Chicago, With Difficulty

After many months of incredibly frustrating comparison shopping, I have chosen to attend University of Chicago Law School.  It came down to them vs Vanderbilt, really, even though schools more highly ranked than Vanderbilt extended offers as well.  Vanderbilt is in Nashville, a town which, after only one weekend spent there, I realized was perfect for me.  I think that I would fit in very nicely in Nashville, and so it was hard to choose to go to Chicago.  I have never actually been to Chicago.  The closest I came was St. Louis, I believe, and that trip taught me that Midwesterners are super weird, and that I do not fit in particularly well with them.  I think it is not naive to expect Chicago to be more diverse, and not quite so midwesterny, but maybe i'm in for a surprise.  In any case, it is only three years, and I figure I could live just about anywhere for three years, so I am not too worried.  UCLS is just a better fit for me, and I think it will open doors that Vanderbilt would not have been able to open.  Hell, one of the reps for Vandy even said, "Well, I mean, we aren't Chicago, but we do pretty well," when I asked about their placement of students in the highest level clerking positions.  This was not the first time that another top law school referenced Chicago as the epitome of one thing or another.  The alumnus who interviewed me for Vandy told me, after discussing at length what I wish to do with my career, "Well, Vanderbilt is a great school, and you will not really be limited by attending there.  However, if you get in to Chicago, you should really go to Chicago."  So to Chicago, I now go.

Of course, this decision could not have existed without the universe first presenting some outside difficulties.  Namely, Terra (remember her?) essentially saying that she loves me and always has and that she wants to be with me.  Long story short: she is going to take the next year "off," and will try to get her own shit in order before thinking about possibly moving to Chicago.  More on this some other time, but know that I did extend the invitation if she was willing to accept.

Just wanted to keep this thing active.  More when time permits.  Did I mention I have a new job?




From http://www.top-law-schools.com/chicago-law-school.html :

University of Chicago Law School

"Lauded as one of the most intellectual law schools in the country with one of the most acclaimed faculties, The University of Chicago Law School has long been rooted as one of the true elites. ..."

"At just under 600 students, Chicago Law has one of the smallest student bodies of the top schools (only Stanford, Yale and Cornell are smaller, and the latter two by only a few students), so it’s no surprise that students and faculty describe it as a setting of intimate, “intellectually intense” engagement. ..."

"Students said that from visiting other campuses, they could tell that students at Chicago seemed like they “actually wanted to be at law school to have careers in law, instead of just because they did well on the LSAT or something and had nothing else to do.”

Professor Leiter said the students are “self-consciously intellectual, ‘let’s argue about ideas all day’ types.” He continued to say,

Partly because Chicago has the reputation of being serious intellectual, rigorous, the self-selection factor perpetuates that. The nice thing about the law school is it’s happy to be nerdy. People take their work seriously, they take ideas seriously, and they like to argue — nobody’s a slouch around here.

A rising 2L offered:

Chicago’s reputation for competition is deserved insofar as you’ll find a lot of students who are willing to work hard to get good grades, but you’ll not find any mean spiritedness in the student body. People don’t discuss their grades or brag. It’s just that people are serious about doing well. It’s more about individual success and achievement as opposed to beating other students. ..."

"The reverence for Chicago Law graduates in the legal community is both apparent and deserved. Students are exposed to a plethora of legal concepts, and the school’s emphasis on teaching quality is manifested through student’s admitted engagement in class and, consequently, in their work. Employers know of Chicago Law students’ dedication and in turn reward them with consistently promising career prospects."

2013 USN Rank (March, 2013)	2012 USN Rank	2011 USN Rank	2010 USN Rank	2009 USN Rank	Law School	ATL Rankings (May 2013)	2013 GPA 25th-75th Percentile	2013 LSAT 25th-75th Percentile
1	1	1	1	1	Yale U (CT)	1	3.84-3.98	170-176
2*	3	2	2	2	Harvard U (MA)	3	3.77-3.95	170-175
2*	2	3	3	3	Stanford U (CA)	2	3.76-3.96	168-173
4*	4	4	4	4	Columbia U (NY)	8	3.58-3.82	170-174
4*	5	5	5	6*	U Chicago	4	3.65-3.96	167-173
6	6	6	6	5	New York U	10	3.54-3.84	169-173

Just another photo example

Here are some photos of Dr John Berardi that were in an article on elitefts.com.  The article is about intermittent fasting, and can be found here: http://articles.elitefts.com/articles/nutrition/intermittent-fasting-big-help-or-big-hype/

Interesting short article.

