Clarity

I think the most beautiful parts of life are the ones we understand least. Not difficult to understand like theoretical physics or quantum mechanics understanding (which aren't difficult but rather impossible), but those where there isn't a right answer. Those areas that the more you try and understand it or conceptualize it, you end up further in the dark forest of confusion, rife with cognitive dissonance, frustration, and head scratching. Those areas that can challenge us on an axiomatic, moral level, or on an intellectual and philosophical one. Those that the deeper you dig, mostly all you get is dirty.

Those questions, those ideas, that don't have an easy answer, often are the ones that leave us the most emotional when we come upon them. When we happen upon an instance where we are forced to deal with them head-on. No longer solely on an intellectual field, but in practice, and without an easy answer.

Those questions are the materials of life's greatest construction: beauty.

For example, when you look out over the ocean on a sunny evening, you can't help but be floored by the beauty of the scene. You know the ones: where the sun is slowly drifting towards the horizon, throwing its rays over the infinite expanse of glassy tide below it, bleeding a complete watercolor spectrum upon the sky. It's powerful. It is nothing short of incredible, and no matter how many times you see one, it always seems to catch you off-guard.

But why is it so beautiful? What about it makes it so incredible, so grandiose? Why are we so impressed by an occurrence that has happened--without fail--for as long as our planet has existed? You can try and delve into specifics, but the further you go trying to explain the radiance of it all, the more you find yourself struggling for the words to do it justice. Trying to ascertain what exactly makes that scene so breathtaking. The harder you try, the more flummoxing the experience seems to get, and harder it becomes to truly comprehend what you are appreciating.

But in that struggle lies what I find most powerful of all: the simple fact that it cannot be fully explained makes it more beautiful. It truly is a complete masterpiece, with every brush-stroke on the canvas serving a more total purpose than we can possibly explain. I always seem to find the further you go down the rabbit hole, the more you seem to end up less sure than you were before of what exactly it is about it that was so incredible, but more sure of the fact that it is, in fact, incredible.

Love is one of those "sunset topics," if you will. Anyone who has ever truly, wholly, and completely loved someone knows the incredible, irrational, and plain insane feelings that love evokes from its spellbound participants. In its power, there is a special kind of beauty; a beauty that comes (at least partly) from the inability to quantify or explain it. Much like a sunset, the more you try to explain love, you are greeted by layer after layer of complexities and intricacies, each with several more roots spreading to other reasons and pieces of the puzzle of what makes it so beautiful. From that complexity comes further inabilities to completely convey the emotion explicitly, but a deepened appreciate for just how complexly beautiful it truly is.

I love those digs. I love exploring the depths of life's greatest themes, as they simply get more beautiful the more you put into them. And sometimes, after enough digging, comes a moment of near-complete clarity. Where for an instant, you're out of the woods and into the light. And anyone along with you on that dig will see that light, too. As soon as it comes, it flees back into the forest of complexities, but leaves you in further awe of the simple wonders this life has in store for those who care to look close enough. It's why we love great literature, great theater (be it on stage, or screens large and small), and great music: it can provide a tunnel through the forest to the light, to see a glimpse of the beauty that surrounds us. In that beauty, there is truth. And if you know me at all, Veritas est silentium.

I guess you can say my life is a quest for the ability to express myself perfectly. It's a quest I never fully expect to complete, but that hasn't stopped me from trying. Call it the Virgo in me. Even if the goal is impossible, I'm finding myself enjoying the struggle more and more as the years roll past.

Sometimes, I wonder how badly the world wants to get my attention.

So incredibly egotistical to assume the world wants to get my attention over someone else's, but sometimes, it certainly feels like it. Like today: I tried to take the "fast way" home from work (you know, the fast way: the way that is faster. Because it is. Even if it isn't.), but I took a wrong turn and ended up on a fucking confusing Salem highway taking me the absolute wrong way and it took me almost ten minutes to get back on course, only to get stuck in the most horrible traffic from a catastrophic accident only 2-3 minutes up the freeway. So instead of skating home quickly, the fast way turned into 45 minutes in park on the freeway. Brilliant.

