A couple weeks ago I went rooting through my old closet at my parents' house, looking for my photos (yes, printed photographs) from a trip to the Southwest which Mike, Reid, Brandon and I took in 2002. I was vaguely despondent when my search failed - and not for the first time - for I have lost so many such mementos of the past - especially from the period between 2000 and 2005. During those years I struggled with persistent depression and the associated medications. It was also during that time I learned, slowly, to reconcile my inner world to the outer world. Having effectively been an only child (my brothers are 12 and 14 years older than me), that process was not easy, because my inner world was, by that time, both well-developed, and completely detached from reality. I was fixated on notions I wished not only to understand, but to know completely - enormous, opaque notions like identity, meaning, and transcendence. Further, I was deluded into believing that the bridge between my inner and outer worlds - not so different, I might add, from the bridge between childhood into adulthood - existed in the form of a soul mate from the outer world, who would understand me, profoundly and completely, and pull me towards her, into that outer world. Worse, I spent much of that period believing I knew who that person was - someone I had already lost forever. I was thereby left to wander a world that was, in a sense, post-apocalyptic, though the wasteland into which I had been banished was internal, not external.
I had forgotten those notions, having inadvertently re-written my early 20's in my memory over time as a stage when I was universally depressed, living solely in my room, searching for answers. But something wonderful happened yesterday - I found a CD-R on which I had backed up a tremendous amount of material I had written and compiled (especially photos) during those years, including a daily journal running from 2001 to mid-2004. It confirmed for me that my narrative, if at all correct, was a reduction of something much more complex. That's what happens with the past, of course - but, it was wonderful to see so much fuller a picture, once again, and to be better reminded of what my life during that period was actually like.
So many things happened to me during that time, and I went through so many shorter, more subtle and nuanced phases. But, one thing was confirmed - I spent much of that time obsessed with the particular concepts I noted above - especially the notion of meaning, and the role that other people, and especially the elusive 'soul mate' had to play in the process. Yes, in three years' worth of journaling, I used that term many too many times.
Particular periods stand out. I spent the fall of 2003, especially, fixated on people - the people I knew, and who I wanted to know and how to find them - and in people, I found powerful reflections of myself which I had long failed to see. I think this time was a flickering candle in the darkness, when I began to bring the two parts of myself together.
That November, I moved into a house with my friends, soon after which a series of changes occurred in me - as if an inevitable result of that event. That spring, I completely stopped drinking, started exercising, committed to learning to play guitar, met many new people and made many new friends. That May, I started dating someone I would stay with for three years. In the context of the prior years - brief, low-quality relationships, like small islands within an ocean of solitude - it was interesting to read my journal entries because it was obvious that finding someone was not the random occurrence that I had always believed it to have been.
Of course, finding her in particular was a random occurrence, but the idea that I found someone was not random - it is clear that I merely had first to change myself and my habits to become a person that would find someone. The person I had been those prior years and the person I became that spring were both strongly predisposed to find exactly the sort of people I did during those respective periods of time. It is so obvious, reading the progression in the writing, and blessed now with the distance provided by time, which grants me some amount of objectivity, and clarity.
Before that spring, I was insular, withdrawn, and without motivation. And just to give one example of how my thinking was backwards, I had often thought of drinking as a social means to the end of finding someone - a way to be in the suspected right places at the suspected right times. I couldn't have been more wrong. It was when I stopped drinking that my interaction with girls - and especially the sort of girls that I would want to know - increased. The progression in the journal is clear as day. Not only was I talking to more people, but it was more meaningful - our interactions were not trite, superficial, or forgotten. Suddenly that February, the entries start to refer to hanging out with new people, sharing better experiences with new and old friends, and being told that particular people wanted to see me. And, although it could just be confabulation, I remembered most of the interactions and events referred to, and I slowly recalled feeling so much better about myself than I had - perhaps ever - even acknowledging that fact to myself.
It is remarkable how many of those people I had either forgotten, or forgotten that the particular events of that period of time occurred with. It is a sobering reminder for me, because for a long time I was obsessed with the idea that I would not, could not forget people and the times we had shared - I believed that remembering was one of the most important functions of friendship, because I believed that a great deal of the profundity of life lay in relationships and that memories were the base currency of life itself. (this final point is tricky, because in a certain sort of way, I think this same "base currency" is still implicit underneath many of my thoughts and decisions, though I no longer think of or acknowledge it explicitly in my thoughts)
Oh, and there's more good news: among the pictures on the CD-R were some scanned photos of the trip I was searching for - much better than nothing, at least! With all the photos I found - both from this trip and other occasions - I plan to create a new Facebook Album: "Look How Skinny We Used To Be"
Monday, February 22, 2016
Monday, February 1, 2016
A Dozen Trips
Lately I have been thinking of travel in a rather philosophical light. Specifically, I have been trying to better appreciate all the intangible and indirect benefits of travel. See, when I plan to travel today, I spitball the potential value by considering things like the opportunity cost of not working, the cost of the trip, the opportunity to do unique things, and overall quality of time I expect to spend. The "error term", around such an estimate, however, is large, and I wish to find what accounts for it.
When I say I've been thinking of travel lately, what I really mean is that I have been thinking about those best trips - the ones that brought me the most joy, and the ones that have left a lasting impression - and attempted to understand why they were so great. It has been one of the most enjoyable and satisfying mental exercises I have put myself through in a long time. And, despite having thought about them plenty, I think it would be valuable to write it all down somewhere where I can come back to it, as a way to review a little more objectively.
When I think of the best trips I have ever taken, I think of these (listed chronologically):
1) New Mexico / Grand Canyon - ~1988. My parents and I drove to Farmington, New Mexico, to see my aunt, then on to Mesa Verde, Four Corners, The Painted Desert, and the Grand Canyon. It was the latter that, I suspect, was most responsible for the deep affection for the Southwest that I have felt ever since. My grandmother had driven out separately and was camping on the south rim, and the anticipation and excitement of meeting her there, the days spent exploring and the evenings and nights spent around the campground, meeting people, sleeping in her camper van, were formative experiences in my conception of the adventure that travel could possess.
I took other trips with my parents - mostly to Colorado. Those were good, too, but none could match that trip to the Grand Canyon. For years afterwards, my grandmother's coffee table books on the desert and the National Parks were beacons reminding me of that trip, always associating her with those feelings.
2) Steubenville, Ohio - ~1997. As part of a high school church "youth group", I went to Steubenville, Ohio, two summers in a row, for the Catholic Youth Conference at Franciscan University. My first real friendship with a girl tumultuously orbited both trips. The first trip contained so many remarkable memories - staying awake all night on the bus, nights sleeping in the gym, so many new friends, so many genuine people. You can disagree with any religion - and I have scarcely participated in any since - but I found something very special in the earnest friendships I made there - I haven't experienced anything like it since, and I would be lying if I said I didn't miss it.