Anyways, he attached the following two photo sets.  The first one is him at 10%, and the second is him at 4%.  With all lean body mass remaining, this would be my general condition at 210lbs, and then at 196lbs.  Dr Berardi is obviously far more well developed than I am, so I would not be quite so bomb looking, but this gives another glimpse at different body fat percentages.  I am currently sitting at 253lbs and about 25%, which is admittedly far away from my goal, but way closer than it seems.  Just a little dietary discipline and the addition of cardio, and I think I could be within spitting distance of single digits by next mid-Summer for sure.

Anyways, on to the photos.  The first set is 10% bodyfat, the second is 4%.  Had trouble locating his bodyweight and height.

ou'll probably observe that the most noticeable difference shows through in the abdominal definition and back definition.  Some of this is due to the dramatic lighting of the second set of photos.  You may also notice his face actually leaned up a little bit, even though it was certainly not chubby or anything in the before photos.

I don't have a great set of before and after photos, because I frankly was just not that interested in photographic proof of my fatness.  So, in light of that information, here are the best I can do.  These first two are from when I hiked the Grand Canyon in October 2010.  This was actually not my top end weight.  In these I weighed about 280 or so, and I estimate that I was easily over 40% body fat.  Probably in the range of 45%.  I topped out by the end of the year at 300lbs, and probably close to 50% body fat, but I literally have NO pictures of this stage of my life. 

Now, this is the best I could do for progress pictures.  This is me all bossed up for a night out with Blaise.  This is very recent, and I'm about 258lbs and 26% body fat.  Obviously, since I'm wearing a suit jacket you cannot really see much, but for those in the know, I went from a size 56R jacket in January at my largest to a 48R in this picture:

Sometimes When You're On, You're Really Fucking On

An interesting thing happened today.  Interesting enough to warrant a post.

I was at the gym today (I had today off, because I worked Saturday for someone).  Did some shoulders and chest and a little bit of arms.

I asked the personal trainer guy there if he wouldn't mind checking my body fat percentage for me (I offered to pay, but he said that was not necessary).

Here are the results:

Weight..................................256 lbs
Body Fat.................................26.5 %
Lean Body Mass........................188 lbs
Fat Mass.................................68 lbs


This is interesting, because my long-term goal has been to get to 185lbs. For anyone not following this on their own, if I were to retain my current LBM and also achieve my previous goal of 185, I'd be dead.  I'd be negative body fat.

This is actually a great thing.  This means that I'm much closer to being in a desirable body (desirable to ME, fuck you society and your shitty standards) than I'd previously thought.  Here are some new goals:

Short-term weight goal.........225 lbs
Long-term weight goal..........200 lbs

These weight goals are associated with a presumptive retention of the same level of LBM (although, an increase would not be a bad thing either).  This means the following:

At 225 lbs, I'd be about 17% body fat.  The last time I was around 17% body fat, I weighed about 187 lbs and felt fucking fantastic.

At 200 lbs, I'd be about 6% body fat, which is ludicrously ripped.  I may in fact not even want to be this low.

Here are some picture examples that I lifted from: http://www.myfitnessstudio.co.uk/what-different-body-fat-percentages-actually-look-like/ and http://www.naturalphysiques.com/144/body-fat-percentage-guide-for-men-by-jeremy-likness

30% (this is not me...none of these are me):

25% (definitely look/feel fatter than this):

20%:

~16%:

10%:

~6%:

So 6% may not look too good on me.  I think I'd look a little emaciated.  I guess we'll see.

Anyways, every now and then, it can be awesome to have a day in the gym that is not JUST disappointment and disgust.

Also, abject heartbreak can be a great reason to drink.  It can also be a great reason to improve yourself. Your choice.

Progress

Progress has always been a funny little thing in my life.  Whenever I think that I'm totally prepared and pointed in the right direction, I end up falling on my face, coming nowhere even close to whatever goal I thought I wanted to progress towards.  I have started to think of these occurrences not as failures, but as corrections.  I thought for a very long time that I was destined to be a healer in a literal way.  A doctor.  A person who saved another person's life.  So I went to school for it.  I completed a degree in a field of health that legitimately interested me, and still does, in fact (holistic and progressive approaches to health).  I planned on working for a little while, then going to medical school of one type or another.

This obviously has not happened.  This is a good thing.  I've realized that I am just too far at odds with medicine to ever be satisfied practicing it.  I want to be proactive, not reactive.  Medicine is ultimately a reaction.  Everything that medicine has ever come up has been as a reaction to an existing problem.  Once that problem is "solved," nature is still unsatisfied, and comes up with a new problem, and medicine goes back to responding.

