re all wonderful and you can say/eat/like both? For the record, I’m a soda/bleu cheese/Sheetz person haha.

Also relevant:

Love. Fall in love and stay in love. Write only what you love, and love what you write. The key word is love. You have to get up in the morning and write something you love, something to live for.
- Ray Bradbury

These things motivate me to keep truckin’ on.

Anyway, to finish up here, I’m getting back into running. I need it. It gets a lot of aggression and pent up energy/negativity out of me. I bought the MOST AMAZING running shoes today because my old ones were shot. Nike Air Pegasus +28. Mine are prettier than that though. Anyway, I consulted Marco after I purchased them because he’s an expert. Running is his passion and he also works at a running store and happens to also be an expert in helping people find the shoes/gear that’s most suited to them. This was his opinion of them:

As you may have inferred by the 28, that shoe has been around for a long time (28 years). So pretty reliable/popular. Definitely in the top 3 shoes we sell at Fleet Feet. Just hope you aren’t an overpronator!

I love my friends. I love people with passions/obsessions. It means they have something to live for and love. That’s critically important.

Mary is living her passion too.

I’m sooooo drawn into community and natural resources/environment sociology. It makes my heart beat in a way different than any other sociology I’ve ever studied. I think I’m finding my calling in life.

Everyone go be like her. And Marco. And everyone else who’s living out their passions.

The most powerful weapon on earth is the human soul on fire.
- Ferdinand Foch

Go hard or go home. I’m floating amidst several intense passions so that makes things slightly more complicated. I want to do everything all at once.

But back to the shoes. They seriously make you feel like you’re flying. Hence the whole “Air Pegasus” thing, I guess. I can’t believe I’ve gone 24 years without discovering them. It’s the dawning of a new era in my relationship with running. So long, animosity in my soul! Miles of running totally knock it out of me. That feeling where you think you absolutely can’t keep going but do anyway is the point where you’re most free. That applies to all difficult things, not just running.

And so, this is to you baby sister… Please keep in mind that while grad school sucks, you’re actually weirdly living at the height of experience right now. Appreciate that. Because from that difficulty will come the greatest success you’ve ever experienced. It will be the type of triumph that will define and give incredible meaning to your life.

She Just Gets Up And Goes. She Doesn’t Give Any Warning.

And here for the first time in my life I saw my beloved Mississippi River, dry in the summer haze, low water, with its big rank smell that smells like the raw body of America itself because it washes it up.

I love Greenfield. I get my pizza from Conicella’s, I drink at Hough’s, and I take my car to Calfo’s when it needs to be fixed. My house has a porch swing and hardwood floors and my room is the converted attic on the third floor where I can see everything and hear the rain and the sun rises on my face every morning and I have an infinite amount of space for projects and sleeping and spreading out and living. My room is the size of some people’s apartments. It’s 10 minutes from everything. I can walk/bike to Schenley Park.

But I will forever have this consuming preoccupation with the south and with the west and I can’t be entirely content here until I go. Especially now that I’ve been here for way too long investing in something that I thought was worthwhile. “Happiness only real when shared.” I didn’t even have to learn that by trial and error because Chris McCandless was nice enough to figure it out for us. So, that’s why I stayed. But the thought of actually living out my life adventures is ALWAYS in the back of my mind no matter what. Especially now that I came to terms with the fact that there was no future and I would never be entirely happy.

Tangent: Honestly, if you’re lucky enough to have that great thing with a person (and by great, I really mean like once in a lifetime love/companionship/passion/dedication/etc), then by all means go where they go or stay where they stay if that’s what needs to happen. Unfortunately, I don’t think many of us actually ever encounter that in our lives so for the most part, just move along. And ideally, if you do have that great thing, then they’ll go with you or stay with you as much as you do for them.