3) South Dakota / Colorado - 1998. The summer before our senior year I tagged along with Tony's family on vacation. We made friends with two girls at our campground in the Black Hills, climbing rocks and sitting around campfires. But, that was only a warm-up to the minivan full of college girls who offered us candy (an innuendo if ever there was an innuendo, when I was still too oblivious to know one) outside Rocky Mountain National Park. Better yet were the horseback riding, hiking, and meteor showers encountered in the middle of nowhere. Great friendships are built on collections of important moments, and an outsized quantity of Tony and I's came from that trip, and the similar one we took the following year.
4) Colorado / New Mexico - 2002. My friend Reid and I had been talking about visiting colleges in Colorado for practically the entire year I had known him. With scarce premeditation, we finished up our Thursday-night bowling league and drove west in his Miata through the night, arriving in Greeley at sunrise. We wandered the UNC campus before moving on to Fort Collins and Boulder. It was the latter that left me dreaming of a different life than the one I had been leading. That night we wandered the campus and the neighborhoods of a town that I have felt drawn to ever since. The next morning we drove to his grandparents' house in Albuquerque - because, why not? I wished that day never to lose that spirit of spontaneity for travel. Every trip I've taken since carries some wish for surprise and adventure that I've always associated with that trip.
5) Oklahoma City - 2006. Somehow I feel like I am forced to pick between this trip and the trip to Costa Rica, which occurred around the same time. Well, Costa Rica probably had more firsts, and more memorable moments in total, but measured by excitement-per-minute, our long-weekend trip in a rented minivan to Oklahoma City to visit my friend Tony over Super Bowl weekend would be hard to top by any other trip I've ever taken, with the possible exception of Stockholm (see below). Oklahoma City was a "guys weekend" before we were old enough to need to call it anything so lame. We shouted obscenities, walked in front of traffic, head butted, poured pitchers on people, and got kicked out of bars - in the first twenty-four hours. We buried passed-out friends under piles of furniture, cracked beers in bed at night, cracked beers in the shower, cracked beers in bed in the morning, and tried to drive to Austin in the middle of the night. But I also remember sitting on Tony's roof one cool, late morning with a Corona and a lime, head still swimming from the night before as I stared out over the endless suburban tracts, conjuring the band Real Estate from my own wistfulness and ennui, years before they had even formed.
6) Utah - 2008. I couldn't improve upon what I recently wrote about this trip.
7) Helsinki #1 - 2009. It kills me that I feel compelled to choose between this and our trip to Estonia the following weekend. Though Estonia was more exotic, and varied, Helsinki was the prototype for all the exchange student excursions to come, where push came to shove and we saw the best and worst of each other, and created our most indelible memories. The tapas restaurant in the alley before a night out in the club; fifteen people crammed into our ultra-modern hotel room passing bottles of cheap vodka; snowball fights, "dead-whale face," and the trip to Suomenlinna, the eighteenth-century sea fort in the bay. The Scandinavian Winter nights seemed endless, as did the low, gray clouds. And, I can't help but confess that when I look at the pictures from that trip - the pictures of me and my friends, I can read things on their faces that I didn't see then - that I was, likely, too naive, or thick-skinned, to notice.
8) Stockholm - 2009. My friends Krista and Jillian had already gone to Stockholm another weekend, but as Tassilo and I planned our trip, they conspired to return with us. Experience has taught me again and again that the group dynamic is everything on a trip. This trip was wild - the tone of spectacle was set early by our friend Daryl's participation in the magic act at the evening show on the ferry. It was the night of a dozen profound drunken conversations. In Stockholm we visited our favorite professor for an evening of drink, revelry, and faux-sophistication. Back at the hostel, we met fellow American and Australian travelers from Copenhagen, drank Jaegermeister, after which I got very lost - and almost kidnapped - returning from one of Stockholm's most high-profile clubs. But, for some reason, it is the memory of my friend Krista - alternately boisterous and sentimental - that I remember, and being alongside my friends with whom I could laugh so easily, always kind to me as they were, always close and in-the-moment. To me, that trip represents all those fleeting moments, charged with profundity and meaning, spent with friends now long-distant but never forgotten.
9) Norway - 2009. I have spent the past few years advertising southern Utah every chance I get, to anyone who will listen. And yet, when someone asks me where the most amazing place I've ever visited is, the answer comes instantly: Norway. The degree of spectacle is on another level in Norway, and it is everywhere. An inordinate number of the pictures I took there don't look real. Oslo was a peaceful urban paradise, full of incredible parks, fellow travelers, and quiet, friendly locals. Yet, the further we traveled west - Undredal, Voss, Bergen - the more otherworldly and incredible the landscape became. Preikestolen was the only fitting climax. Couchsurfing and friends-of-friends lent the places we stayed warmth and personality. I didn't know what to make of any of it as I watched the sun rise from Tassilo's car in Stockholm after an all-nighter. I still don't know, but I've never stopped wanting to return.
10) Spain / Morocco / Portugal - 2012. Barcelona was even better the second time - Montjuic and Tibidabo, islands of serenity in a city of millions. Girona, Ronda, Sintra were all remarkable - quiet towns in which I could have stayed for weeks, each. And Lisbon is a place I could live forever, eating the same ice cream bars outside the olympic park in the sun. But it was Marrakech that has stayed with me. We were terrified - hesitant to leave our room, but for the friends from the U.K. that we met at our hostel. What was oppressive, then funny, has, in hindsight, become profound - it was Merry and I clinging to each other, relying on each other when we had nobody else to rely on. It seems so powerful to me now because it was so automatic, and because it worked. I know we will always be able to rely on each other.
11) Colorado - 2013. Engagement ring secretly in tow, I committed myself to proposing before we arrived back home. I was first seriously tempted to ask a whopping hour outside of Omaha, driving west, with the sun rising behind us. Nevertheless, I waited until our first night in the Lost Creek backcountry, where I asked Merry at sunset amid an especially remote section of wilderness. Off we went to tremendous weather and a fantastic campsite at Eleven Mile State Park, followed by a cabin in the woods, serene and lovely. If vacations seldom deliver the peace and serenity that I imagine, then this one is the exception to the rule. It also taught me that meaning, like inspiration, is something you can only set the stage for, then step back and wait patiently.
