adventures

I think I may be hormonal, because I feel like I did in middle school - a longing for a life filled with passion and grace and fierce happiness and adventure and daring deeds. I think about the real world and get a little desolate. Good thing I'm a writer; better write novels that make other people feel the same way as I do.

Part of what's got me feeling all off-balance and cranky is that the kitchen is in pieces. Mike is DIY renovating a lot of the house. This includes laying tile, installing granite countertops, and putting in new sinks ... which he has never done before. I'm all for trying things and saving money by not hiring contractors. But, man, you gotta take the time to do it well, with precision. None of that is actually happening with the kitchen renovation. Fortunately, it's almost over.

Not being able to use the stove or oven, having to wash dishes in the bathtub ... it's really amazing how depressing that is.



But in unrelated, fun news, I went camping at the end of August.

Nick and I drove up into the mountains with some friends, Nick's little Honda heavy on its wheels with the weight of tent and food and toasting forks and sleeping bags and people. We walked around Estes for a while, watched a glass blowing demonstration and bought some saltwater taffy.

(I tried to convince everyone to take one of those touristy old-timey saloon photos, but they were being buttheads.  One day, I will manage to get one of those pictures taken. ONE DAY.)

It started pouring rain. It was cold and heavy with huge fat drops that audibly impacted with the ground. We held out our hands to feel the smack of rain on our palms, and then we ducked into a shop to look at fossils.

The rain let up pretty quickly, but it stayed cloudy and thundery - you could hear it grumbling away over the mountains. We drove to our campsite and set up the tent. We played some card games, then built a fire and had hotdogs, baked beans, and s'mores. Everything tastes better cooked over a fire.

I woke up in the middle of the night (thanks, bladder), but I'm so glad I did. Up in the mountains, away from the smog and lights of the city, the stars were crazy bright, Jackson Pollocked all over the sky. You couldn't see all the sky, since the pines hemmed it in on all sides, but it was still mind boggling, in a really great way. They looked so bright and moon-close, despite knowing how far away they really are.

Normally stargazing makes me feel both awed and insignificant. It's a positive and depressing experience at once. But this time, I just let the sheer beauty wash over me. Didn't think too hard about it. Normally, I'm all for thinking hard about things. But it was nice to switch off the brain and just enjoy the sight.



More good things: This weekend, one of my good friends from college is coming to visit! Nick and I are planning outings already. Casa Bonita, a tour of the Great Divide Brewing Co., maybe a trip to Boulder to play Boulder Bingo (with squares that say things like "man with ponytail" and "metaphysical bookstore"). I miss my college friends, and the collegiate life. I should go back to school.

luminous and happy

(video credit youtube user AgentThirtyFour)

I watched the solar eclipse with Nick last week. The internet misinformed us, and we thought we wouldn't be able to see the eclipse from home. A road trip to New Mexico or Arizona was out, given that we're broke, and Nick couldn't get Monday off of work. So we watched the eclipse online. After a while, though, we figured we'd give it a shot, and went outside to see what we could see. I'd bought a pair of flimsy solar viewing glasses a couple months ago, and we decided to give 'em a spin.

As we stepped onto the sidewalk, there was a break in the cloud cover, and we were able to see the last ten minutes of the eclipse. It was really strange, but very fun, looking at the little orange sun, grinning like the moon. A good quarter of its face was hidden in shadow. We watched the shadow sliding away and the sun slipping behind the horizon.

It was fun. I know I already said that, but it was. Fun in a summer vacation, staying up past our bedtimes kind of way - except this isn't summer vacation and I don't really have bedtimes anymore. It was nostalgic. It felt like when I was a kid and would lie in bed with the late summer sun coming in through the white curtains, falling asleep listening to the older kids playing down the street, to the irregular pong! pang! pong! of their basketball smacking the pavement. Comfortable, and familiar. Not the eclipse itself, I guess. But tumbling outside into late afternoon sunlight, getting giddy and awestruck. It was like being a kid.

Just a few days ago, Nick and I attended a friend's young brother's graduation party. It was another gloriously nostalgic day. Gorgeous weather. I sat outside and ate grapes and relaxed with friends and made plans to go backyard camping this summer. I also got involved in a lively debate about the relative believability of Voldemort's reign of terror in the wizarding world. (I love having intensely nerdy friends.)

It's weird. The stress and constant pressure of needing and failing to find a job (or rather, a job that measures its payment by the year, not by the hour) has me feeling pretty desperate and worried most of the time. But then at other times, I'm struck by these inexplicable kid-moods. Like, I'm overcome by these wild creative desires that are not at all productive or realistic. I think it's just subconscious escapism - just my mind trying to distract me from anxiety. Or maybe it's trying to motivate me? Like it's saying, "Look at all the rad stuff you could do once you're not worrying about how you're going to afford to buy groceries!"

