Car Talk and Coming of Age

I am taking one large step toward some semblance of adulthood- I am becoming a car owner. I haven't even signed the title nor driven the car more than a couple of miles here in Moscow, but here I am already stressed out and writing in my blog at 1:25 am. There's a lot of details to have to think about when you own a car. I'm not that great with details.

I want to be careful not to give the impression that I am somehow ungrateful for the privelege of car ownership (in reality, "my" car is a gift from my mother, her old car). I am excited at the prospect of being able to steal away to the Smokies, drive through the Blue Ridge Mountains in North Carolina, not to mention at least one trip down to New Orleans (I'm pretty sure it's only like 9 hours). Anyhow, I guess I have lived such a seemingly simple, but ultimately somewhat responsibility-avoiding life. That is, part of my riding a bike and relying on the bus for this long has been largely motivated by financial and responsibility-related reasoning (i.e. avoiding) and 20 percent environmental and health thinking (i.e. just enough to make me feel like I'm doing a good thing and really justify the avoidance). Avoidance of responsibility and commitment continues to be a theme for me.

Most things that "normal" kids do when they are 18 (i.e. date girls and buy cars- not necessarily in that order), I am finally getting around to as a near 30 year-old. I guess I have always been a late bloomer (literally), so why would this be any different. There's just this part of me that gets so annoyed that I have allowed myself to avoid responsibility and commitment and not just simply face the realities of adulthood. Part of me feels so relieved to finally be participating in what, though perhaps somewhat sadly, has become a rite of passage in our culture. And like I said, though I do still have a part of me (which on a long-term use level is much higher than 20 percent of my thinking) that believes both in keeping one's life simple (not to mention minimizing one's impact on our Mother), there's part of me that really connects with the American sense of discovery and exploration that is inextricably linked to car travel. I think of all the beautiful places that I now have access to that I may never again have the chance to explore (if you couldn't tell by all of my gushy facebook posts and increase in blogging that I will be moving back out west when I'm done with grad school then now let it be known that I plan to be living out here in the wild(er) west). In fact, I got a list of natural wonders and beauty spots (as granny would call them) from a guy here in Moscow to go and check out while living in East Tennessee.

Like I said, I am grateful to my mother for my new vessel of exploration. For our grand Mother's sake, I wish this vessel was carbon-emission free (and that someday soon I'll live in a world and in an income bracket allowing for the purchase of such a vehicle), but as Edward Abbey used to say, the wild spirit of exploration and discovery calls us to get out and enjoy what natural beauty remains for as long as it remains. But it's not like I'm driving an SUV; it's a freaking Toyota Echo.

One small step for most. One giant leap for shitball, responsibility-avoiders everywhere. After all, real discovery can only come from exploring the roads of life. And the way I figure it, I hope to do as much exploring as I possibly can. Open road here I come.

Simple Pleasures

I am sipping coffee and looking out the big windows of my favorite cafe in Moscow, ID. I've got that funny post-workout blend of tiredness and energy. There are four young girls (can't be much older than 10 0r 11) sitting in the circle of chairs next to me, eating bagels and teasing each other. The usual blend of moscow locals are here: old hippies, students, professors, pseudo-hipsters, and downtown professionals. It's December 21st- the shortest day of the year.

Maybe it's that I've just finished my first semester of grad school and now find myself with absolutely no obligations for a whole month. Maybe it's that it's winter and I'm more aware of putting the daylight hours to the most efficient use. Maybe it's both. Maybe. Whatever the case may be, I feel like I've been more aware of the simple little pleasures of life this last week and days.

Last night, mom and I had Granny and Gramps up for dinner; nothing fancy, just soup, salad, and bread. We broke out a bottle of merlot to spice things up a bit, and Gramps even had a little glass (though he didn't finish it). I rubbed Granny's back and listened to Gramps tell Ole and Lena jokes (some I'd heard and some I wish I hadn't). Mom flitted about making things look nice and picked out poems from the Christmas poem book that she loves so much. She got Granny to read a few out loud. We just sat around and, as Granny likes to say, "just chatted". Simple.