12) Germany / Luxembourg / Austria - 2014. When my friend Tony got stationed in Germany for two years, it became a foregone conclusion a trip was forthcoming. When Merry and I got engaged and set a wedding date, the viable dates for that trip narrowed considerably. I booked a flight to Stuttgart on short notice. When I landed, we didn't so much as stop back at his house before the road trip commenced - Liechtenstein was abandoned during the day - good, we were tired - and wild at night - good, we were ready! Better yet was to reunite with old friends - Tassilo in Munich, then Nath in Vienna. It was the latter city, which I had wanted to visit since I had first seen Before Sunset, which left the strongest impression on me. A late, late night at the club with Nath and plenty of new friends saw us off, back to Stuttgart on scarce sleep (and me on none - when Tony crashed, I sang Pulp's "Bar Italia" to myself as I beelined for the city-center Starbucks). I swore I would never fly to Europe for a single week, but I don't regret making this exception.
When I say I've been thinking of travel lately, what I really mean is that I have been thinking about those best trips - the ones that brought me the most joy, and the ones that have left a lasting impression - and attempted to understand why they were so great. It has been one of the most enjoyable and satisfying mental exercises I have put myself through in a long time. And, despite having thought about them plenty, I think it would be valuable to write it all down somewhere where I can come back to it, as a way to review a little more objectively.
When I think of the best trips I have ever taken, I think of these (listed chronologically):
1) New Mexico / Grand Canyon - ~1988. My parents and I drove to Farmington, New Mexico, to see my aunt, then on to Mesa Verde, Four Corners, The Painted Desert, and the Grand Canyon. It was the latter that, I suspect, was most responsible for the deep affection for the Southwest that I have felt ever since. My grandmother had driven out separately and was camping on the south rim, and the anticipation and excitement of meeting her there, the days spent exploring and the evenings and nights spent around the campground, meeting people, sleeping in her camper van, were formative experiences in my conception of the adventure that travel could possess.
I took other trips with my parents - mostly to Colorado. Those were good, too, but none could match that trip to the Grand Canyon. For years afterwards, my grandmother's coffee table books on the desert and the National Parks were beacons reminding me of that trip, always associating her with those feelings.
2) Steubenville, Ohio - ~1997. As part of a high school church "youth group", I went to Steubenville, Ohio, two summers in a row, for the Catholic Youth Conference at Franciscan University. My first real friendship with a girl tumultuously orbited both trips. The first trip contained so many remarkable memories - staying awake all night on the bus, nights sleeping in the gym, so many new friends, so many genuine people. You can disagree with any religion - and I have scarcely participated in any since - but I found something very special in the earnest friendships I made there - I haven't experienced anything like it since, and I would be lying if I said I didn't miss it.
3) South Dakota / Colorado - 1998. The summer before our senior year I tagged along with Tony's family on vacation. We made friends with two girls at our campground in the Black Hills, climbing rocks and sitting around campfires. But, that was only a warm-up to the minivan full of college girls who offered us candy (an innuendo if ever there was an innuendo, when I was still too oblivious to know one) outside Rocky Mountain National Park. Better yet were the horseback riding, hiking, and meteor showers encountered in the middle of nowhere. Great friendships are built on collections of important moments, and an outsized quantity of Tony and I's came from that trip, and the similar one we took the following year.
4) Colorado / New Mexico - 2002. My friend Reid and I had been talking about visiting colleges in Colorado for practically the entire year I had known him. With scarce premeditation, we finished up our Thursday-night bowling league and drove west in his Miata through the night, arriving in Greeley at sunrise. We wandered the UNC campus before moving on to Fort Collins and Boulder. It was the latter that left me dreaming of a different life than the one I had been leading. That night we wandered the campus and the neighborhoods of a town that I have felt drawn to ever since. The next morning we drove to his grandparents' house in Albuquerque - because, why not? I wished that day never to lose that spirit of spontaneity for travel. Every trip I've taken since carries some wish for surprise and adventure that I've always associated with that trip.
5) Oklahoma City - 2006. Somehow I feel like I am forced to pick between this trip and the trip to Costa Rica, which occurred around the same time. Well, Costa Rica probably had more firsts, and more memorable moments in total, but measured by excitement-per-minute, our long-weekend trip in a rented minivan to Oklahoma City to visit my friend Tony over Super Bowl weekend would be hard to top by any other trip I've ever taken, with the possible exception of Stockholm (see below). Oklahoma City was a "guys weekend" before we were old enough to need to call it anything so lame. We shouted obscenities, walked in front of traffic, head butted, poured pitchers on people, and got kicked out of bars - in the first twenty-four hours. We buried passed-out friends under piles of furniture, cracked beers in bed at night, cracked beers in the shower, cracked beers in bed in the morning, and tried to drive to Austin in the middle of the night. But I also remember sitting on Tony's roof one cool, late morning with a Corona and a lime, head still swimming from the night before as I stared out over the endless suburban tracts, conjuring the band Real Estate from my own wistfulness and ennui, years before they had even formed.
6) Utah - 2008. I couldn't improve upon what I recently wrote about this trip.
7) Helsinki #1 - 2009. It kills me that I feel compelled to choose between this and our trip to Estonia the following weekend. Though Estonia was more exotic, and varied, Helsinki was the prototype for all the exchange student excursions to come, where push came to shove and we saw the best and worst of each other, and created our most indelible memories. The tapas restaurant in the alley before a night out in the club; fifteen people crammed into our ultra-modern hotel room passing bottles of cheap vodka; snowball fights, "dead-whale face," and the trip to Suomenlinna, the eighteenth-century sea fort in the bay. The Scandinavian Winter nights seemed endless, as did the low, gray clouds. And, I can't help but confess that when I look at the pictures from that trip - the pictures of me and my friends, I can read things on their faces that I didn't see then - that I was, likely, too naive, or thick-skinned, to notice.
8) Stockholm - 2009. My friends Krista and Jillian had already gone to Stockholm another weekend, but as Tassilo and I planned our trip, they conspired to return with us. Experience has taught me again and again that the group dynamic is everything on a trip. This trip was wild - the tone of spectacle was set early by our friend Daryl's participation in the magic act at the evening show on the ferry. It was the night of a dozen profound drunken conversations. In Stockholm we visited our favorite professor for an evening of drink, revelry, and faux-sophistication. Back at the hostel, we met fellow American and Australian travelers from Copenhagen, drank Jaegermeister, after which I got very lost - and almost kidnapped - returning from one of Stockholm's most high-profile clubs. But, for some reason, it is the memory of my friend Krista - alternately boisterous and sentimental - that I remember, and being alongside my friends with whom I could laugh so easily, always kind to me as they were, always close and in-the-moment. To me, that trip represents all those fleeting moments, charged with profundity and meaning, spent with friends now long-distant but never forgotten.