Drifting back to the point… On The Road is like a sacred religious text to me. I’m seriously only 30 pages in and it’s like the 4th time I’ve read it, but there’s still so much good life shit in there. Some sentences/paragraphs/thoughts kill me in a way that leaves me completely floored because it always seems like my soul has either had that feeling/experience or longs to have it. Case in point:

I woke up as the sun was reddening; and that was the one distinct time in my life, the strangest moment of all, when I didn’t know who I was–I was far away from home, haunted and tired with travel, in a cheap hotel room I’d never seen, hearing the hiss of steam outside, and the creak of the old wood of the hotel, and footsteps upstairs, and all the sad sounds, and I looked at the cracked high ceiling and really didn’t know who I was for about fifteen strange seconds. I wasn’t scared; I was just somebody else, some stranger, and my whole life was a haunted life, the life of a ghost. I was half-way across America, at the dividing line between the East of my youth and the West of my future, and maybe that’s why it happened right there and then, that strange red afternoon.

The first time I saw the Mississippi River, I was completely at a loss. It was everything I thought it would be. And it was incredible. And EPIC. And I fell in love with the south. I think they bewitched my sweet tea last time I was there because my only real goal in life is returning as soon as possible. Every plan I make is just another way to go back. Jayber Crow isn’t helping.

I also spent my whole life dreaming about the Pacific Ocean. And the first time I went in, I was in Chile. And it was winter. And the water was cold, as the Pacific Ocean always is. But it was nearly the best day of my life. And I can’t stop thinking about going back to that either.

In general, I have an unexplainable spiritual fixation/connection with bodies of water. This is probably the basis for my obsession with boats. My second life priority, aside from moving south, is buying a sailboat. And living happily ever after on it. On the water in the sunshine.

And then there’s the west.

It should not be denied…that being footloose has always exhilarated us. It is associated in our minds with escape from history and oppression and law and irksome obligations, with absolute freedom, and the road has always led west. – The American West as Living Space, Wallace Stegner

Into the Wild is my other sacred religious text, in case you haven’t figured that out yet. My spirit is sheer adventure and freedom and and peace and love. I can’t stay in this one spot forever. Mary drove to Utah and had the type of epic roadtrip experience I want to have someday soon. That I’ve been trying to have since I was 17.

As hesitant as I was to get into nursing because it meant giving up my public policy and public health “dreams,” I kind of feel like somehow destiny got involved and now I’m about to get into a career where I will always have a job no matter where I go will always have enough money to make my travels actually happen which is kind of what I wanted more than anything to begin with. I can just pick up and leave. Whenever. Let’s do this, life. At 24, I’m still such a baby with a million years ahead of me. At 90, I want to know with every certainty that I lived madly.

This is the type of idealism that dooms people. Maybe. Even so, “I just want to burn up hard and bright.” And I’m TOTALLY at the dividing line between the East of my youth and the West of my future.

By the way, all the best music comes from the south. And they play it often and everywhere. Oh, New Orleans. Someday soon.

I could listen to this song forever.

Also relevant… Big River

Pittsburgh will be the place that I return to when my biological clock starts ticking. I’m going to buy a house in Greenfield and have four kids. This is maybe a problem because I think my soulmate probably lives in the swamp or works in a shipyard or spends a billion life hours in the middle of nowhere. Whatever. We’ll make it work.

But until I have to deal with that, get me out of here ASAP. I’m kind of freaking out. I’ve been freaking out for a year and a half. 4 long months until Alabama.

Oh, what would you do if i showed up at your door just ready to go

The City Keeps On Going. We Just Keep On Rolling.

Oh, wait. I can’t even go play football anymore? Sigh. Get me out of here. I’m cool with losing my ex-boyfriend. But not everything I love about my life. Evil exes need to grow up. No wonder I’m a hostility monster towards everyone.

The agenda today didn’t pan out like it was supposed to. 3/8 things isn’t too bad. Especially when I control my own destiny and can change my own plans if I want without feeling bad about it. Used book shopping always thwarts good productivity efforts. Afternoon naps do too.