I've spent a lot of time thinking about this, and I employed a strategy that has worked for me in the past.  When I once wanted to be a firefighter, I anticipated that I would feel underutilized if I remained only a firefighter, so I started going up the line and increasing responsibilities.  I thought maybe I could be a paramedic, and then work on promoting up the chain and get onto the administrative level (Chief, Captain, etc).  Then I realized that I would still just be following policies put in place by people who were supposedly smarter than me.  So I kept going, and going, and going, and eventually decided that the only place where I could practice life saving medicine and not have to answer to anyone would be as a neurosurgeon (I know now that I was wrong, and that even there I would have to answer to administrators and whatnot).  Anyways, this is how I ended up in school for medicine.  Then I thought that naturopathy would be even FURTHER down the line, since most people really only turn to naturopaths after western medicine has already repeatedly failed them.  Whatever, I'm getting bored talking about this right now.  The point is that I spend a lot of time thinking of the possible results of every choice I make, and I proceed accordingly.  I almost always end up having to change my plan, or the plan doesn't work out at all even when I did everything right.  This is a good thing.

Without this phenomenon, I would never have stopped to ask myself, "What is more important than life saving medicine?"  The answer is, "An innumerable quantity of things."  I've already mentioned my modern belief that it may not be the most honorable quest to try to save the life of every person who is born, so I will not expand upon this any further than to bring attention to it now.  If medicine is not the answer, what is?  Stop looking at the situation from your own point of view.  What do third world peoples need?  Food, ultimately.  It does not help however to just deliver food supplies to these people.  Population dynamics will win.  If a peoples can not support themselves, then those peoples will ultimately be destined to die away.  The only possibility for a third world population to really be able to rise to second and first world status is for that population to pull itself up without help.  So how does a nation suddenly provide food for itself?  By obtaining and maintaining a steady supply of water. 

Hence my further education plan:  I intend to go to UA in Fall 2012 to begin studying Environmental Hydrology and Water Resources.  This is a Science college program, but I will be able to take (and hopefully pass) the Engineering test, if I so desire (I do).  I will be able to take skills from this program (actual skills!) and use them in the real world.  I will be able to choose where I work.  I will be able to work internationally and in crisis areas.  In fact, a few of the faculty helped set up water systems in Haiti following the earthquake there.  I would be able to stay in Arizona if I wanted to (up in the air right now), since water supply is a constant source of worry in the desert.  The point here is that I'd be able to go to a third world area and impart the tools and ability to sustain water supply, which could be used to maintain a food supply, which could be used to bolster an economy, which could be used to improve infrastructure, which could be used to expand the economy and build connections with other peoples and other nations, etc ad modernum.  Or, I could focus on engineering better and cheaper water related supplies, like ground water pumps or filters.  Either way, I would be impacting an entire population in one fell swoop, instead of working with one patient at a time.  It's all about maximizing your impact, right? 

Then there's body image.  I have recently sort of come more to terms with my body.  I don't have an unreal image of myself in either direction anymore.  I have a healthy and accurate image of myself, and I'm okay with it.  With this "revelation," or whatever you want to call it, I have found that I've also been better able to lose weight.  Weird.  I have been slowly but regularly losing since May.  I estimate that I topped out this year at 298 lbs sometime in January.  On February 14th, I was 295.  On March 1st, I was about 288.  Now I am 263.5.  This is a full loss of just under 35 pounds.  I'm still moving down.  I'm getting some of my strength back in a big way.  This is all good stuff.  I have lifting goals that are realistic and impressive.  I think that I can get there.  I'm not worried about these things. 


"Do you ever feel like you just landed
On this earth?
See the creatures all do their dances
Back and forth
You get restless and then you join them
On the floor
Suddenly it's tomorrow
It's not today anymore"

Hi-Speed Soul - Nada Surf


"When I accelerate
I remember why it's good to be alive
Like a twenty-five cent game
Maybe this weight was a gift
Like I had to see what I could lift
I spend all my energy
Walking upright"

Do It Again - Nada Surf


The lips of time, they kiss again
When I walk alone into the night
They know my voice, they know my name
My need for love, my fear of heights

So I keep my wit, my running game
My shoulders straight, chin up high
But it's all a lie
It's all a lie, it's all a lie

And I forget how the time, it flies
When my fingers crossed, I hope in vain
That you'll be home with sleepy eyes
To fix it all, cause you know my pain

And I forget how the time, it flies
When the day is long, and it keeps me dry
Cause it's all a lie
It's all a lie, it's all a lie

There's no perfect way to clear the mess
We both have a past in a silver frame
See my heart, it died a slow weary death
In the tainted arms of another man

You and I we're no different
Than the rest of the world when the morning rings
Everyone wants a piece of the love of God
Everyone sings, everyone sings

I know you can tell that I can't help myself
Can't help myself
Cause it's all a lie
It's all a lie, it's all a lie, it's all a lie, it's all a lie, it's all a lie

The lips of time, they kiss again
When I walk alone into the night
They know my voice, they know my name
My need for love, my fear of heights

But seen I'm not different than the rest of the world
When the morning rings
I just want a piece of the love of God"

It's All A Lie - Keren Ann

Get Real Already

What do you think is going to change?