I tried listening to the radio, only to get pissed at the Blazers for losing to the Bobcats. Who does that? (I mean, seriously. Who loses to Charlotte, who we just traded with to get their best player?)

So I had to turn that shit off. Instead, I sat in traffic and really thought about how one wrong turn, one street too soon, can lead to losing an hour of my Friday night in the I-5 parking lot. In a lot of ways, that wrong turn feels like it has more cosmic significance. Had it not been for that wrong turn, I would've avoided the accident entirely, been home sooner, not missed my chance to see some people tonight. It felt like I needed to be stuck in traffic, to hear the only team I really care about choke away a lead to a garbage team, to not get what I had envisioned and felt like I deserved after such a busy week.

I didn't get the Friday I had planned on, nor the one I hoped for. Instead, I got home to an empty house, made dinner for myself, watched Up in the Air, and listened to my soundtrack for the evening. Not what I envisioned, but almost better in a strange way.

In its own way, the universe reminded me that regardless of how in control you think you are, you aren't even close to calling the shots. And that no matter how smart you think you are, you're actually way less smart than that (Assist: David Foster Wallace).

So let us toast what we cannot know and could not have guessed. Most of what life contains comes to us unexpectedly after all. It is our job to welcome it and give it meaning. And today, I give my wrong turn significance beyond its stock.

Playlist of the evening:
1. January Hymn - The Decemberists
2. Someone Like You - Adele
3. My Body - Young the Giant
4. Only Happy When it Rains - Garbage
5. Unforgiven 3 - Metallica
6. Sail - AWOLNATION
7 Lost in the World - Kanye West and Bon Iver
8. Sweet Disposition - The Temper Trap
9. Crystalized - the xx
10. Rhiannon - Fleetwood Mac

So obviously I didn't keep this up very well last time. Apparently, blogging did not "stick" that well last time around. Few reasons for that that needn't be explored much beyond saying my life went sideways for a while and I thought I was too busy for myself. Which is utter crap, when you get down to brass tacks. Never claimed it was a good excuse, but that's what happened.

I have been doing quite a bit of throwing things against the wall recently, and life has been sticking much more. I'm happy with how my life looks, for the first sustained period of time in years. Anyone who knows me knows I'm traditionally a very happy person, and tend to be happy as a default setting, even when shit gets shitty (eloquent, I know). There have been some stretches over the past year and change that have been less than optimal, however, and I didn't really love where I was at, what I was doing, or where I was going.

Upon cognition of that craziness, I switched my life up. I quit my job. I packed up my Saab and left my life I'd made for myself over the past 5 years in Southern California behind. I liken it to shearing dreads; metaphorically, I was cutting ties with all of the energy, history, and insanity I'd accumulated over the course of those tough times. To greener pastures, but shaped by the experiences of my past.

That's the beauty about the past: it may have been amazing, it may have been trying, but it will always be. I have a lot of fond memories of San Diego with the people I loved, the places I frequented, the sun that never stopped shining. I have some painful memories there, too. Parking lots that nearly brought me to tears walking through, drives I could hardly make without tasting the bittersweet nature of my past. . . it was all there. Regardless of what it was, it was. And that's important. I look back on it and am stronger, happier, and a more complete human being because of it. I wouldn't trade my past for anything. And it took me leaving it behind to really appreciate that.

To tie this back into my main point: I moved back to Portland. Home. It always has been home, even when it wasn't. I'm brewing twice a month now, lovingly embracing my creative side for what is authentically the first extended period of my life. I've been dating, which has been a revelation and fantastic in its own right. I've coached a 4th grade girl's basketball team that has been so ridiculously entertaining I can hardly contain myself. I'm working some 40+ hours a week at a new law firm, and have really been enjoying it. And I see my family often, siblings included.

I feel . . . happy. Completely content. What the future holds, I don't know, but I certainly know a few more aspects of my life are going to stick now that didn't stand a chance in San Diego.

