Darkest before Dawn

When I was in college the adults I would meet would say that those four years would be the best of my life. The collegiate realm is filled with comfort, but the rest of the world is hard and unforgiving. Soon I would have to be working for a living, paying taxes and trying to make ends meet.

This year will be five years out of school. Sure the initial transition was hard, I spent a couple years forgetting some of my bad habit, remember what I believed in and harder than all the rest of them, learning to structure my own life, create my own goals, define my own assignments. Some days are hard, today I learned I didn't get an full-time job opening at my eternal place of part-time employment. Three years of loyalty and I am still out in the cold, but what I found to be funny was that I didn't care. I have bigger dreams than that place, I have bigger ambitions than what they might or might not be willing to give me. I am determined to make my own stars.

So five years have past and I stand today on ground forged by me, surrounded by things I have made, modified or fixed, friends that would give everything if asked, and an incredibly strong sense of self. Sure I have made some mistakes, but none that I regret and the hardships I face are just puzzles to be solved, the people I meet a chance for new experiences. Every day I walk home looking at the world around me, happy and proud, with a little smile on my face. Tonight as I sit and type this I smile and enjoy the descending night, knowing that even at it's worse, tomorrow will be better than today and today was perfect.

Hoka Hay...

A Paradox

While I believe that anyone can learn anything to full comprehension, I am still unconvinced that it is possible to know everything. So what is the sum of the parts?

Winter of our content

In this winter where I find freshly fallen leaves covered with snow, Fall leaped on without mercy by the next season. And the bright orange shapes that peak out of the white crust stand brilliant and singular, boasting even. Unprepared for their mortality, defiant even. But under their shadows greater things shift. Suddenly there comes a time of reinvention riding on the fallen freaks of a broken extremism and paranoid delusions. Give no quarter for such swine, ours is a battle for beginnings that threaten to slip back with the oil-fouled tides.

But I stand puzzled over basic tenets. As my life has shifted from one path to another the greater economic conflagration and political insanity pales in the face of an epic search of the Word. Not some biblical edict spoken by a breathless god but a question of a mortal about how to lead a happy life. Melodramatic phrasing I will admit, but the question still stands resolute. I am willing to forget prejudices about what that word means, take into account the importance of struggle and remove the judgmental nature of good and bad. Starting from the ground and looking up. And I am at a loss for words...

Election Day

When I was a freshman in college I saw the Election of Bush. In Junior Year I saw 9/11 and in that second saw much of the future that sadly became true. I left college with trepidation and distrust in my heart. In the eight years that followed my graduation I saw government corrupt itself and refuse to honor congressional s0penaes, a war in Iraq launched on false terms with no end in site, a war in Afghanistan launched on real terms never brought to conclusion, federal debt skyrocket, my own income shrink and difficulty in finding a full-time job with benefits, and finally in the last month the collapse of the entire economy with a disastrous bailout package that puts our debt at record levels to bail out companies that plaid the game poorly. And yet today I feel optimistic for the first time. It is a scary kind of unsettling feeling. We are not quit comfortable with each other yet. But I think I am going to grow to like it.

Peace. Truly.

Fear and Loathing in the Public Library

The library is an asset in Squirrel Hill that I rarely frequent, partially because of the late fees on my library card which regulates my reading to their facilities (paying utilities is far more important than those pesky tithes) and because of the weird way outlets are hid there so using a laptop can be difficult.

Never the less, I was there recently, sitting by the big front windows reading and watching this young couple to my left with their one-year old playing on the carpeted window seat. They were talking about politics and their support of Obama when suddenly the father looks down at the child and coos , "...and we are going to have health care, yes we are. You and I are even going to have social security..."

It is strange that these are the lullabies we sing our children. May November 4 bring at least the chance that the father's promise comes true.

...And the fish was thiiiis big

So in my life there are things I would like to pursue: perhaps a significant other, success in my art (however I plan to define that), or physical fitness. What I have found interesting is that if I go to each with a spreadsheet an charts mapping time, goals, expectations the lesser the chance of me walking away happy and fullfilled.

I have come to understand that none of them are instantaneous and each require that I live each day not with a specific goal, date, weight in mind but rather be conscious of good living. Instead of having a work-out schedule, I do karate when I am inclined to do so and as I do it more I find myself compelled. I talk to women without the motivation of dating and end up with enjoyable conversations and sincere friendship. I sit down to draw not with desire for adoration by others but just to have fun, to love what I put down on paper or on screen.

I think this is the key to being whole. If you measure your bits and parts in timetable, segmented by seconds and accounting the act, it become something less than life. Culturally happiness is often defined be succeeding in goals, but I am coming to believe less and less that is true. Some of the most magnificent moments in my life involve failing and by that fall discovering something more powerful.

This is one of two, two of the many.

Just another day really, touch typing this on one tab, pushing Gmail chat on another, reading a graphic novel on the third and looking at Charlotte's Flickr on the final tab. It has become a kind of drug, one that requires pushing my multitasking to new heights. Chat with three friends, read the NY Times, watch a movie, brain flickering and flooded. At some point it will become relevant, like the ability to build crude shelter, but when? I await my zenith with glee and no small amount of anticipation. It is my time to SHINE.

Instead I am in orbit, saluting other satellites as they pass with wordy, often misspelled and abbreviated salutations. At the whim of the great Magnet.