You're going to look different?
You're going to act different?
You're going to be better at something?

You're going to worse at something else?

It's all bullshit.  You are who you are, and no one ever changes.  The only thing that changes is how the world perceives you.  In one moment, you're talentless, and in the next, visionary. 

You already know these people, and you know how they think.  You cannot change them.  There are other people, though.  People who may get it.  I hold on to some sliver of something that tells me that they are out there, and that they will form the army that I see in my mind.  They will understand the importance and the historic nature of you.  They will tell their children, and their grandchildren's children will find photographs and do research, and love you from afar.  They will feel kinship and wonder what it was like then.  They will wonder what you would think about their modern issues.  Things that you never could have conceived of having to have an opinion on.

They will wonder what things would have been like if the world only understood you.

Superhuman

Infographic by Smarter.org

We Are Not Wolves, Though We Should Wish To Be

I realized, sometime during the past two months, that people really like to refer to humans as "pack-animals."  They like to say that we operate best as a community, and that we are genetically designed to seek communion with each other.  They say that isolative people die younger, and have greater rates of depression.  They often compare humans to wolves, which is weird because, as far as I know, wolves only exhibit the frequently referenced wolf-pack hierarchy (alpha, beta, omega) in captivity.  In other words, people love to say that wolves exist in highly structured packs that are run by the dominant or "alpha" male.  Second in line is the beta, who acts sort of like a servant to the alpha.  Last in line is the omega who apparently is just everybody's bitch.  In reality though, wolves only do that when they are packed together with wolves that they are unaccustomed to (like they would be in a zoo or a refuge or something).  In the wild, wolves travel as families.  Father, mother, kids.  Cousins?  I don't know, I'm not some wolf expert.  My point is that the "wolf pack" that everyone loves to reference so much is actually an artificial construct that is sort of a due directly to the meddling of man, or possibly to extraordinary natural circumstances (disasters, famine, etc). 

I've been thinking about this concept for a while though.  Before I learned that about the wolves.  It seems to me that the people who insist that humans are pack animals are generally members of the pack.  They aren't the Alphas.  They aren't the leaders.  They are people who are confident in their incompetence, and know that without a strong leader guiding them, they would not survive.  They may not be stupid, or weak.  But they are afraid.  And furthermore, it seems that the leaders generally look at the pack as a group of pitiful creatures.  People who can not care for themselves.  And so the leader is there.  To make the decisions, and to save people from their own backward instincts.  We are so firmly modernized that we say things like "Without air conditioning, he could die!"  Granted, people die all the time in Phoenix (where I currently am) from heat related issues, but think about how long we as a species survived in all sorts of environments without air conditioning.  Cars.  Sunscreen.  Rectal exams.  Flavored yogurt NOW! with Fiber!  It seems that we are this weird accident that inexplicably continues to propagate, and the rest of creation is just waiting for us to go away so that they can get on with it.

Chasing Manhood

It's probably true that every man (and many women) wonders at some point what it is to be a man.  Masculinity.  Testosterone.  Other buzzwords.  Some men think that masculinity is modern rape and pillage.  Some women think so, too.  Some men think that masculinity is being able to be a woman, sometimes.  Some women hope this is not true.  There are those of us who see and acknowledge a quantum leap between biological human men and the things that we are now.  While once we performed outrageous feats of strength and athleticism merely as a daily necessity, we now throw up after running 10 kilometres.  Do you hear what I am saying now?

One of my favorite blogs recently pointed out one of my favorite truisms.  Scientists and the such rebuilt Viking longboats and tried to replicate their, um, adventures.  They used Olympic rowers, but found that it was impossible to conduct the same things that the Vikings are documented to have conducted for hundreds of years.  It was too hard for Olympic rowers (considered the best rowing athletes in the world, apparently) to power Viking long ships.  It was too difficult to navigate with their technology.  It was too cold.  Is this registering?  Some of our best living athletes could not even temporarily perform the task that peoples of old routinely performed.  ROUTINELY.  There is something missing.