For example (given the time and opportunity), I want to be in a big ridiculous joyful sloppy scornful loving cynical gigantic bizarro band that's like the Decemberists & the Head and the Heart & Florence + the Machine & Glittermouse & Mucca Pazza & OK Go rolled into one, all heartfelt and nerdy. With like twelve people on stage, playing weird instruments and being noisy and luminous and happy. Our shows would only be performed in the summer, at night, outdoors, with the crickets and frogs, and each performance would be accompanied by fireworks. And we'd hand out sparklers to the audience.

Realistic? Practical? Reasonable?

No. And, in all honesty, it's probably something I'll never actually do. But it's a nice daydream, and it reminds me of all the small ridiculous creative things I want to be doing. Filming youtube movies. Making music with friends. Trying out new recipes. Learning to swing dance.

It's a good reminder to myself to keep sending out applications, to keep editing and tweaking my resume, to keep churning out cover letters. Because, one day soon, I'm gonna land a decent job and I'll have time to be just as ridiculous and creative as I damned well please.

It's gonna happen soon. And when it does - look out.

Love & ... Aliens?

"And I watched those constellations shift, hoping that they would part and I would see her face.  It was at that moment, in that very small town of 30,000 or so, that I truly appreciated the vastness of the universe and the searching we might do in it."  - John Hodgman

I don't have anything to add to this. It's funny and touching and weird. Just watch it.

this exceedingly rare spark

See that little speck of blueness a little more than halfway down in the far right stripe?
That's Earth, from about six billion kilometers away. Image taken by Voyager 1.

The other day, I had a somewhat upsetting epiphany.  I realized that, in the far, far distant future, there will be no more stars in the sky.

Actually, it started with the realization that someday (should intelligent life survive so long), kids will look up into the sky, and Orion will be missing a shoulder.  That's because Betelgeuse, the massive red supergiant that's makes up the hunter's left shoulder, is due to go supernova sometime within the next million years.

And then it made me realize that we live in an absurdly brief period,when stars burn in the darkness, when galaxies bloom, when there is warmth and light and motion.  In the end, entropy wins.  It won’t be long, on the cosmic scale, before every star burns out and every spinning planet goes still.  Heat will dissipate, fusion will cease, and even the microorganisms that turn our bones to dust will have long since gone extinct.

Pretty weird to think about.  Life is an anomaly in the universe, this exceedingly rare spark that we all share.

And yet, in this brief bright time, we spend our days fearing each other, fighting over infinitesimally small differences, feeling disconnected and discontent

It's easy to forget that all life on the planet is made from the same four nucleic chemicals, built with the matter forged in the hearts of stars - each and every organism, from algae  to tigers to viruses to us.  Even the spider that just ran across my bed (sending me into paroxysms of horror - looks like I still have lessons to learn about regarding my fellow life forms as fellow life forms).

And when it comes to humanity, all of our differences lie in a single percent. I am 99% genetically identical to everyone I know, and to the people on the other side of the planet.  Unfortunately, the human brain isn't good at thinking on a global scale, let alone a cosmic one.  It's mostly just really, really good at thinking about itself and its immediate wants.

I'm not good at being considerate of people a few continents over, or a few generations down the line.  I'm not even good at being considerate of my future self, as evidenced by my continued penchant for eating french fries.  So how can I expect human beings to be thoughtful and global-minded?

I guess I don't, really.  But if humans, or whatever humans evolve into, are going to travel across the galaxy and maybe meet other life forms out in the vast wild universe (something I consider a worthwhile goal), I can at least work on trying to be a bit more far-thinking myself.

After all, life everywhere should be reaching out to find each other, so we'd be able to know, as we head toward the day the last star fades, that we're not alone.

p.s. Be sure to read my friend Becky's blog of flash fiction, Pretending to Know You.  She's putting her one wild and precious life to good, creative use.

We humans are capable of greatness.

videos by Reid Gower

In a conversation I had with Becky a few weeks ago, I started putting into words why I'm so fascinated by astronomy, and space, and how we, as a species, need frontiers. To keep us hopeful, and humble.

The idea of future space exploration fires me with hope and fear and a desperate, lonely tender love for humanity.

Humanity is so lonely - the only intelligent species on our planet, the only ones burdened with the knowledge of our own existence and limitations, with no one to talk to and no one to understand us, and we revolve all alone in space, a little blue dot full of a curious and heartbroken people. Thinking of interstellar exploration makes us aware of how rare and amazing we are. It puts us in the right perspective. It makes us realize that we have a future, and we should do everything to make sure it's long enough for us to get to the stars.

Wouldn't it be terrible if there were other intelligent species out there, ones who've been through fire and waste, ones who've come so close to self-destruction, ones watching anxiously to see us take our first wavering steps, waiting to say hello, but we killed ourselves before we even got the chance?



"Projects that are future-oriented, that (despite their political difficulties) can only be completed in some distant decade, are continuing reminders that there will be a future." - Carl Sagan