Throwing it WAY back

Got nothing new for Ya'll, so I found this old thang in the darker corners of my hard drive.

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There comes a time in a Man’s life where he begins to look backwards. He unrolls the old burlap cloth that covers the chest of past memories and slowly, almost reverently, undoes the lock and opens the lid. His breath is slow but excited as he runs his hands over long forgotten memories, chuckling a little at his former escapades and narratives.

But as he continues, his hands find more and more things that make him crinkle his brow and flare his nostrils slightly. After about five more minutes of rummaging through this treasure chest that is his past, he remembers the reason why he locked, covered, and hid this box somewhere deep in his subconscious garden shed.

It contains the most comprehensive compilation of evidence that points to his all-encompassing moronity. The lock is quickly snapped shut, the covering duct taped on, and a hasty expedition into the mental everglades is undertaken in the tradition of the age old pastime of Floridian crime lords wanting to dispose of “evidence”.

            I’m guessing that the average age of this is mid 30’s or so. But whether due to my unexplainable hunch that I’ll die young or the shoddy lock-smithing on my memory-box that allows my meddling imagination to find and break into the chest like an elementary school kid trying to find knives in his dad’s closet, I have reached this stage in my life prematurely.

            Regardless of how this point has been reached, I have recently been finding the stories from all of my 20-some years on this earth rushing into my mind. They come at whatever time they please, sometimes causing me to chuckle to myself as I walk to my college classes (Which sometimes catches some interesting looks from passer-bys) or causes me to cringe in embarrassment.  For sake of entertainment, the latter will probably be the most prolific of the narratives told in these pages.

           

            Through most of my elementary and middle school education, I was taught at home. My mother had been an English teacher at a few different venues, and my Father had done his fair share of teaching as well. This made for an excellent learning environment that my brother and I both flourished in.

 Learning from classical novels, streamlining mathematics in order to reach the higher levels in a shorter period of time, being able to visit writing workshops and field trips to whatever we pleased, and all before lunchtime.  I give a good deal of credit for the way I am today to the way that I was taught at home. And therein lies the problem.

I was socially backward. This might be an understatement, if you ask anyone who knows me. But the combined forces of home schooled sheltering and that lack of ability to adapt socially to a culture (which stemmed from our military family having moved 14 times before I turned 14) caused me to be unbearably shy, imaginatively obtuse, and generally awkward.

In my mind, the defining story of my entire home school experience began one autumn in the sleepy, bedroom community of Eagle River, Alaska. I was approximately 11, and I had recently become aware that children were sent AWAY from their homes to receive instruction. Apparently, a few blocks down the street, there was a mysterious building where children congregated each day in order to receive government issued knowledge in a place that they called “Alpenglow Elementary School”.

I was fascinated by the idea. The children spoke of things such as “cafeteria” and “Recess” and “School Plays” which in my mind were interpreted respectively as “word associated with processed foodstuffs”, “Time where one either plays games or gets shoved in the mud”, and “Something I hope my dad will show up to this time”.  Now the logical reader will begin to wonder how I even heard these words mentioned, as I have already mentioned that I was hermit-like and had little to no contact with normal children. The answer still makes me cringe slightly.

In my backyard there was a tree. This tree had been planted around the same time that the house had been constructed, and had survived the harsh winters and short summers of Alaska enough times to have grown branches that overhung the fence. The other side of this fence shared a strip of grass with a neighborhood road. And that strip of grass was daily used by the kids coming home from Alpenglow Elementary School. If that tree had contained any form of intelligence, I doubt it would have conceded to the purpose for which I used it.

I would sit in its branches and spy on the normal kids. Hidden in its thick leaves, I would peer down upon the upstanding children of suburbia and marvel at them. The peculiar plastic boxes with superheroes or princesses pictured on the side, the oddly shaped duffel bags that housed secret Alpenglow Elementary School documents that were carried on their backs (I saw one dropped and it’s precious secrets spilled on the ground once. I felt like a secret agent that day). Everything about them was foreign, mystical, almost as if I were an alien sent to observe a different species.

This is how I learned about the café of processed meats, and this is where I gathered my information on the social nuances of the human race. But unfortunately, my research was cut short.

One fall day, I was laying in my usual tree branch. Mind rehearsing the colloquialisms that I had learned from the previous week (things such as “Jump-rope”, “I got an F”, and “Lunch money”) when I saw the first group of the kids round the corner about a hundred yards from my position.

I repositioned myself, grasping a branch with my left hand in order to allow me to lean farther down and be able to pick up the quieter conversations that I had previously been missing out on. The children were closing the distance now. Only 15 meters left. I twisted my hips a little more, reaching with my ears, waiting to begin my daily research. They had just come under the shade of my tree.