9) Norway - 2009. I have spent the past few years advertising southern Utah every chance I get, to anyone who will listen. And yet, when someone asks me where the most amazing place I've ever visited is, the answer comes instantly: Norway. The degree of spectacle is on another level in Norway, and it is everywhere. An inordinate number of the pictures I took there don't look real. Oslo was a peaceful urban paradise, full of incredible parks, fellow travelers, and quiet, friendly locals. Yet, the further we traveled west - Undredal, Voss, Bergen - the more otherworldly and incredible the landscape became. Preikestolen was the only fitting climax. Couchsurfing and friends-of-friends lent the places we stayed warmth and personality. I didn't know what to make of any of it as I watched the sun rise from Tassilo's car in Stockholm after an all-nighter. I still don't know, but I've never stopped wanting to return.
10) Spain / Morocco / Portugal - 2012. Barcelona was even better the second time - Montjuic and Tibidabo, islands of serenity in a city of millions. Girona, Ronda, Sintra were all remarkable - quiet towns in which I could have stayed for weeks, each. And Lisbon is a place I could live forever, eating the same ice cream bars outside the olympic park in the sun. But it was Marrakech that has stayed with me. We were terrified - hesitant to leave our room, but for the friends from the U.K. that we met at our hostel. What was oppressive, then funny, has, in hindsight, become profound - it was Merry and I clinging to each other, relying on each other when we had nobody else to rely on. It seems so powerful to me now because it was so automatic, and because it worked. I know we will always be able to rely on each other.
11) Colorado - 2013. Engagement ring secretly in tow, I committed myself to proposing before we arrived back home. I was first seriously tempted to ask a whopping hour outside of Omaha, driving west, with the sun rising behind us. Nevertheless, I waited until our first night in the Lost Creek backcountry, where I asked Merry at sunset amid an especially remote section of wilderness. Off we went to tremendous weather and a fantastic campsite at Eleven Mile State Park, followed by a cabin in the woods, serene and lovely. If vacations seldom deliver the peace and serenity that I imagine, then this one is the exception to the rule. It also taught me that meaning, like inspiration, is something you can only set the stage for, then step back and wait patiently.
12) Germany / Luxembourg / Austria - 2014. When my friend Tony got stationed in Germany for two years, it became a foregone conclusion a trip was forthcoming. When Merry and I got engaged and set a wedding date, the viable dates for that trip narrowed considerably. I booked a flight to Stuttgart on short notice. When I landed, we didn't so much as stop back at his house before the road trip commenced - Liechtenstein was abandoned during the day - good, we were tired - and wild at night - good, we were ready! Better yet was to reunite with old friends - Tassilo in Munich, then Nath in Vienna. It was the latter city, which I had wanted to visit since I had first seen Before Sunset, which left the strongest impression on me. A late, late night at the club with Nath and plenty of new friends saw us off, back to Stuttgart on scarce sleep (and me on none - when Tony crashed, I sang Pulp's "Bar Italia" to myself as I beelined for the city-center Starbucks). I swore I would never fly to Europe for a single week, but I don't regret making this exception.
Burial and Art as Experience
Will Bevan – the artist known as Burial – appreciates
omission, the same way as so many great writers. His songs give you enough to
wonder, but not enough to know – and this forces you, as the listener, to fill
in the gaps. This strategy is one of the most potent weapons an artist can
wield, and he does it well. His best songs insist an idea but offer inconclusive
evidence. They can be sort of infinite, in their own way.
When I listened to Burial’s most recent EP – Rival Dealer –
I was floored. I knew I was listening to the same artist – you can hear it in
the songs’ composition, timbre, and mood – yet, I couldn’t quite believe what I
was hearing. And, well, I could wax poetic about the songs themselves – the
impression they left on me, et cetera, but that would not be the point. Importantly,
it occurred to me that Rival Dealer may contain much less for someone who had
not heard Burial’s previous work. Yes, it seems to me that the EP is, to a
significant degree, a sort of riff on the expectation of what Burial is – meaning, if I am right, that the music may fail to speak to someone who has not listened to him previously and thus has not constructed
those expectations.
There is a theory in the world of art that states that a
work should stand for itself, and should not be colored, or distorted, by things
outside the work, such as the artist. We should judge an artist’s works,
therefore, without regard to the fact that we may not agree with the artist as
a person, say. This principle appeals to me in a very fundamental way; however,
I could not immediately reconcile it against my experience of Burial, and my
belief that his new music is better when taken in the context of his old music.
Surely the experience of his prior work should not color my experience of his
new work, right?
I think the way to reconcile the two comes from Brian Eno,
who has offered that what we call ‘art’ is best understood not as the thing
itself, but as the interaction between the thing and the experiencer. This, he
says, solves a bunch of problems encountered in the theory of art. It
certainly, in my mind, solves the problem I described, because the idea of
Rival Dealer will be different to someone who has heard Untrue and Kindred than
it will be to someone whose nearest point of reference is, say, Skrillex. Note,
for what it is worth, that this doesn’t require that you jettison your
preconception of the artist as a person – though, I honestly think that doing
so is just a good idea, and doesn’t require some strict rule to justify it.
So, what of Burial, and Rival Dealer? Burial songs often
seem to me like the impressions of people adrift in the nighttime in an unknown
city. They are intense and yet elegant. Many of them work in clubs, and yet
they are all better than any club. They also seem hallucinatory – not in the cheap method of "fiction," but in the manner
of true hallucinations, whose hallmark is that they can only be distinguished
from reality slowly, through the process of coming to detect where their composition diverges from reality.
The final two songs of Rival Dealer are like the eponymous
Burial protagonist remembering having stumbled through a back-alley door in the rain, into a gymnasium where a
prom is occurring. No, wait: better yet, he is simply recollecting some substrata of his
youth, almost certainly long gone, connected to feelings we commonly give to prom - that juvenile longing, wishfulness, incomprehension. These songs are the sum of a hundred collected
memories of a certain past that you can almost, but not quite, understand – it
is Will Bevan omitting just enough, again. The spoken-word portion at the
conclusion of the album suggests a certain keyhole but doesn't require it. It is enough, for what it's worth, to give subsequent listens a different
context, but I like to think of it as optional. I suspect it was included by
him because the subject inspired him and is important to him, but it
might take away more than it adds to the album.
I have had dreams that have come, I am certain, from the
song Hiders. I can’t readily recall another musician that has made me dream.
Will Bevan is pretty amazing, and I look forward to whatever he does next.
Sunday, January 17, 2016
Whispers
In March of 2008, a friend and I made the long haul from Omaha to the Grand Canyon, via Breckenridge and then Durango, arriving as a snowstorm pushed dramatically up over the canyon wall, blanketing the rim. I strained to see into the expanse as the waves of precipitation rolled past us, the sun intermittent, fighting to burn through. For scarce seconds, the inner canyon could be seen, the river a distant sliver amongst the riddle of buttes. We stayed in a room perhaps a hundred feet from the edge, and during the night I rose and tiptoed outside, across the snow that had fallen. The canyon was silent, eerie, perfect.