Then when Granny's energy reserves had been fully drained (I think it was about an hour and a half), they left and mom and I plopped down for some Muppets. Mom purchased Season 1 of the original Muppet Show, and it is priceless. We laughed and laughed and laughed. Simple. Then we switched over to a full length movie,The Sea Inside, and for those of you who haven't seen this one, please do. Simple and powerful.

There's something so powerful about simplicity. I think this especially so in the crazy, chaotic, ever-moving, ever-evolving, melodramatic, endless-entertainment-seeking world we find ourselves in. Sitting down and and reading a book is profound. Going for a walk and simply breathing fresh air is extraordinary. Taking time to cook a meal from scratch brings us back closer to the rhythms of the earth. The simple and powerful pleasures of life.

Creation vs. Consumption

I am quickly realizing how little time I take to truly be creative and how much consumption has become my default mode.

Instead of writing I watch a movie. Instead of taking the time to learn a new recipe, chop, and cook- I fry up a quesadilla. Instead of writing a friend a letter (or more realistically, a heart-felt email), I aimlessly wander The Facebook. What's up with that?

I guess the simplest and honest answer for my choosing consumption over creation is that it clearly takes no brain power. In the words of my hilarious grandma, "I just don't like to think...I let your grandpa do that." Seriously!? Am I so lazy that I'd just rather not think, make the minimal mental effort, and simply consume rather than creat!? I don't know.

Alfred Adler argued that the driving force behind all human behavior was creativity. That is, that we are creative by nature. But if that's true, we are we also so clearly driven by consumption?

Anyhow, I'm going to finish watching All About My Mother...I'll get back to you with the answer.

Bill Callahan

Anyone ever seen Bill Callahan live? For those of you who have, you need no explanation as to what his presence and performance is like. For those who haven't, you should know, he's weird.
Not like bad weird, necessarily. For me, his music is like the kind of artsy, twisted, unique foreign film you watch and afterward can't really figure out if you enjoyed it or not. If anything, he's absolutely unique: there is no one like Bill Callahan.

He played at the Pilot Light. This place is equally artsy, twisted, and unique. It's the kind of place that could very easily be mislabeled as hipster. While it definitely attracts the hipster crowd, I never felt that "we're to cool for life" vibe. It's the kind of place that sells Schlitz in a can. I mean, it's crusty. It's also tiny. The bar has 5 stools and then there's benches around the perimeter of the already narrow and intimate space. It's the kind of place where you can be a wallflower (literally) AND be right up front; very laid back.

The opening act was a dude from Portland whose sound made Elliot Smith sound like a bubbly cheerleader. This guy was a solo act, playing drums and singing (though this may be a somewhat generous use of the verb). His lyrics were pained, painful, and filled with despair. In fact, at one point, he kept repeating "despair" over and over- playing with his "voice". This guy next to me saw me start to laugh and leaned in to share in the fun. He confided in me that he was glad someone else found this guy humorous. I told him: "it rains a lot in Portland...I mean, ALOT!!!"
That got him going. We laughed and chatted to keep ourselves entertained. Steve was from Milwaukee and in town on business. He drank Schlitz from a can.

The next act was an all women rock band called "The Lights". I teased Steve that they looked like a Spinal Tap version of Heart- they had these funny sequined shirts, big hair, and tights. Actually, they had a couple of numbers that were entertaining, not to mention their sound was a huge breath of fresh air compared to the suicidal smell still lingering in the air from Portland boy. Anyhow, we continued to make funny, sarcastic comments to each other. Then, Bill showed up.

Bill was fairly plain and unassuming in appearance- tall white dude, ostensibly in his mid-30's with salt and pepper gray hair, a white button up (with the top few left open), a pair of blue jeans with a slightly off-center leather belt. But his voice was unmistakable. His voice is this deep, penetrating baritone that, along with his deep and intense face, has this strangely stunning effect. I mean, it's not so much that you feel that you can't move. It's more like you are simply pulled into his presence; like he's put you into a trance and you had no choice. His sound is dark (though nothing like the spoon-gouging-out-eyeballs sound of the other dude) but it belies his obvious funny bone (which I really liked). One of the best lines was his twist on Amazing Grace:
"once i was kinda blind, now I can sorta see". Loved it.