Has anyone thought about work?  What does this have to do with the world?  What does this have to do with being men, and being women?  What did your money...save?  Prevent?  Create?  I don't think there are answers to these questions, of course.  This is something that most everyone thinks about.  It is related to the question of masculinity.  I think that, biologically, it is very much related.  People like to think of the differences between men and women as being the differences between "Hunters" and "Gatherers."  I don't think that it is this simple, of course.  Cavewomen, as I will refer to them, probably hunted a ton as well.  They were bigger than modern women.  Most muscular.  More like what modern people consider men to be?  Don't know.  The point is that they were well equipped.  They were strong.  They were vicious and biologically inclined, and they killed.  Is killing the key?  I hope not.  Or, at least, if it is, I hope that nature does not abhor a metaphor.  Men killed too, of course.  Until civilization, men killed for dominance.  Men killed for food.  Men killed for sex.  Dominance.  Food.  Sex.  Not necessarily in this order, I suppose, but definitely IN.  To be a man, it appears that you must care about domination.  You must care about food.  And you must care about sex.  Don't be an idiot.  Nothing I ever say is literal.  Unless, I say it is.

It appears that every important thing any man has ever done that was great enough to be remembered by the collective consciousness was done for food, domination, or sex.

What would you kill for?

I am looking for something to dominate.
I am looking for food.
I am looking for sex.

"There must be something we can eat
Maybe find another lover...
...Try to see it once my way
Everything zen...
...There's no sex in your violence"
-Bush

Do You Want To Come In?

Check me out. Erin said that she didn't really like me writing about her in here instead of just saying things to her face, but here I am, writing away.

Erin wasn't really responding to my texts. She wasn't exactly answering my phone calls. She most certainly was not calling me back. After about a week of this, I was convinced that there must be something up. Turns out I was right. She happened to also be sick that week, but that major player here was this very blog. She stumbled upon this thing most likely by following comments on Adam's Italy blog (not a big deal as I did originally gave her the address, but she told me she couldn't deal with the rules, and would therefore not read it). She most likely did what most people would do, and searched her name to see if I'd written about her, which of course I have. She found the old entry about herself, and focused in on a very specific portion of it.

I wrote about Paul, very briefly. Keep in mind that this was about a year and a half after he'd gone. My observation sounded cold,

"She has experienced shit, and her life is so empty, that it almost makes me angry. Paul died, and killed a large portion of her. The bags under her eyes are my monument to him, and they will seemingly never let me forget him or his impact on her. If I were to want her to love me, I am not sure that I'd ever be convinced that I had 100% of her. She belongs to him still, and I do not know how to help her let go; I'm not sure if she's ready to yet.
It was always understood (by her and I) that she and Paul would end up together after he cleaned up."

Now, to me, this doesn't sound as bad as I suppose it might to someone else. What I meant at the time was that Paul had become such a big part of her life, and with him gone, she didn't know how to refill that void yet. There is an interesting phenomenon to mention now. In some clinical studies, scientists looked at hibernating animals in order to understand the relationship between calories, fat, metabolism, exercise, and obesity. Basically, a hibernating animal is a very obese form of its normal self. The animal puts on a tremendous amount of weight in anticipation of a cold hard season that would yield an insubstantial amount of food to continue daily living. The weight is in the form of fat (brown fat, I believe), and it serves as an energy source for the animal, who then enters a state of something sleep-like wherein they can dramatically reduce their energy requirements. This reduction is generally attributed to the drastic lowering of core body temperature and the slowing down of all bodily functions. Blah blah blah, we all know how hibernation works, I guess. Anyways, scientists would take an animal who was in the midst of hibernation and then surgically remove a portion of their fat. Now, I'm not sure what I would have expected to happen, but what happened was certainly unexpected. The animal regenerated the lost fat to compensate. Considering that no additional food was going IN to the animal, it's baffling to try to figure out how they managed to regenerate fat to replace that which was removed. The point of this, though, is that when an important part of them was removed without their permission, they were able to replace it with something just as valuable that ultimately may save their life.

Erin is a hibernating ground squirrel, and Paul was forcibly removed by a curious surgeon. Her self has since regrown and recouped, in a way that ultimately saved her life. While once she was cold inside and her heart was beating very slowly, she is now gallivanting about the meadow with a thousand acorn-producing trees in each direction. The piece of her that was taken has not prevented this from happening.

To continue, Erin must have read the various parts of that post in which I extol her virtues and proclaim undying secret love for her. I wonder why I don't feel more embarrassed about this? I mean, she must have put the pieces together to understand that nothing has really changed, right? I think so, at least.

On Friday night, I had my bike and a jones for some trouble. I laced up and hopped on the light rail in to Phoenix. I rode in to downtown, where I got off and rode over to her (parents') house. I texted her, "Can you come outside for a minute?" and waited about for about ten. No answer, so I called her. She woke up and came outside to talk. We talked lightly for a minute or two to lighten up the mood or something? We hadn't spoken for like two weeks now, right? Then I just launched in to it and asked her what was going on. Laundry list. I hurt her with the stuff that I'd said. She didn't understand why I didn't just say it to her. She always comes to me with her problems, and maybe she should start to distance because she won't always be able to do that. A few others. Nothing that really surprised me, I guess. I apologized, because I think this was largely misunderstanding. She can't tell if I'm writing facetiously sometimes or not. Fair enough. I almost spilled guts when I started to tell her about how she had confused with me a few things, but it just didn't feel right yet.