The next day we took the rarely-traveled 89A bypass up through Marble Canyon to Lee's Ferry, nestled along the Colorado just downstream of the towering walls at the end of Glen Canyon, before pushing on to the remote Wire Pass Trailhead on the Utah/Arizona border. It was almost warm out on the hike into Brimstone Gulch - the world's longest slot canyon - wading through shady, near-freezing waist-deep pools before reversing our way, detouring south over hills of rock, sand, and sparse brush towards The Wave, a rock formation in an area known as Coyote Buttes. We trekked cross-country, across undulating sandstone, past all manner of surreal rock formations and sandstone patterns, finally believing ourselves to have found it nestled atop a hillside. Plains stretched out to the east, dotted by cartoonishly round rock outcroppings. As the daytime waned, we negotiated a slope a bit too steep for comfort, back down a different direction and scampered down a streambed and back to the car, driving on to Kanab in the dark to find a hotel. It was St. Patrick's Day.
I had discovered in mid-December that I was too late to reserve us permits to hike to the bottom of the Grand Canyon that March. It was something I had wanted to do since my grandmother had died. The place had been special to her and I wanted to understand, to feel what she had felt. We had gone, anyways, because my friend had never been there, and because I was in love with the road, and in love, already, with the west I had seen, and the idea of the Great American West, pastoral and free. There was no place too far.
I had also run into a well-traveled acquaintance at a friend's party that past fall and had found out that, in her job with the NPS, she had been stationed at Glen Canyon National Recreation Area. I sent her a short email when I got the news about the permits, asking her advice for other places we might go in the area. She sent me a wonderfully long response, overflowing with suggestions for both hikes and food. She suggested the Escalante river area, Brimstone Gulch and Lee's Ferry, at the other end of the Paria river canyon. We could, she said, hike through from the one to the other, but it'd be "a marathon trip." She told us to skip Page. She called Boulder, Utah, "heaven." We were on her tour! On we drove towards Escalante.
The ranger at the interagency visitor's center convinced us not to hike the Escalante river - too muddy in the spring - instead suggesting Coyote Gulch. "Is it as scenic?" She let out a mild chuckle at the question, then gave us directions. We drove Hole in the Rock road until we were bored, until we were sick of it, further yet. We stopped at the Hurricane Wash trailhead and set Samuel in the window. We hiked the wide, sandy wash. Over miles, it closed up into a shallow canyon, occasionally slotting up. It was just the beginning. A stream eventually came in from the north, after which the river meanders started cutting into the canyon walls. The progression was inexorable. Before long there were 500-foot high ceilings of rock hanging over our heads as the river twisted back and forth, down through the sandstone, at once dramatic and serene.
It was much colder at night than we had planned for, much colder than was appropriate for our sleeping bags. I didn't sleep much. It didn't really matter. I couldn't believe what we had seen. We didn't make it down to the river - so what? There was so much - I could hardly comprehend it. It felt, even then, like I had discovered some wonderful secret, like my luck was not just excessive but conspicuous. Walking out the next day, I felt the sort of joy that overflows into grief - that bittersweetness, born of the knowledge that I had missed out on this wonderful thing for all the years of my life, until then. We finished the long slog back out the sandy wash, the sun beating down, the way out so much harder than the way in - was it really more than a trivial slope we were climbing? It felt like it. The temperature swings in the desert, where there was little humidity, were tremendous. There was a note on the car referencing Samuel. They knew he was from Iowa. But that's another story...
We drove out to the end of the road, to Hole in the Rock itself, my car negotiating what ceased to be a road, what was merely a path over the raw, slickrock terrain - severe approaches and departures, nerve-racking obstacles. It was evening when we walked from the parking area up to Hole in the Rock, our first sight of Lake Powell on this trip and my first sight of the lake in five years. It felt, at the time, like half a lifetime, as if I had last left it expecting, perhaps, that I might never see it again. No, I suspect it was having dreamt of it so many times in the intervening years which made this moment powerful. Is there a word in the English language capable of conveying the way a person or a place or a time, can remain so unresolved, can unconsciously pull on us? Or, the way we can see something we know, and yet, having ourselves changed since then, have that thing conjure something significant of who we then were?
We departed after the sun, finding a roadside campsite not far away. You see, out upon Hole in the Rock road, everything appears flat, until you stop moving. I had never seen, or dreamed, such a landscape as this area suddenly becomes at "human scale", on foot, wandering in any direction. What was this place? All I knew was that the time I had spent walking through the sand, through the scrub, across the rock, had felt right - like I belonged there. In the night, a tremendous wind woke us, suddenly flattening the tent down against us. We lay, unmoving in our sleeping bags, for a long moment before either of us dared speak. Before and after that phantom wind, the silence of the nighttime was complete.
We drove past Calf Creek the next day, up through Boulder for lunch, back to Grand Junction, and in time, back to Denver, back to Omaha. I went back home, back to work, preoccupied, utterly infatuated by what I had seen. It was spring. I seem to remember being happy, in general, that year, and hopeful. I was confused, only, about what I wanted my future to be.
I think the trip inspired me in that regard, shook me out of my stasis. This was before I had gone part-time at work to return to school that fall, before I had gone to school in Europe that winter. I am so glad I did those things, as I would later repeat to myself endlessly, "before it was too late."
People aren't good at remembering who they were "then," whenever "then" may be. It means little, by itself, to say I drank less coffee and more beer. How did I think, and what about? It takes a lot of effort for me to reconstruct, even generally, what must have been going on in my head. I had different worries than now. I was a different person. To a large degree, it has been lost to the past, and I will never really know. And, time will only widen the gulf.
I wish I had done a better job then of recording what I was going through. It's unfortunate, because I have kept a journal or blog for most of my life since I was fifteen. The majority of those things, though, have been lost to the past - the Word document I kept in high school; the webpage I journaled on in the early 2000s, countless half-written stories that attempted to capture some moment, some feeling, some sense of who I then was.
I have gone back to Southern Utah many times, and have had many wonderful experiences there. None of them will equal that trip in 2008, though, when I witnessed the snowstorm at the Grand Canyon, and discovered southern Utah. I was inspired, and my eyes were suddenly opened, and hiking - as a means not only of exploration but a manifestation of freedom - quickly became a passion. I return to those places because I miss them, and though they bring me joy, the feeling of serendipity has gone away, as it is apt to do. Today, a whisper of it returned. I grew immediately quiet, trying to listen, trying to return to that first time.
I try, always, to remain grateful for the experiences I have had.