Anyhow, I should say that the only reason I even knew/know about Bill is my friend Nikki's husband Chris whom I saw the show with. Chris, thanks for introducing me to Bill. It was kinda weird, by I sorta enjoyed it.

Refections on Semester One

I am done with my first semester of grad school...well, almost. I do have to proctor (who made up that word anyway!?- sounds like a medical procedure involving gloves and bending over) an exam on Thursday. But for all intents and purposes, the workload is done. Some of you may ask- so why the hell are you sitting down and doing more of what you've been doing for the last 4 weeks (that being writing on my laptop)? Good question. The simplest and perhaps most honest answer is that my life is really quite boring and that sitting at my favorite cafe with a cup of coffee and writing a reflection on the semester sounded actually quite nice. It's also something (writing) that I've found I enjoy when I don't have to write with any real deadline or purpose. I should also say that my decision was presumably largely influenced by the fact that my heater (though quite effective in pumping out waves of heat) sounds like there's a Mack truck idling (and, strangely enough, smells a bit like that-it's natural gas). Anyhow, here I sit.

Something that's still quite fresh on my mind is my recent, inaugural visit to UT's recreation center. I call this reflection "Just do it".

After a full semester of surviving on somewhat irregular runs and my mostly daily bike commute (except for when it rains, then it's bus and walk) for my exercise fix, I was ready to go do something that was both aerobic and at least partly social. I did attempt to play Ultimate with the local crew here in Knoxville sometime around mid-semester, but, ultimately (couldn't resist) found myself needing to work on Sundays on homework. So I stuck with the convenient, however solitary, nature of running and counted my bike commute as "good enough". I thought about going to a yoga class. I thought about seeing if there's a master's swimming group. I thought, "I should do something that's more social." I thought that pretty much all semester. I finally went and played some pick up ball last week.

I showed up at the gym with my backpack bursting at the seams with all of my gear stuffed in it. When I came up to the check out desk, I got the look I've gotten pretty much all semester. Sometimes it's like: "dude, what the hell do you have in your pack?". Other times it's more like: "dude, do you need a place to stay?". So far, the latter question has been in the minority and not been asked by any cute and available women. Anyhow, I checked out a lock, a ball, put my gear on, and hit the courts. I was pleased to find that not only were there 4 full well cared for courts, but that the gym actually had some windows large enough to erase a lot of that gross, claustrophobic, fluorescent feel that gyms usually have. I was pleasantly surprised.

Then I got another surprise. The gym has work study students (and apparently cameras) whose job it is to watch out for hippies with backpacks who look like they may actually try to sleep in the locker room. Apparently I had that look, because my particular little gym elf came over to enforce the critical "gym shorts only policy". My KAVU, cotton shorts weren't the mesh polyester that everyone else was playing in, and apparently, this is law down here in TN. In retrospect, I'm surprised they didn't bust me on my shirt. I had on my gross Gap t-shirt with bike grease, holes, and cherry stains (one of my favorite mementos from Gabriela). But my shorts, really? So I told him that I wanted to talk to his bosses. He looked like I had just eaten a large portion of his soul (he looked like he was 15, and to be fair, he'd probably never seen a large, sweaty hippy capable of anger). He came back two minutes later to say that everything was fine. Then the balling began.

They say that with basketball, once you've got the touch, you never lose it. What they don't hear them say is that while that may be true, sometimes the touch gets hidden under a couple extra beers, significant vertical leaping loss, as well as good old fashioned muscle atrophy. I think I must have missed like 10 layups. But I made up for it with hard d and some sweet passes. What the hell is my point? My point is that I had so much fun playing ball. I was reminded of much I love running with the ball, looking for the open pass, hitting the back cut, and making a sneaky steal. I like that when you can play the game well, you can just jump on a court, and start playing. I know it's easier said than done, but, next semester I'm gonna play at least once a week.
I need to play once a week.