I remember a popping sound, then an acceleration registered in my intestines, followed by a sudden stop coupled with a heavy and painful blow to the back of my ribcage and spine. The wind immediately rushed from my lungs and my brain scrambled to piece together what malfunction had just occurred.

I was lying on my back. I could see the branch that I had been perched on about 10 feet above me. I could feel the now-broken branch still clutched in my left hand, and I was making sounds similar to an ostrich that had a dozen golf balls stuck in its throat. And then I realized where I was.

I was at the feet of about sixteen of my research subjects. They were in a stunned silence with their mouths hanging slightly open and looks of complete confusion in their eyes. Being the suave young man that I was, I lurched to my knees and attempted to begin my explanation of myself. Only to find that I was still making the ostrich noises.

In hindsight, they may have been able to at least pity me, if they weren’t so frightened by the Hannibal Lecter-esque headgear that a local sadist with an orthodontic practice had insisted I wear for the duration of my elementary mental development. Coincidentally, I’m sure that I stunted or horribly disfigured the natural mental development of some of those in the impromptu audience gathered around.

I decided that the best course of action was to stumble to my feet and sprint in a dizzy path towards the nearby gate to my backyard, where I fumbled the lock open and fell upon my knees in the brittle, but safe, grass of my backyard. I pulled the door shut behind me, but not before I heard intermittent sobs of shock and several voices mumbling concern for the poor mute “whatever-that-was” that had fallen into their lives moments ago.

I discontinued my research, claiming that I had a much more important study in my basement concerning the native pill bugs of that region. This project seemed so much safer, both physically and psychologically.

I left that story behind me, letting catfish and alligator eggs accumulate on its waterlogged covering for almost a decade now. When one opens the box of memories past, only the blandest among us has nothing to be embarrassed of.

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 Whoa. That was a nice and easy Copy-Paste adventure.  Hope Ya'll enjoyed it.

           

Systematic Beauty.

                                                                            Frost.

Why do people take so many pictures of it? What makes frozen water particles that were suspended in the air and then deposited on a solid surface so visually arresting?

Why is anything able to grab our attention and draw the gaze of many, eventually garnering the title of "beautiful"? What makes that happen?

It's interesting how the idea of beauty is so universal, yet there is so little empirical evidence that gives us a reasonable explanation as to what is beautiful and what is (for lack of a better term) gross. What interests me most about this... this idea of "art", is that even though there is no way to scientifically test the human reaction to lines, shapes, colors and other assorted factors that go into making something beautiful, there is an exact and systematic process by which all of these factors are combined and applied and lighted, positioned, viewed, etc. that brings about the base components of "Art" in the first place.

Also, It interests me in a curious/frustrated way that all the necessary factors for "art" should occur routinely every time i park my car out side between September and March. ("Oh man, looks like nature art-ed all over my windshield again. And since i'm an idiot and never remember to buy a scraper, i'll have to use my pocket knife and fingernails to create a fist-sized hole which will be my sole visual cue until my defrost kicks in.)

But think about it. When an artist splashes pain on a canvas in a seemingly arbitrary and half-hazard attitude, the cohesion of the paint combined with the physical forces acting upon the globules (gravity, initial velocity, wind resistance, splatter effects, gunshot wounds) are what make the paint behave in the way that it does, resulting in a aethestically pleasing (to some, I suppose) display of artistic angst and possibly laziness that the artist was hoping to achieve.

I've always been of the mind that the aloof and socially inept mechanization processes that govern our universe, solar system, and a vast majority of thrown deli meats would not have an intimate relationship with the footloose and whimsical bird that is art. But not only do they have a relationship, they are even accepted, nay, sought after to grace the halls and dining rooms of the most illustrious dinner parties, be it in the form of canvas, marble, or a massive pile of feathers.

The seemingly incompatible and awkward couple that is science and beauty stride gracefully through the corridor of time. Leaving tokens of their appreciation in the minds of great artists of renown,

while sometimes maliciously depositing flaming bags of dog poop in the minds of other "Artists"

  

 

Respectively, a giant inflatable piece of poop, and a three legged dog created from the artists hair clippings and bubble gum. People actually set out to make these things. This is not an accident.

So the next time that you see your run out to your car, already late for some important meeting that will determine the fate of your job or unstable relationship, and you see that mother nature has painted a delicate and interwoven memoir to purity amidst the harshness of winter, take a moment to slow down and recognize it for the beauty and complexity and the marvel of science and grace that it is. Then go back inside, make some Jasmine Chun Hao tea, and reflect on the delicacy and interwoven painting that is life and the flow of the cosmos.


Or, furiously scribble a pear-sized viewing hole, inevitably located in such a way that the only position that will allow you to maintain visual contact with the outside world is one that the unaltered human body has no potential for, which will eventually lead you to kick out your entire front windshield at the first available stop sign.