The next day we took the rarely-traveled 89A bypass up through Marble Canyon to Lee's Ferry, nestled along the Colorado just downstream of the towering walls at the end of Glen Canyon, before pushing on to the remote Wire Pass Trailhead on the Utah/Arizona border. It was almost warm out on the hike into Brimstone Gulch - the world's longest slot canyon - wading through shady, near-freezing waist-deep pools before reversing our way, detouring south over hills of rock, sand, and sparse brush towards The Wave, a rock formation in an area known as Coyote Buttes. We trekked cross-country, across undulating sandstone, past all manner of surreal rock formations and sandstone patterns, finally believing ourselves to have found it nestled atop a hillside. Plains stretched out to the east, dotted by cartoonishly round rock outcroppings. As the daytime waned, we negotiated a slope a bit too steep for comfort, back down a different direction and scampered down a streambed and back to the car, driving on to Kanab in the dark to find a hotel. It was St. Patrick's Day.
It was good news, bad news with the innkeeper, who informed us there were no bars in Kanab, but gave us a room next to two girls that had just checked in - probably the hotel's only other customers. We went over and introduced ourselves. They welcomed us in and shared beer they had brought and we all watched the World's Ugliest Dog competition on TV. I tried not to laugh as much as I really wished to. We chatted and got to know each other. We staged a picture of them laying in the bed with Samuel, our mannequin head, surrounded by empty beer bottles. We laughed some more. They were headed for the Grand Canyon. It was the opposite of every St. Patrick's day ever, and it was great.
I had also run into a well-traveled acquaintance at a friend's party that past fall and had found out that, in her job with the NPS, she had been stationed at Glen Canyon National Recreation Area. I sent her a short email when I got the news about the permits, asking her advice for other places we might go in the area. She sent me a wonderfully long response, overflowing with suggestions for both hikes and food. She suggested the Escalante river area, Brimstone Gulch and Lee's Ferry, at the other end of the Paria river canyon. We could, she said, hike through from the one to the other, but it'd be "a marathon trip." She told us to skip Page. She called Boulder, Utah, "heaven." We were on her tour! On we drove towards Escalante.
The ranger at the interagency visitor's center convinced us not to hike the Escalante river - too muddy in the spring - instead suggesting Coyote Gulch. "Is it as scenic?" She let out a mild chuckle at the question, then gave us directions. We drove Hole in the Rock road until we were bored, until we were sick of it, further yet. We stopped at the Hurricane Wash trailhead and set Samuel in the window. We hiked the wide, sandy wash. Over miles, it closed up into a shallow canyon, occasionally slotting up. It was just the beginning. A stream eventually came in from the north, after which the river meanders started cutting into the canyon walls. The progression was inexorable. Before long there were 500-foot high ceilings of rock hanging over our heads as the river twisted back and forth, down through the sandstone, at once dramatic and serene.
It was much colder at night than we had planned for, much colder than was appropriate for our sleeping bags. I didn't sleep much. It didn't really matter. I couldn't believe what we had seen. We didn't make it down to the river - so what? There was so much - I could hardly comprehend it. It felt, even then, like I had discovered some wonderful secret, like my luck was not just excessive but conspicuous. Walking out the next day, I felt the sort of joy that overflows into grief - that bittersweetness, born of the knowledge that I had missed out on this wonderful thing for all the years of my life, until then. We finished the long slog back out the sandy wash, the sun beating down, the way out so much harder than the way in - was it really more than a trivial slope we were climbing? It felt like it. The temperature swings in the desert, where there was little humidity, were tremendous. There was a note on the car referencing Samuel. They knew he was from Iowa. But that's another story...
We drove out to the end of the road, to Hole in the Rock itself, my car negotiating what ceased to be a road, what was merely a path over the raw, slickrock terrain - severe approaches and departures, nerve-racking obstacles. It was evening when we walked from the parking area up to Hole in the Rock, our first sight of Lake Powell on this trip and my first sight of the lake in five years. It felt, at the time, like half a lifetime, as if I had last left it expecting, perhaps, that I might never see it again. No, I suspect it was having dreamt of it so many times in the intervening years which made this moment powerful. Is there a word in the English language capable of conveying the way a person or a place or a time, can remain so unresolved, can unconsciously pull on us? Or, the way we can see something we know, and yet, having ourselves changed since then, have that thing conjure something significant of who we then were?
We departed after the sun, finding a roadside campsite not far away. You see, out upon Hole in the Rock road, everything appears flat, until you stop moving. I had never seen, or dreamed, such a landscape as this area suddenly becomes at "human scale", on foot, wandering in any direction. What was this place? All I knew was that the time I had spent walking through the sand, through the scrub, across the rock, had felt right - like I belonged there. In the night, a tremendous wind woke us, suddenly flattening the tent down against us. We lay, unmoving in our sleeping bags, for a long moment before either of us dared speak. Before and after that phantom wind, the silence of the nighttime was complete.
We drove past Calf Creek the next day, up through Boulder for lunch, back to Grand Junction, and in time, back to Denver, back to Omaha. I went back home, back to work, preoccupied, utterly infatuated by what I had seen. It was spring. I seem to remember being happy, in general, that year, and hopeful. I was confused, only, about what I wanted my future to be.
I think the trip inspired me in that regard, shook me out of my stasis. This was before I had gone part-time at work to return to school that fall, before I had gone to school in Europe that winter. I am so glad I did those things, as I would later repeat to myself endlessly, "before it was too late."
People aren't good at remembering who they were "then," whenever "then" may be. It means little, by itself, to say I drank less coffee and more beer. How did I think, and what about? It takes a lot of effort for me to reconstruct, even generally, what must have been going on in my head. I had different worries than now. I was a different person. To a large degree, it has been lost to the past, and I will never really know. And, time will only widen the gulf.
I wish I had done a better job then of recording what I was going through. It's unfortunate, because I have kept a journal or blog for most of my life since I was fifteen. The majority of those things, though, have been lost to the past - the Word document I kept in high school; the webpage I journaled on in the early 2000s, countless half-written stories that attempted to capture some moment, some feeling, some sense of who I then was.
I have gone back to Southern Utah many times, and have had many wonderful experiences there. None of them will equal that trip in 2008, though, when I witnessed the snowstorm at the Grand Canyon, and discovered southern Utah. I was inspired, and my eyes were suddenly opened, and hiking - as a means not only of exploration but a manifestation of freedom - quickly became a passion. I return to those places because I miss them, and though they bring me joy, the feeling of serendipity has gone away, as it is apt to do. Today, a whisper of it returned. I grew immediately quiet, trying to listen, trying to return to that first time.
I try, always, to remain grateful for the experiences I have had.
Sunday, January 10, 2016
What I learned from The Future
Below is a post I wrote eighteen months ago and never finished. I'm heartened by my progress on the list in the second paragraph. Of all the things that are hard - really hard - in life, it is worth remembering that most of us have an innate sense of goodness, and that if we can reduce the noise of everything that would distract us from it, its expression is a very simple thing.
