Praying for a normal MRI

Today, I contemplate many things (as is often the case when I make these blog posts).

I feel as if I am too inward-thinking. Yes, I do think much about the outside world, but recently I've been wondering about my insides ... more like worrying. My senses feel off. I cannot separate the psychosomatic symptoms from the real ones (if any). Tomorrow I go in for an MRI. Wednesday I will sit with a neurologist and talk about the results.

I want to be brave, but how can one be brave when he knows absolutely nothing about what is in front of him. In my lifetime, I have lost such special people; I have confronted poverty; I have faced down bullies; I have run until my legs feel like jelly; I have cried, face down in the grass on a hot summer day with no regard to how perfect the day was; and I have risen to such great heights of happiness even on a cold rainy day. I have overcome many fears and stepped great distances from my comfort zone. Yet, this feels like nothing else. At 31, my body and mind might be betraying me. My body's abilities may fall off steeply, and I may be destined to ride out my days in a wheelchair; I may lose my ability to speak, to act, or to think. 

I am scared, and I want to be brave.

How will I do what I want to do? How will I reach my goals like this? I am praying that these results come back negative.

Rant on.

My body can be a ferocious beast. It can travel hours over mixed terrain and ascend up a vertical face. Honed, it can do hours of cardio. Honed, it feels refreshed after laying in a bed after a full day of outdoor activity.

Yet, my body is a vessel. It carries a mind that taxes it with stress and uncertainty. It pulls it through low nutrients and inactivity. I stare at computer screens for hours and only my fingers twitch. Lately, I have been lazy. I try to keep working out and fail. Slowly, I can feel my body fall into disrepair. Two days ago, my leg went numb while laying in bed. As I tried to move it, nothing happened. I flopped over in bed, awaiting the numb, tingly feeling to come but nothing happened. I panicked. I flopped my body to the side, hoping that my leg was just numb but working. When I got to edge of my bed, my body collapsed onto my leg. I sat there for a moment and wondered what to do. Immediately, my overactive imagination jumped to stroke. Given the stress, poor nutrition and inactivity, I felt it wasn't too much of a long shot. Given in to despair, I called my roommate into my room. As he came in, maybe the way I shifted my body made a difference and my leg was working. I told him sorry for wasting his time and made an appointment with the doc. A nurse checked me out for stroke and said I did quite well (in other words, nothing indicated a stroke). The doc wanted me to see a neurologist. However, I've been down this road before with my insurance. It is stressful going to the doctor. It is even more stressful trying to cope with the medical bills. So I will wait to see if it happens again.

I went running afterward and felt weak. My body is in no shape to run, and it makes feel slothful. I want to run and feel free like old times. I want to be able to run three miles and not feel like I'm going to die. Lately, I can barely run one mile. BLAST IT!

The semester is wrapping up and I feel obligated to finish a paper at the last minute. I had to pick the topic while I was worried about finances and not thinking about school. So, needless to say, I got the topic wrong. Being that it was too late to switch the topic, I find my theme and all my conclusions to be contrived.

I hope to escape this summer and get my thesis done. I only want to connect to people on a deeper level. I want to make some new friends and have some new adventures. I want to press my body to be active again and away from this depressing environment. It still doesn't feel like I'm leaving Moscow. I guess I am just as worried that Boise will be much of the same. I learned last weekend that even though everyone has been nice upon my return, some talk constantly saying things they wouldn't dare say to my face. I say these people are cowards. Yet, uncertain of who they are, I am pushing everyone back.

It is unsettling to be in this atmosphere. I value genuineness and sincerity. I believe this fakeness is the failing of leadership in this country.

Rant over. 

2L year ramps up. Summer unknown/scary. Feeling down, but Alive.

Where is this big world I used to know so well? Where is adventure, achievement, a challenge worth attempting?

Where are my friends? Where are those kindred spirits who long for deep connections, deep experiences, truth, and adventure?