Forgive the re-introduction. The next post will be more observational-introspective and less self-indulgent. For real.

Beginning anew

My new blog begins here, I believe. At the start of things.

My last blog, Now That It's In The Rearview, was about my trip to Europe and reflecting on my life during that amazing, mind-expanding, eye-opening vacation. I feel like, every time I want to post to that, I stop and don't want to add to it. It's such a unique and complete piece of my life that I feel like tampering or adding to it would be like planting seeds amongst the thriving flowers. So I won't. I'll start this one.

Much as my last blog is a time-capsule of what my journey entailed and what my thoughts on each day were as they unfolded, this web space is more for what I'm doing now. I don't want to make a commitment to myself that anything is going to look one way or another or what it'll entail, but it'll be more of a rough sketch of what I'd like to see happen, or what I'm up to at the moment and where I plan to take it.

Recently I've felt pretty stifled by obligations to school, work, money, the LSAT, and such that I've just wanted to break out and do something entirely new and creative. I've felt very inorganic, like I'm doing for some predetermined reason, and less out of simple desire to do so. Sometimes necessity can be quite the mother to invention, and I do not wish to cast any doubt over the fact that in my life, I am very happy doing what I am doing. But as with everything in living, one must act in balance.

Due to my inorgania (which I wish was actually a word, as I have quite a new-found fondness for it), I have been productive. I'm applying to internships, I'm earning good money, I'm becoming more responsible for my actions and my future, I'm going to graduate early, and I'm the only one accountable for the way my life is moving. That's good. The bad that comes with that is the unavoidable feeling of that, while this is all by choice and happily done so, I feel like what I'm up to is always for some greater defined purpose. I'm studying for the LSATs because I want to go to Law School and I want to go to one of merit. So I happily study for them. I want to help my family out in the money department, so I am graduating early. So I happily take summer classes to make that a real possibility. I want to be able to put some money away and take some financial culpability for my life, so I happily work my job and try to put some money away.

While I do everything happily, sometimes I just want to just create something out of nothing. I want to do something for the sake of a more immediate, tangible goal. But I don't want that creation to come via the harm of something else. In fact, that's the absolute last thing I'd want. I'd rather just pursue my goals I listed above, 100 times out of 100, if in any way my creating would jeopardize my primary goals. I just want to have something I can call my own, something I can be proud of, and something that I did out of a pure desire to simply do it and create.

I can't paint, so I won't. I'm a terrible artist with a pen, pencil, pastel, pad, etc, and I don't want to be good at that. I can't play an instrument worth anything, and I don't particularly want to learn how to, as any real instrument of the "pick-up and play" variety just doesn't appeal to me for one reason or another due to it being cliche or unwieldy.

But, I do have a few ideas of how to create, some of which are already in the making. One is my garden that I have planted and nurtured from seed. It's a silly little thing, really. My beans never really took off and they died as I didn't thin them all that well, but some have survived. My sunflowers look healthy. My peppers are doing fantastic, as is my little pumpkin patch, and my tomatoes look healthy too. My radishes already came up and were beauties to behold too, and I was very proud of them, showing everyone who came over just how well they were doing.

In a microcosmic way, radishes are indicative of what I'm trying to accomplish: they weren't of any worldly merit, really, you could buy them at the store and not everyone likes them. It probably cost more to grow them than to buy them, but I grew them anyway and damnit they brought me a lot of happiness, those $.89 seeds did.

I want to get my hands dirty. I want to create for the sake of using my human resources to do so. And so I will. This blog will be the touch-stone for that creating, and what I really am thinking about doing. My next project will be much larger in scale and more intense in scope, along with much bigger rewards and much larger margin for error, but regardless of what happens, I think what I'm hoping to achieve will be so, and that's the sense of accomplishment in learning something you know nothing about but appreciate, and going from there. For what it is, I'll unveil bits and pieces, but until then, I'm just glad I have this place to start with and finally put my feelings to paper.

Craig