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As much as I liked "Me and You and Everyone We Know," I had to admit that Miranda July's following movie, "The Future," was even better, mostly for being a more focused statement, less a collection of moments. Both were great, but something about how she placed the rescued cat, and the fracturing relationship, next to each other in the movie has stayed with me. The movie has a poetic vocabulary, an ability to express thoughts and feelings through surprising, disparate elements. The feeling of regret expressed in the movie, especially, has been with me since, IS any feeling of regret that I experience, one and the same.
Speaking of that, what regrets do I have recently? Only that I have not lived my own beliefs more fully, I think - generosity to the people I love, diligent attention on things I can change for the better, summary avoidance of things I cannot change, a focus on the value of time. But, I do not think of these things as regrets so much as opportunities.
When did I become such an optimist?
-----------------------------------------------------------------
As much as I liked "Me and You and Everyone We Know," I had to admit that Miranda July's following movie, "The Future," was even better, mostly for being a more focused statement, less a collection of moments. Both were great, but something about how she placed the rescued cat, and the fracturing relationship, next to each other in the movie has stayed with me. The movie has a poetic vocabulary, an ability to express thoughts and feelings through surprising, disparate elements. The feeling of regret expressed in the movie, especially, has been with me since, IS any feeling of regret that I experience, one and the same.
Speaking of that, what regrets do I have recently? Only that I have not lived my own beliefs more fully, I think - generosity to the people I love, diligent attention on things I can change for the better, summary avoidance of things I cannot change, a focus on the value of time. But, I do not think of these things as regrets so much as opportunities.
When did I become such an optimist?
Saturday, January 9, 2016
What's Most Important
Over the last six months or so, I have been writing a story that is an aesthetic reaction to my first trip to Europe, where I made a close group of friends while going to another school. It was an abrupt - and in that way potent - departure from a life I had long lived in one place by a long-comfortable set of terms.
Writing this story has, more than any previous one, put the tenet of economy front-and-center for me. I feel fortunate to have written enough to appreciate - if not nearly master - why economy is important. I have so many memories from my trip to Europe, so varied and yet all precious to me, and my first inclination was, of course, to throw it all into the pot, optimizing only, perhaps, through reorganization to form a more deliberate narrative.
What's most important in a story is the aesthetic effect, and each thing that is added has the potential to act in a dilutive manner, rather than a constructive one. Most aesthetic effects are most optimally expressed quite simply. The kitchen sink approach, frankly, rarely works at the story level. And so, I had to find the shared aesthetic core of my memories, and build a story that expressed just those most important things.
It took a lot of time. I say I wrote this story over the last six months, but I had been searching (er, more like waiting patiently) for the story for at least a year prior to that. I knew this one was important, and I didn't want to rush it. I feared that if I failed to capture and do justice to the aesthetic core of my memories, that they would likely become so revised by my misaligned focus, that there would be no going back, and something I consider to be of great importance might be lost forever. The next story which I've begun working on is the same - maybe even more potent, maybe even constructed upon more fragile memories. And, I've taken even longer to find my way into it. Yes, it would seem that the higher the stakes, the longer it takes.
Despite patience, experience, and all attempts at discipline, it's still been so, so hard to keep the story set in Europe as short as it should be. I feel a constant compulsion to embellish upon what is there. Indeed, reacting to my own writing is a surprisingly reflexive process wherein just by reading my own words I often come to see not only the story, but sometimes the source material (my memories) in a totally new light. And, what's been said so often about characters is true - good characters take on a life of their own, because by knowing human behavior, the patterns we first give to our characters come to dictate their subsequent thoughts and actions.
---------------------------------------------
Something remarkable happened to me a couple days ago: I had a dream about a character from my story. Upon reflection the next day, I was reminded of the cornerstone Jungian inquiry in dream analysis: for what is the dream compensating? Remarkably, the dream told me that I was ignoring one side of that character's personality, which must certainly be there. Just as dreams regarding my waking reality often prove to be, it was indisputable that this dream about a character I had only imagined was, nevertheless, correct. I revised the story to expose this other side of the character's personality, and when I later reread it, there was no question that a problem had been solved that I had not consciously realized even existed.
There was a period of time, too, when I was writing the end of the story, when I found myself wishing I could call my character on the phone. This, I believe, was also a subconscious, compensatory function. See, there is a point in the story when the narrator should have called this character - though upon writing it, I did not even consciously conceive of the possibility - the omission was implicit. It was only when I reflected upon my wish to call them that I saw what was right there on the page - that I had, essentially, written him with that blind spot because I, myself, possessed that blind spot.
----------------------------------------------
There are few things in my life that give me the amount and variety of joys that writing gives me. I am so grateful to have found it - that I had the crazy sense to try, and that I now have the memories I do of all that it has given me.
Writing this story has, more than any previous one, put the tenet of economy front-and-center for me. I feel fortunate to have written enough to appreciate - if not nearly master - why economy is important. I have so many memories from my trip to Europe, so varied and yet all precious to me, and my first inclination was, of course, to throw it all into the pot, optimizing only, perhaps, through reorganization to form a more deliberate narrative.
What's most important in a story is the aesthetic effect, and each thing that is added has the potential to act in a dilutive manner, rather than a constructive one. Most aesthetic effects are most optimally expressed quite simply. The kitchen sink approach, frankly, rarely works at the story level. And so, I had to find the shared aesthetic core of my memories, and build a story that expressed just those most important things.
It took a lot of time. I say I wrote this story over the last six months, but I had been searching (er, more like waiting patiently) for the story for at least a year prior to that. I knew this one was important, and I didn't want to rush it. I feared that if I failed to capture and do justice to the aesthetic core of my memories, that they would likely become so revised by my misaligned focus, that there would be no going back, and something I consider to be of great importance might be lost forever. The next story which I've begun working on is the same - maybe even more potent, maybe even constructed upon more fragile memories. And, I've taken even longer to find my way into it. Yes, it would seem that the higher the stakes, the longer it takes.
Despite patience, experience, and all attempts at discipline, it's still been so, so hard to keep the story set in Europe as short as it should be. I feel a constant compulsion to embellish upon what is there. Indeed, reacting to my own writing is a surprisingly reflexive process wherein just by reading my own words I often come to see not only the story, but sometimes the source material (my memories) in a totally new light. And, what's been said so often about characters is true - good characters take on a life of their own, because by knowing human behavior, the patterns we first give to our characters come to dictate their subsequent thoughts and actions.