My routine has become disjointed, too busy with law school to breathe, too busy trying not to stress about my summer. It gets closer, and my plans still hang in limbo. I have again reached outside of the ordinary to try a new approach. It has yielded little results. But I fear I must approach the very precipice of my own destruction before I turn away.

I have come too far to give up now.

I am down this morning.

Last night, I wrapped myself in an old blanket and shivered myself to sleep. I didn't want to close the window. The air was too fresh, and oh how I have missed fresh air. I slept alone which is probably for the best. Too many times, I get close to the wrong people. Too many times I get close to people who are on some different path, and we must always part. Many times, I wake up and would like to see a family. Instead, I see my alcoholic roommate shuffling around recovering from his latest lonely bout of drinking. He is not a good conversationalist. A bitter law student, nearly every conversation turns into him trying to prove he is right on a topic, but I fear he rarely is.  So I turn to him as I pass to leave and say something generic like, "Hey, have a good day today." It keeps it positive, but let's him know I am not really in the mood for conversation (at least not with him).

My life has become a series of small connections with many people. I work on legal research or my studies during the day. Sometimes, when I close my eyes I can still see the glow of fire against the swaying trees, the silhouette of rocky shores, Curt and Al strumming their guitars. Or I see the red crimson cliffs of Zion as I ascend downward into a slot canyon slipping down into the water, disconnecting my rappel and slowly treading to the other side. I look up and a tiny slit of blue stands above towering red sandstone cliffs on each side. It is like caving without the claustrophobic tightness. I see the gray Eastern sandstone as I ascend up a rock wall. I see my friends around a table for dinner. I see many old faces filled with laughter. I see a community. 

My life is better for these memories. Yet it is a curse all the same. I truly miss feeling connected. I long for some stability in my life, and I long for a family. I long for beauty and poetry. I long for talking about the finer things, and I long for those days when I didn't fear the future so much. I felt on a path, and I felt wise for being there. Now I feel like I got lost somewhere along the way, and all this was a horrible mistake. I have lost friends, loved ones, experiences, and family. Yet, I still cannot stop.

On any given day, you'll see me laughing, making light of a situation, and saying that everything is OK. Why? Because if I continue downward all day: I will never see the canyon walls of Zion; I'll never be able to introduce children to the wilderness; I'll never hear another jovial strum around a campfire; I'll never hold one woman's hand into the future forever; I'll never be able to connect to my family; I'll never get out of this hell I've stepped into.

So I will find ten reasons to laugh today. I will find a reason to run or climb. I will find a reason to make someone's day better.

“Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could. Some blunders and absurdities no doubt crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day. You shall begin it serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense.” RWE

To last year and my free spirit. It survives.

I sometimes look back and question the meaning of this blog. Did I use it as a form of self expression or open honesty with my friends? Did I intend it as an outlet for my writing desires?

In it, I have captured instances I never would have remembered, of passions I once held so high. In it, I can see both my rise and fall as a free spirit. I can see areas where I had more self discipline (and much less.) I try to keep my silly notions of love far and away from this place ... Yet they creep in.

So today, hopefully, I will start again. I should write about the current political atmosphere, the unjust nature of a society that allows a strong middle class to disappear. Yet ... I shall not write about these things because they are out of my control. With all my knowledge, I realize every day how powerless I am in this society. I am powerless both in society and for myself. Every day, I believe I know less about people, about me, about the world. Yet, I can know the moment and focus on what I can do write now. 

I find myself writing in the bustle that is the COOP during a late Saturday morning rush. Every table is full with people in their conversations, drinking coffee and eating the COOP's delicious food. A woman maybe in her 30s sits at a diagonal from me. She sits alone, stares into her drink, and then scans the room. She does not seem anxious, but maybe a little lorn as she breathes across the top of her steaming cup. Men sit and stand around, dressed in their camouflage jackets and hats. Some have the regular hunting orange. Most others seem to be college students or faculty.