Eventually, it became time to leave. I made motions to this effect, and she said that she would walk me to the light rail stop, which was right near her (parents') house. She was barefoot, but insisted that it wasn't a problem. We walked and talked and it was cute. Got to the light rail, bought a ticket, sat down. We continued to talk. Light rail arrives, but there appears to be approximately three crap loads of people on it, and no more bike hooks open, so I say that I'll just ride to the next stop and catch a less busy one. We start walking back to her house then, since I'm not going to get straight on a train. I don't remember when or how, but she offers to drive me home. I sort of felt like riding actually, but the night seemed unfinished, so I said okay. Drive home is light, but fun still. At the apartment too soon.

An interesting exchange occurred at the apartment. She had stopped the truck, but it was still running. We had a moderately awkward, "okay, well, I guess, goodbye then?" sort of moment happening, so I said, "Do you want to come in?" I was almost joking, but not really. Then, in a tremendous mindfuck, she thinks about it for a seconnnnnnnnnnnndddddddddddddddddd that lasted what God considers to be eternity. She eventually declined, due to lack of privacy, sort of? I mean, I don't think she was even considering the extrapolated extreme ending that is implied by my question, but it's fun to live in fantasies, isn't it? It feels like being a goldfish. You live in a fish tank with a castle and a rock and a seaweed thing. When finally someone introduces another goldfish to your tank, it is the beginning of an epoch. A new era of existence that surpasses your three month memory. Something better than a new castle, or a piece of coral, or a diver guy with a treasure chest that floats bubbles to the top of your tiny world. You can't ignore it when God puts a new colored rock there, but after three months, you forget why the rock was interesting in the first place. You always have someone to swim in circles with, though.

As for love:
"If you have it, you don't need to have anything else, and if you don't have it, it doesn't matter much what else you have."
-Sir James M. Barrie

Don't Forget

"The mere athlete becomes too much of a savage, the musician is melted and softened beyond what is good for him. The two should therefore be blended in the right proportion." -Plato

If You Love Me,

Make this happen

Detachment

I feel like I rarely get sideswiped. I am almost never overwhelmed. I don't know if this is a strength or a weakness, though. I mean, to people who are thrust into massive depressions when someone does even the most minutely offensive thing to them, this sounds like a great situation, I'm sure. Living in a steady state isn't as comforting as it sounds.

When something comes along that should cause me to be slammed, I step back and examine it as an outsider. This gives me unusual clarity and a pretty good handle on the situation, but I lose some of the depth of emotion that others remember so vividly. The weird thing is that I can usually identify how I otherwise SHOULD feel, and to what degree; I just sort of auto-suppress the majority of it. I don't look back and remember the pain or the anguish, but rather the lesson learned. Sometimes I learn something from the intended emotions. Sometimes I learn something from the sudden change of circumstance that I didn't really see coming.

Someone whom I know to be awesome and who I think will factor into the completion of the puzzle someday throws me off kilter. I was recently confused anyways. A long-term friend exhibits behavior that hints at something more. The possibility makes my tongue hurt. Why my tongue? Who knows. The first girl asks me what I think about her beginning to date a friend of hers. Too many circumstances preventing she and I right now, although I know she'll be important for a long time. I already said that. She sort of half asks, half furrows her brow in worry. Can you split between those two things? She texted. She asks and I tell her that I'm totally okay with it, because he is a good dude, and he'll look after her, which she sort of needs more than she'd like to admit. I mean, based on her history, she wouldn't appear to need ANYONE'S help, but I know better. She needs me, and I will need her more and more. She asked what I thought about her recent decision. I said it was cool. I said that I was surprised by the sudden change in her status in my life, and that I had to reconsider her future possible placement. I mean, does this ex out the possibility of her being my future love? Does the sudden maybe change of the long-term friend really mean that I've always sort of wanted it to mean? If it does, then I have to rethink Peace Corps, and Med School, and Everything.

None of this really affects me. It puts me into the same state of mind that I get into when trying to figure out the answer to a tough problem. A math problem, or a larger more conceptual problem. More abstract, more conceptual...conceptual. Conceptum "draft, abstract"...I don't know, the point is that everything hits me like a piece of a large puzzle that is itself a piece in an even larger puzzle. I have to figure out certain other peoples' lives so that I can figure out how they will fit into mine.