---------------------------------------------
Something remarkable happened to me a couple days ago: I had a dream about a character from my story. Upon reflection the next day, I was reminded of the cornerstone Jungian inquiry in dream analysis: for what is the dream compensating? Remarkably, the dream told me that I was ignoring one side of that character's personality, which must certainly be there. Just as dreams regarding my waking reality often prove to be, it was indisputable that this dream about a character I had only imagined was, nevertheless, correct. I revised the story to expose this other side of the character's personality, and when I later reread it, there was no question that a problem had been solved that I had not consciously realized even existed.
There was a period of time, too, when I was writing the end of the story, when I found myself wishing I could call my character on the phone. This, I believe, was also a subconscious, compensatory function. See, there is a point in the story when the narrator should have called this character - though upon writing it, I did not even consciously conceive of the possibility - the omission was implicit. It was only when I reflected upon my wish to call them that I saw what was right there on the page - that I had, essentially, written him with that blind spot because I, myself, possessed that blind spot.
----------------------------------------------
There are few things in my life that give me the amount and variety of joys that writing gives me. I am so grateful to have found it - that I had the crazy sense to try, and that I now have the memories I do of all that it has given me.
Monday, July 6, 2015
Enough
Yesterday while expeditiously mowing the yard and no doubt thinking about my investment portfolio allocation I struck and killed a baby rabbit. There was that unmistakeable sound of trouble from under the mower deck, and when I pushed it aside to investigate I immediately spotted the soft grayish form lodged in a rut in the grass, streaked with red, pulsing with desperate, deep breaths. For all the tragedy of killing any living thing that can feel, the worse horror was to see it still alive, heaving, suffering. Such moments as what occurred inside me then transcend my capacity to express. My first, terrified compulsion was to finish the job, that no matter the difficulty I owed it to that poor creature to put it out of its misery. To kill was terrible, but to torture it, by any combination of action or inaction, would surely always stay with me. But no, I couldn't do it. I ran away like a child, which is not to denigrate my capacity to think so much as to describe the baseness of what must have happened inside of me to trigger flight.
There are two things I need to learn from this experience.
First, I should have been more mindful, and I don't just mean that I should have seen a rabbit hiding beneath the deep grass (although I probably should have). The rabbit (I am almost certain it was the same one) had earlier sprung from a bush as I mowed around it, but it had waited until the very last moment to do so - I had pushed the mower up against the trunk of the bush when the rabbit darted away, after already having mowed several strips in closer and closer proximity. I am not an authority on the behavior of rabbits, nor any animals, but I could see that it was young, could see his little body and short back legs and short ears carried close together along his back as he bounded, urgently though not quickly, down the slope towards other bushes, where I lazily assumed he would seek shelter. But I should have gathered that he was predisposed to stay still much longer than animals, in general, in proximity to the awful racket of the mower. After all, I had seen birds and mammals and reptiles alike pursue a wide berth a hundred times. But this one hadn't. If I would have noticed what was going on around me, the rabbit might still be alive.
Second, what am I supposed to do now about the dread, the regret, and the guilt that I feel? I think I now know the answer to this one, too, although it is less tangible, more subjective, more philosophical. I was reminded yesterday of the saying, "the best revenge is to live a good life." I ended up thinking a lot about what that meant, and why that was, and I became convinced that, even if it is true, it captures only one narrow aspect of a larger, and more important truth. After all, who gives a shit about revenge? (And no, my question obviously has nothing to do with rabbits.)
Seen as a problem dealing with tangential harm caused by mowing, the best I can hope to do is to avoid repeating the same occurrence in the future. But, that will not bring the rabbit back to life. What future actions can I change that may, in some way, offset the harm I have inadvertently done? I think the answer, it turns out, is all of them. All of my actions.
I create my legacy one action at a time, and each one changes the world in ways small or large, seen or unseen. And although it is difficult to disentangle the virtue of any one action, it does exist. It just takes observation and humility and patience to see it. It takes wisdom to distinguish good from bad. The simplest way to be good to the world is to act well. The simplest way to be better is to act better. The best way to honor all that is good in the world is, simply enough, to live a good life, one action at a time.
Though saying so can be interpreted as trite, even shallow, it is anything but. The words, typed and displayed on a screen, must work very hard to convey the earnestness and simplicity of the truth. It is certainly easier to type than it will be to do. I will spend the rest of my life attempting to do it, for the rabbit, but also for myself, and the people I love, and the good that is possible in the world. There is nothing trite about believing in the ability to do good, and to pursue it doggedly. I hope that is enough.
There are two things I need to learn from this experience.
First, I should have been more mindful, and I don't just mean that I should have seen a rabbit hiding beneath the deep grass (although I probably should have). The rabbit (I am almost certain it was the same one) had earlier sprung from a bush as I mowed around it, but it had waited until the very last moment to do so - I had pushed the mower up against the trunk of the bush when the rabbit darted away, after already having mowed several strips in closer and closer proximity. I am not an authority on the behavior of rabbits, nor any animals, but I could see that it was young, could see his little body and short back legs and short ears carried close together along his back as he bounded, urgently though not quickly, down the slope towards other bushes, where I lazily assumed he would seek shelter. But I should have gathered that he was predisposed to stay still much longer than animals, in general, in proximity to the awful racket of the mower. After all, I had seen birds and mammals and reptiles alike pursue a wide berth a hundred times. But this one hadn't. If I would have noticed what was going on around me, the rabbit might still be alive.
Second, what am I supposed to do now about the dread, the regret, and the guilt that I feel? I think I now know the answer to this one, too, although it is less tangible, more subjective, more philosophical. I was reminded yesterday of the saying, "the best revenge is to live a good life." I ended up thinking a lot about what that meant, and why that was, and I became convinced that, even if it is true, it captures only one narrow aspect of a larger, and more important truth. After all, who gives a shit about revenge? (And no, my question obviously has nothing to do with rabbits.)
Seen as a problem dealing with tangential harm caused by mowing, the best I can hope to do is to avoid repeating the same occurrence in the future. But, that will not bring the rabbit back to life. What future actions can I change that may, in some way, offset the harm I have inadvertently done? I think the answer, it turns out, is all of them. All of my actions.
I create my legacy one action at a time, and each one changes the world in ways small or large, seen or unseen. And although it is difficult to disentangle the virtue of any one action, it does exist. It just takes observation and humility and patience to see it. It takes wisdom to distinguish good from bad. The simplest way to be good to the world is to act well. The simplest way to be better is to act better. The best way to honor all that is good in the world is, simply enough, to live a good life, one action at a time.
Though saying so can be interpreted as trite, even shallow, it is anything but. The words, typed and displayed on a screen, must work very hard to convey the earnestness and simplicity of the truth. It is certainly easier to type than it will be to do. I will spend the rest of my life attempting to do it, for the rabbit, but also for myself, and the people I love, and the good that is possible in the world. There is nothing trite about believing in the ability to do good, and to pursue it doggedly. I hope that is enough.
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