I randomly told a barista today that I may never know Moscow. It is a quiet place during one of the most busy and controversial phases of my life.  I long for so much while I  am here. It all started with Steph. I always thought I would marry her. I thought I could finally move on with some of my larger life plans, like kids and family. But the other side of me kept pushing my career. I thought, back then, if I was not moving forward, I was falling behind. So I came here to Idaho and left her there with her goals. It thought it was fitting to leave her there with her goals so I could focus on mine. However, I slumped into what I now deem was something akin to clinical depression. My body started shutting down. I drank too much. I barely held onto strained connections with the people around me, and I felt I was coming every closer to the disastrous consequences of being too poor in America. Once down there, I felt my life would be awash with waste, no way out, no matter how talented I may be. I asked myself what really separated me from those who I had helped in the past? I lost my faith in life. I soon lost my hope. So the idea of Steph was the only thing I hung onto. I became more sick and more stressed. Soon I found myself leaving school to be with her. I needed a restart, but my spirit even when returning to Denver was still dead. So I malingered there, first with Erinn then with Steph. My uncle did not send the money he promised to send, the $1,200/month (for three months) I was counting on to find a job. His business was falling on hard times, he said. So with no money, I again fell into the spiral of poverty. But there is something about Colorado that kept me afloat. I decided that it was the only thing that might save me. I needed to be a man of action so I moved in with Steph. I soon found myself healthier each day, but spiritually still dead inside. Her words were cold, focused on her own goals. It would take a fight to elicit any emotions from her. Maybe that's why I initially loved her. She was focused, and I had enough spirit for both of us. Yet, with my then bankrupt spirit, it was not enough. Soon, I was offered a job in Carbondale IL. I reluctantly accepted. I felt it was a wrong move, but back then, I felt as if everything was the wrong move. I trusted the people inviting me though, and Steph urged me on. So with a great deal of inner conflict (I had just interviewed for a job at a small research firm and had a second interview), I left.

My time in Southern Illinois was both depressing and magical. I would awaken in a cold, smelly, mouse-infested camper or a muddy tent most of the time. When the cold lifted, I was covered in seed tick or mosquito bites. During this time, I would go to the hospital once with an allergic reaction and feel sick many nights from worry or stress. Yet, I soon started to emerge from my spiritual sickness. Curt strummed away on his guitar singing John Hartford songs around the campfire. Al sang, laughed and cut me with his deep, meaningful conversations. Meanwhile, Teresa gave me a cold outer core that would warm into a friendship. It made me feel as if my actions were satisfactory, as if my life had some purpose.

Most importantly, the children and nature encompassed my life with their relative antithesis of what I had become. Life and hope was what they were to me. I felt joy and laughter when working with them. I remember a vivid vision of standing in a torrential poor, my hood pulled over my head, cold to the core, slightly shivering, (feeling more alive than ever) talking to a 12-year old girl about the difference between perceived risks and real risks. She did not want to do an element on the challenge course that rose six feet from the ground. She had seen her classmates do it, but she still feared it. It reminded me of so many times on the rock face when all I could see was the fall even though I knew I had the power to do it. I had spoken to this girl a few times before. She was nerdy, interested in science and had a very inquisitive mind. I saw great things in her future, but I also thought of me at that age and the people who had inspired me. I said to her that life has two kinds of dangers: real and perceived. If one started to confuse the two, it would lead to a life not lived. It would lead to fear, and one would be at the mercy of whatever society wanted. Real risks come with real consequences. However, perceived risks may seem scary, but they are no more real than the boogie man that used to stand in the closet during our childhoods. So feel I told her to feel it out with her mind, and I told her to have faith in those whom she trusted to guide her. She said she trusted me, and I soon saw her conquering the element. The smile of her face, of her mom's face (one of the chaperones) and the laughter of the group soon ensued. So there we were, in the pouring rain, on a 50-something degree day, shivering and so happy. 