What I picked up:
- The Metamorphosis
- On The Road… because I loaned my original copy to an ex-best friend and never got it back and I need it more than ever right now
-  Godel, Escher, Bach… which is MIND BLOWING based on the first chapter alone
- Letters To A Young Poet

The Caliban Book Shop never lets me down! Although, to be fair, 2/4 books were purchased at the half-price bookstore in the North Hills.

Needless to say, I think Jayber Crow may need to be put on the back burner for now. It kind of takes a long time to read anyway. It’s not hard or dense. You just get caught up thinking about life and mentally drift away from the pages.

All four of those books were selected because they’re crucial to this particular life moment.

On The Road is still in my top 5. And it has one of the best first couple of sentences ever. I don’t care what those other lists say.

I first met Dean not long after my wife and I split up. I had just gotten over a serious illness that I won’t bother to talk about, except that it had something to do with the miserably weary split-up and my feeling that everything was dead.

There’s Too Much Life In This Book

Both of them were good people, as people go, and they had a nice farm, but they were living out the terms of a failure that was long and slow. I don’t claim to understand it. I only know, from what I had seen already and what I saw later, that they would go along together quietly enough for a while, and then one night (it would always be at night) they would come face to face again with their old failure, each with needs that the other could not fill, and nothing they could do for each other that would not make things worse.
- Wendell Berry, Jayber Crow

Because I Couldn’t Let Go When The Water Hit The Setting Sun

This is what Mary said about Jayber Crow before she loaned it to me… “It will make you miss everyone you’ve ever known and every place you’ve ever been.”

TRUTH.

I can’t remember the last time I was this preoccupied with a book.

You just start thinking about life in weird ways. It’s not necessarily a bad thing. It’s just different. You’re sad that it’s gone but happy that it happened? I can’t come up with a good description.

White Daisy Passing – Rocky Votolato

I’m A Freak And I’m Nervous When It’s Easy

True story. Must self-correct. Sometimes I wonder if Stephan Jenkins ruined a lot of good things before he came to that realization. Regardless, he put it in a song and I can’t thank him enough because it triggered a rush of self-awareness.

I am a master of self-sabotage.

I have this eternal tendency to believe that someday the amazing stuff in life will actually be too good to be true. So, I have a resistance to some things. A lot of things, actually. Therefore, I cheat myself out of really being able to enjoy the best things and settle for everything that’s subpar. If something’s mediocre or good, I go all out with the potential to make it great and end up happy. But if something’s already great, it scares the shit of me and I freeze and don’t know what to do with it so I usually ruin the great thing and inadvertently banish it from my life forever. Trying to perfect something is what I know how to do. Actually enjoying something that’s perfect or near perfect is what I need to learn how to do. This applies to school, people, hobbies… you name it. Everything.

Moving away from that crap, this was really the best day evah! The application is done. Finally. It shouldn’t have taken so long but I resorted to lame internet procrastination because I was kind of anxious about the possibility of not getting in. Also, I think I’ve been happy for three straight weeks. Which hasn’t happened for the last three years.

Long morning bike ride –> rediscovered music as if I’ve been dead since October 2008 –> cranked up the Ryan Adams while running errands –> some of my Alabama dreams came true –> started a volcano with Desi –> read part of Jayber Crow on the porch swing –> fell asleep on the porch swing and had a monumental nap –> made homemade pizza

Simplicity is soothing. But it also gives me too much time to think. And things quickly become complicated with over-analyzation. It’s kind of wearisome to always be looking for a way to balance the two. I feel like I’m trying to achieve nirvana or something.

My goal is to start September with a clear head. Which requires me to stop freaking out about a few things and embrace them instead. Go away, hesitations.

Semi-relevant…

And the world cannot be discovered by a journey of miles, no matter how long, but only by a spiritual journey, a journey of one inch, very arduous and humbling and joyful, by which we arrive at the ground at our own feet, and learn to be at home.
- Wendell Berry