Being as I'll be in Moscow next week at this time, home is on my mind. Perhaps for the first time in my life, I feel like I have a relatively clear sense of what and where home is for me. So why now? And what and where are home for me?

I know that much of my sense of home has to do with that I am truly living off on my own, away from everything familiar, really by myself for the first time in my life. It's that annoying but truth-holding adage about how you have to leave home to be able to fully appreciate it. I remember having some small sense of homesickness and longing for home as an exchange student in Germany. But I was only 16 and I was completely taken care of by my host families (not to mention that I didn't have to do anything other than simply attend my high school classes). Now, twelve years later, I'm living in Knoxville, TN, living alone, and doing the grad school thing. Never before have I felt such a clear sense of where and who my people are; where home is.

Now I'm sure that much of this is (clearly if I'm spending hours on a Monday afternoon writing about this) good ole fashioned homesickness. It's not so much that I'm clear that Idaho is my home so much as it is that I miss it. Though how can anyone every really separate homesickness from sense of home. Maybe it's these feelings that act as our inner compass; guiding us back in the right direction when we've wandered afar. Perhaps experiencing the feelings of being away from home is truly the only means to discover our inner sense of home. Ok, I'm starting to sound like a wanna-be Buddha. Sorry. But really, what is home? And how do I get there?

I think that much of my geographical sense of being away from home overlaps with my sense of being away from the people I love most. My sense of home has always been about people. I think this has been especially poignant for me being so close to Phil, Ali, and Gabriela these last months. Of course my feelings are especially strong right now, seeing as how they are planning on moving here next month!!!! But aside from that, my time with them this summer and this past fall have left a deep impression on me as to how important it is to make time for the really important people in our lives. When I'm with Phil, I know that I'm with someone who knows all of my quirks, insecurities, dreams, hopes, and fears. With Phil, specifically, I have the best of both worlds- he is both good friend and great family.Being with him, I'm reminded that I have been blessed with both an immediate and extended family (as well as an amazing group of friends) who love me for all that I am. But home is place too.

One of my password reminders is the question: "Where would you most like to live?". My answer, "Near the mountains". I am forced to recognized that I'm actually in a place right this very moment that is close to "the mountains". But the mountains out here ain't the mountains I grew up with. The Smokies are wooded hills- beautiful, deciduously decorated, remarkably accessible. I definitely connect my sense of home to the rugged, evergreen, still mostly wild Rockies (specifically in Idaho and Montana). There's something entirely unique and unmistakable about the scale and sense of wildness still present in those mountains. And maybe that's another part of my connection to sense of home- wildness.

Deep down, I believe that all of us are wild. I KNOW that I'm wild. I was born wild. I I think that I feel more alive, more free when I'm in a place that nurtures a sense of wildness. I can still remember running up the hill behind the parsonage on riverside, swinging on the big ole rope swing, dropping off of it and rolling through the underbrush. I remember intertubing through the rapids just across the road from our house. I remember waterskiing, naked under the full-moon on Dworshak reservoir. I am happy when I'm wild. Never before in my life have I realized how much I love Idaho. Never before have I realized how blessed and charmed my childhood was (and my life now is) because of Idaho.

What was my point? Oh yeah, home. In the end, at least for me, it comes down to two things: people and place. I'm sure that much of all this rambling is largely romanticized. In the same way that I was born wild, I was born a romantic and the grass has always been greener somewhere else than where I am. While I recognize that this may well be the case and that after being in Idaho (especially during the cold and gray of december/january) with family and friends for a couple of weeks, the tone of my blog may be quite different. Maybe having a sense that home is elsewhere is also a way to cope with that I still feel somewhat unhome here. I'm sure that's part of it. But something deep tells me that I'm discovering (or perhaps simply rediscovering) another aspect to my sense of home. That aspect I think is rooted-ness.

My life has been a bouncing from one place to the next. I've lived in a lot of different places. I've worked a lot of different jobs. Not since my days growing up in Idaho, have I been in one spot for longer than 4 years. I think my roots are starting to sprout.