Moments like this were akin to stepping into the sunlight from a deep dark cave. The moments wrapped me up in their warmth and reminded me of who I was, whom I had become, and the path back. This world and its fears stripped me of my true nature, and suddenly it was coming back. The situation with the girl was not the only incident. There were others: Al (a guy I viewed as legendary) telling me he would miss me and our conversations; jumping off Curt's boat in the moonlight with two of my best friends: Thaddeus and Tyler; a boy telling me that a moment in the dark, in a group, not talking, by the lakeside, surrounding by a cacophony of singing tree frogs was the most beautiful of his life; pulling Teresa's niece back from a copperhead snake; Thaddeus's offer to stay at his place after my allergic reaction; Anne's offer for me to stay with her even though I knew she was annoyed by me; the random canoe trip back from a lunch spot with two boys to grab the food I had mistakenly left where I saw two beautiful women on the camp's beach (of which one would ask a colleague if I was single); the random trip with the climbing girl to exchange some canoes where she would tell me that I was a handsome man (I had really lost any confidence in appearance).

Recalling it now, nearly a year later, I know I have forgotten more than I remember. But I needed to put this down on a page. Because now, I work with so many people who I do not know. I connect with people who know me so superficially. I hide behind a mask here in Moscow. I am so busy. I am so poor. I doubt myself at every corner. I have no friends in my back corner. This journey seems to be a rock climb where no rope exists. Either I make it or I fall to my own demise.

So like any rock climb, I try to let go of the past, try not to focus so much in the future. I try to focus on each movement, it's beauty and not the fall potential.

It is only then I can keep climbing.

Alone.

Sunny light reflects off the budding green, showering speckles across the brown bark of the deciduous forest. Little creatures like frogs and turtles surround me. Dragonflies will soon alight and bring an essence of summertime.The calm breeze moves silently among the new leaves and ripples the water.

Yet, today I found out that I can't again pay my bills. When did it come so hard to cover the basics? I feel myself sliding toward homelessness, destitution, and a life unimaginable.

Fear being alone, having no family, no friends, and no love who will have your back in the darkest of times.

For that makes one lose sight of the beauty that surrounds us.

My hands shake as a type.

I am alone.

Everything is spinning.

I feel best when I am part of something, when I feel as if people need me. I sit here tonight. Someone said it would be about the same if I left. It was, I feel, the last person that I may have felt needed me.

And as I sit, I feel more alone than ever. To another, I say, "Even if it was a 'no,' a simple response would have been nice.

I feel as if I have made friends in each place I have been, but stupidly I have clung to this idea of Colorado being home. Now, here I am. I feel more unwelcome than ever. I cling to the hopes of a job, of some stability. I have no other place to go, and the one I love, I fear, does not care if I stay or go.

Dark days, some say, test the mettle of a man. I say that these dark days can be done and over with. I yearn to laugh once again, to see the rhythm among the chaos and the opportunity to choose levity.

For tonight though, I sit alone, suited up to go outside and walk the city streets, my uncle's condescending words ringing in my ears that I am just like my deadbeat father. Those words cutting so deep inside. Right now, I am Depressed and longing for something that I do not feel I deserve.

Dear Brian, I say to myself, hold on. For someone may need you still or be wrong in the present assessment.

I cling to the thought of a warm breeze sifting against the leaves, fresh mountain air, a heartfelt hug, a smile of someone I love, the heavy rain during a summer storm, the feeling of something accomplished, the feeling of challenge, the daring adventure and the thought of someday feeling part of a family. I cling to it as I cling to life even when I descend deeper into this torrent, no clue where I will end or where I may begin again.

Everything is spinning.

Colorado, do you welcome me?

It is not the idealized Colorado of my past. Since my return, I have applied to 40 plus jobs resulting in four interviews emphasizing that I was "overqualified" for the positions. One person even mentioned the fact that he wanted to interview me just to meet me. Another said my resume was intimidating.

Today, I sit in limbo. One manager from a consulting firm took me to lunch where he concluded that I should meet his fellow partners. He says that he thinks I have a really great background. Four or five months is the wait, he says.