Much Ado About Something ... Again

It recently occurred to me that most people appear to get more and more crazy as they get older, but with the exceptions of senility and dementia I think most people stay the same and society just moves away from them over the years.

Also, I wonder if for those people who really DO go a little crazy, do they know it? Do they recognize it happening? I can so easily see myself becoming more and more obsessive and getting to a point of insanity somewhere in the not too far off future. I have shockingly little control. I mean, I have many times more control than the average person (arrogance), but I also have exponentially more to control. In other words, if they have X amount of control to exert over Y amount of whatever, I have 5X control, and Y^10 amount of stuff to control. Does that make sense? I'll do more with what I have than most people who stretch themselves to their absolute maximum. I'll do that, but I'll leave quite a bit undone, and I'll always wonder why I didn't save the world. Or maybe I'll wonder, "When will the world know that I've saved it?"

I'm looking forward to that calm that I so desperately hope comes with certainty of purpose. I mean, I'm certain that I HAVE purpose, but I don't really have any specifics. Great American Novel? Musical Revolution? Medical Breakthrough? Something much, MUCH smaller? I don't know.

I try to comfort myself with the idea that so many great people didn't become great until very late in their lives, and even then only after doing many horrible things or failing tremendously dozens of times before. I haven't really failed YET, but I see the obstacles already piling up and waiting for me. I feel at once that I have both to choose correctly the path to fortify myself (medical school? peace corps? work at a gas station?) and also to let everything just happen. I mean, I am trying my best to convince myself that this really is a matter of destiny and that I will accrue the necessary tools naturally and in that way will find the exact thing that I am to do.

I sometimes run in to other people who speak like this. People who feel such a tremendous tug towards greatness that they've stopped denying it, and stopped hiding it from everyone. Unfortunately, it's clear that most of these people will probably never achieve what they hope for. I hope that is never me. I can't really imagine much else worse.

I need to find myself living somewhere else.

I'm cleaning out my garage

Parents bought me some plastic shelving, which is perfect. They are lightweight but heavy duty enough to hold hundreds upon hundreds of cd cases and old shirts and novelty underwear and whatever else is floating around my garage. It was important that they be lightweight so that they aren't a super bitch to move when our lease is up (my old shelving was super heavy chromed metal and it was awful to move).

I'm cleaning this garage up. It was already pretty bad, then Louis "cleaned" the house and basically just threw everything from the living room and main house randomly into the garage. So it was almost unbearably messy. Shit everywhere. I walked in and literally said, "Oh, my God. Shit everywhere. There's shit everywhere! Damnit! There's shit on the windows! Oh, my God! My house is full of shit! He shit everywhere! Look what he did! He shit all over the walls! There's shit everywhere!" Or something like that. I don't remember EXACTLY what I said. Whatever.

Anyways, so I'm cleaning that shit and finding crazy old stuff. Like pictures of me from back in the day. And of old friends. And other things. Old clothes. Magazines. Books. CDs. I miss some of my friends that I don't get to see much. I realize that there is a chance that I'll leave for Peace Corps while Leslie is off exploring the world in the way that she has chosen to do so. I found a picture of her from her prom when she wore a blue dress with black bow detail stuff and was very tan and Stevie sort of ruined the picture, but he didn't look all that bad honestly. I found pictures from Cancun of myself with my shirt off. I found pictures from Italy of me and Elizabeth and my hair looks like Anthony Kiedis' hair did a few years ago, although the picture predates that stage of his career. Prom pics with Julee and Co. Fun times. We looked good. That one picture that haunts me of me flexing in front of my dad's car after it was painted. To be back there. I hate not being able to stop looking backwards. Saying more than once that things will change is worse than never knowing that they need to in the first place.

More and more

Some of my friends have postulated that I have an odd ability to befriend people who will need me in a significant way at some point. Some of my friends consider this a weakness. Some of my friend consider this a strength. Some of my friends probably don't think this is true anyways. I think that I do tend to meet people who are in hard places in life. Or maybe everyone has those hard places, and I just tend to be around when they go down. Whatever. The point is that I seem to always be called on during major crises. I've mentioned before that I love this about my life. It is kind of like being good at a really important job. I don't know, like being a food safety investigator who has never let an outbreak of E. Coli slip by on his watch or something. I mean, the other thing here is that people define crisis in different ways. For some, the crisis is simply whether or not to take a chance on loving someone unexpected. For others, it is whether they are going to be able to survive living with their parents any longer. For others still it is whether they will have a home and their daughter when they leave. I helped Terra move out of her mesa house and away from her raging husband. I packed up her uhaul. I drove to tucson to help unload it. I even slept there and tried to help console her. I tried to convince Heather that it was going to work out (it did). Et cetera et cetera. Et Set Terra. I wonder if it is that people who need me find me, or that people that I need find me. Or maybe that I'm just more aware of people who need help. I don't know. I think that it really comes down to whether I'm here for everyone else, or if they're here for me.