This past Tuesday, I interviewed for another position that I desperately want. A lady from D.C. gave me a "9.9," and said that it was a pleasure talking to me. I am very educated about the different facets of this position, proficient in the way nonprofits work, a perfect match for this organization, willing to take a lower salary because it is public interest work. In other words, it would give me some form of fulfillment unattainable by money alone. Alas, the world does not always work on capabilities. So I fear that another opportunity may be slipping from my grasp.

Still, I hang on to HOPE. It is that essence, the feeling that tomorrow will be a better day. Hope is that relaxed element even in the midst of painful, wretched torture that fuels a joke and a relaxed demeanor. Holding on to hope tells the world that I am strong. It shows the world that I will not be so easily broken.

Today, I sit on the edge of homelessness. Tomorrow, I may be stable, happy and productive. On the fulcrum, my weight shifts first towards ruin then to glory. I am careful on the fulcrum. One slight mistake may make me fall the wrong way. It is that hope that keeps me balanced. My education and love for learning help me to focus and stay resilient. My great past keeps the hope alive that it may someday return.

If life is a climb, I fear that this moment is a crux.

The body tenses and relaxes. My tender pectorals and abdomen wince with each movement. Only hours ago, I twisted and flexed and flexed and twisted with a splash and a breath for a mile. Swimming. It is a custom I have been getting into while I deal with the stress of being destitute, let down, and bewildered. Never has my confidence fallen so low. When I left Idaho for Colorado, I knew it would not come easy, but I underestimated the shit storm that would ensue.

To keep my head up, I swim. I run. I hike. I try to surround myself with friends. I try to take any opportunity while the debt collectors call and harass. I feel sorry for those collectors, led down the path to earn money by harassing those who have fallen on hard times. Hopefully, my stint is brief. Some days are better than others. Some days, I feel an interview coming. I apply for three to seven jobs a day.  I meet people who tell me that they can help me find jobs. However, I feel nothing materializing.

Sometimes, I take a breath to reorient myself. That which was planned never was, and that which is always is. I must remember a saying by an old hero, RWE.

“Write it on your heart
that every day is the best day in the year.
He is rich who owns the day, and no one owns the day
who allows it to be invaded with fret and anxiety.

Finish every day and be done with it.
You have done what you could.
Some blunders and absurdities, no doubt crept in.
Forget them as soon as you can, tomorrow is a new day;
begin it well and serenely, with too high a spirit
to be cumbered with your old nonsense.

This new day is too dear,
with its hopes and invitations,
to waste a moment on the yesterdays.”

To reminisce of a time once passed, and relived again.

"You always want to see as much of the sky as possible." - Flatliners

I have only been as lonely as I am now one time in my life, and that moment was a short-lived, 9-month stint in Jacksonville, IL. I was miserable, and my body went through much of the same thing. I felt out of place, ostracized, and defunct. I worked hard, and I felt nothing for my endeavors. I felt lost.

When I got to Northwestern University, I doubted everything about myself. I felt defeated. If I couldn't make things work at a lower-level school, how was I supposed to make it work at a prestigious university like Northwestern?

Yet I thrived! I remember biking around Chicago after work. I did not know anyone, but soon found myself awash with friends. After watching my relationship disintegrate during my last few weeks, I soon found another woman, an inner city school teacher, who had a heart of gold. I danced around the city, attending a free event here and there. I felt the thrill of walking past Cabrini Green, a once-infamous housing project. I walked on the edge as I rode my road bike down into the south side during a 60-mile bike ride! And soon, my body returned to normal, my rhythm at work progressed quickly. I was doing more and more, and soon I was part of a team at a prestigious school. Suddently, I was getting good reviews. My confidence steadied.

I do not mean to run away, but something is not right here. I hate whining, but it feels like my body knows me better than my own mind. Silly as it seems. I thrive for adventure, for a challenge, for big mountains, or new experiences. I thrive for working and being around people. I thrive for being productive.

I thrive to build. 

Law school seems to fuel none of this. It has turned into yet another academic endeavor. It feels like another hoop to climb through before I can move onto the next stage of my life.

It feels pointless.

The worst part is that I feel utterly alone as I go through it. 

I fear death when I no longer feel alive.

As of recent, my body has returned to mostly normal. My limbs are limber again. The pain that has set so consistently in my abdomen and sometimes chest fades. I swim a little over a mile every other day. I run miles on the other. I have lost a little over 10 lbs, and I am a step away from climbing again.

I am thankful for all these changes. Yet, a tiny notion sits in my head. Must I keep this diet forever? Do I have food allergies or is something malfunctioning? Two nights ago, I had a protein shake and then a grilled cheese and everything happened again. My doctor doesn't seem to think it is my gallbladder. My family heartily disagrees.

It baffles me that the body can control our temperament, our ability to focus, our ability to love fully, and our ability to live in the present. I am so thankful for these days when things begin to return to normal. I have all but said good bye to law school. If it was the stress that did all this to me, I want no part in it. I want to feel as I do now. I want to feel my feet, light and quick, rising from the ground and pushing my body forward. I want the flexibility and lightness to climb trees, to hike big mountains and scale giant cliffs. I want to sense the world and not live in fear.

I fear death when I no longer feel alive. 

Boise, the beginning

The realities of the heart transform into the realities of the body if you are as I am, a very passionate soul. During the past several months, my heart has felt the void and my body has crumbled. Only while reading the words of Wallace Stegner as an old man have I realized the truth of these words.

"It is remarkable how apt bacteria and other agents of the moral sense can be, how readily they infect and afflict us when we need affliction."

What a wake up call it has been, an even slower path to recovery. I have been carrying a great weight of sadness, and my legs finally buckled. I am relieved I made it through my first year of law school. My uncle attributes this to my strength to keep going. I attribute it to my folly and a near miss of disastrous proportions. But I am often too hard on myself.

I sit here now in the late morning breeze, speckled shade while birds sing and voices faintly call in the distance as they navigate the green of the golf course. I have come to live with two people whom I respect and feel great for their company, much like their son who first became my friend.

As I start to lift my heart, my body slowly starts to recover. Climbing sits only moments away and long bike rides seem easier and easier.

Now is not the time for many choices. I think my recovery is still key. However, soon I will have to shape the next few years and that time is growing near. So much sits on the horizon and like any other time in my life, decisions stand near.

Rejoice

For we are creatures made of tiny little stars swirling around in atomic clouds. Laugh with friends. Find new adventures! Forever follow and do justice to love. Forever hold on to an optimistic spirit.

Worth.

A law school dropout, now director of a theater department smiled and spoke about truth. The only thing he said mattered was truth. 

Yet, where is truth when it feels as if society drags us constantly from it? Where so many people hide behind the mask of some rationalization, truth is a lost concept. Some hide behind advanced degrees, never wanting the world to know their own intellectual impotency. Some, outwardly beautiful people, will forever feel insecure in their beauty. Their worth ebbs and flows on the extrinsic energy of the group. 

However, inner confidence gives rise to a classic comfort. This comfort gives rise to a classic, key emotional stability that helps us stay as a steady as a clock when all the world storms around us. As Robert Louis Stevenson once wrote, "Quiet minds cannot be perplexed or frightened, but go on in fortune or misfortune at their own private pace, like a clock during a thunder-storm." 

I have watched my confidence dwindle this year. I wrapped it up in another, and another, and another until it was out of my control - a stormy mind in a stormy world. Yet, today, I take a step back as my mind begins to quiet, as I start to see the world again for how it is. 

Being strong in this world means carrying a quiet mind through the raging storm. 

Camus once declared that within the midst of the winter, he found within him an invincible summer.This summer, my invincible summer, my personal fire, I have thrown in many directions lately. I have spread it out over 2,000 miles and felt only empty words in return. I have spent what little energy I had in a fruitless endeavor. My body crashed against the shore of lost hope. It is a hard thing for me to know something is possible, but a realistic impossibility. As with everything, this is a learning experience. 