So here's the deal

Was drunk and with phone, so hilarity and destiny ensued.

Roadrunner got some lame dirty texting, which she thought was fun, so no problems. People and their guilt. Makes no sense. Just enjoy your life for a second or two. It's okay, Jesus won't damn you. Or maybe he will, in which case I apologize. My bad.

Secret Lover got the table and all that's on it, which is now everything.

Peace Corps application is officially submitted. Now I shiver with anxious energy for the entire next year, wondering if I'm man enough to do this. Expect a whole new slew of "will she wait?" songs based on SL probably, but don't tell RR that they aren't about her. It's casual, and it's okay that way. We're both invested. We're Jim and Karen, but Pam is still answering phones. Does that make sense? Yes, it does.

The new job starts on the 15th (a Monday). I will do a week or two of training here in Tempe, then may have to relocate to a battleground state until the end of the election. I'm super excited about this.

Leslie is going backpacking forever. I really want to do this, too. I was thinking that maybe when I get back from Peace Corps, if I still don't want to rejoin civilization, I could take the money they give me and go backpacking through Europe or something. I mean, I could also invest the money wisely, but that sucks and doesn't do anything except yield more money. Money is for fools. Or am I going to do that Masters program thing? I forget. Oh well.

Stranger Dazier

I am sitting at a window. A girl who looks like Chelsea is outside playing with her daughter and husband. The small orange trees outside the window move slightly because of the wind, and the flowers move even more. I'm hot. Espresso hits me like a flaming brick, and I just had two shots in a very quick drink. I catch a draft every so often from someone opening a door behind me, and I think that I'm feeling what the trees feel. I've decided that I like the sound of wind through pine trees. It is a nonviolent brushing noise that is like a very large man walking heavily. Intimidating for no reason at all. The steam wand makes a good attempt at impression, and I have to wonder about the serendipity of things. I look at friends often and think, "How can they still not know who I am?" It occurs to me that Leslie does, which is odd. We don't see each other, and I always feel like I'm sort of bothering her at least a little bit, or like she has so many fun friends and I'm always too serious. At the same time though, I really do tell her things. Not that all of my friends have betrayed me (most have not), but I really believe her when she says that she won't tell anyone. Maybe it's because we don't have any overlapping circles; rays pointed in different directions. She is moving to Tucson. I am sad about this for no reason. I don't see her now, even though we live within ten or fifteen miles of each other. I hope that she does well where she's going. Maybe I like that she does what I feel like I cannot do. She moves through her world with blinders on. She is just running straight forward towards nothing at all, not letting heavy people slow her down. She is living largely for her own purposes, which she isn't even sure of. She goes to California. I feel like I'm tied down. Like if I leave, people will die. I am in the crowd on which she is being carried, maybe. If I am rooted in the ground, blowing straight up with all of my breath, she is the person that I'm keeping aloft. The roots are what worry me. They aren't my body. They are the invasive tendrils of beautiful dying things. Little orange trees stand up against gentle winds, but they are in the pots that I put them in. I'm constantly nailing metal hoops around wooden pots. I need to make metal pots for more trees.

Ashlee last night

Watch until the end. Seriously.

You Make Me Want To Puke

Here is a recent post from MODBLOG, one of my favorite blogs:

"Now THAT’S dedication to body modification
Tuesday February 26th, 2008 @ 12:33 PM
Filed under: BMEBoys

Paul writes,

I’ve been working on a weight loss/body sculpting *mod*for a few years now, and I’ve finally hit my goal, going from over 235lbs down to 155lbs. I’ve been self conscious for a long while, but now I’m happy with where I’m at. It’s funny how self hatred can drive you to self love.

It’s one thing to sit under the tattoo needle for a few hours to modify your body, but I think we all too often write off the thousands of hours (and don’t get me started on the pain) it takes to transform ones physique like Paul has.

"

Monday Bloody Monday

I'm looking forward to Monday. It's the first day of my new year, really. I am going to get back on a bodybuilding type diet (with a few modifications, of course), as well as a powerbuilding weights routine. I'm also going to reduce the expected frequency of running, but increase the average duration. In ADDITION, I have rebuilt three of my bikes, and I plan on riding them more. One of them is a single speed mountain bike that I built last year (I built everything except the actual pieces of metal...I even laced my own wheels) that I never took to the mountains. I plan on getting back into cycling, because, after all, the revolution will have two wheels. Get with it. ALSO. Actually, I'm not sure if there is an also or not.