 

 

Exams then Boise

Dancing meant so much then. A head rested on my shoulder. Our hips shifted at the sway of the rhythm. The solidarity of movement helped captured a certain essence of our humanity.  Once one has touched those truly beautiful moments of life, every other little thing is only a distraction from those moments. In other words, a man who has seen the sunlight will never accept the pale glow of artificial light. It is a connection not to be lessened with our rational minds.

Now, I dance and twist in wild rhythms trying to capture a freedom I once possessed. The alcohol courses through my veins. It peels the brain's onion, and all the bad decisions flow forth without guilt. And when a sober thought reaches me, I think of those deeper days when I was a better man. I think of the children I could have inspired, the projects I could have poured this time into … I think of the useless and boring days here.

Lately, I have been running. I also run to feel free. Breathing rapidly, pulse buzzing, sweat perspiring, an aliveness encompasses my spirit. Endorphins emerge and maybe I am not so lost as I seemed only hours ago. Yet, I run with a certain notion of bittersweet angst. No goal sits on my doorstep. I am where I worked to be, and now sometimes I just want to leave. I found love only to reject it. Now, I am a but a fragment of what I once was. However society may see me, I have fallen and am in the bitter struggle of climbing out.

I need this to be leading somewhere. I need my life to mean something.

It is not within me to give up.

Standing in the downpour, countless hours of writing await

When shit hits the fan and everything dwindles in the prospects of oblivion, all you have is your belief in yourself. Never forget this, because it is the very essence of this belief that will help keep your will, your drive, your composure to focus, to get done what needs to get done and to live in the moment with all its insanity.

Let come what will.

The days march on with small steps

For all the whining I do, the days are not so bad. Woke up today to the sun and another onslaught of snow. However, for the past five days, the weather was moist and warm. The clouds did not part as they do today, but it felt a little like Spring.

I cannot fathom what is at the heart of so much disinterest in something I care so much about. I feel as if it is more of a feeling that I will try hard and nothing may come of it. I hate to see a well-educated barista who for all his/her education does nothing more than serve drinks. What a selfish use of an education. However, how is this different from the professor whose research is esoteric and metaphysical? He gets grants to expand our educated minds ... but does this really have a real impact on the world. Does he use his talents in any other way?

So I sit here sometimes, disinterested for only the fact that I am so lonely, that I may not be of use. It kills me because I feel so close to my goals.

Tonight starts the toiling away into the morning hours with work. I feel that if I focus only on this, this school and Moscow ... that I will be able to finish in good fashion. Then with a clear head, I may start to see this school and town more clearly. I may then decide to stay or go from this course.

What I would really like to do with my summer ...

I'd like to drive into a small town/city/suburb, sit down at the counter, and ask someone, "Let me hear about your life. Then I want you to tell me what you think is right and wrong about where our country is going."

I'd ask mayors, the homeless, business owners, construction workers, truck drivers, amusement park workers, the young, the old, the middle aged ... get a canvass of everyone. Hopefully I'd find the optimistic, the pessimistic, the realistic and even the true cynics. I'd pick two big issues per person, write about his/her life (where he/she is coming from with the opinion), then I'd write some background on the subject and where he/she thinks we, as a country, should be moving. Topics would range from big, overall, national debates such as gay marriage to local, specific issues such as water rights.

I'd update this all on another blog, unconnected to this one. As I snaked my way through the country, I would have an update a week with a new person every week. I'd camp out or sleep in my car/ stay with friends or stay in a hotel when a shower was in order.

If not me, someone should do this. I feel like the pulse of America is still there. However, it is hidden by big interests and talking heads, the ideas that separate us all before we even where the other stands.

If I had the funding, I'd dedicate my summer to this. This would be a great idea, and a great adventure.

Searching for a path "to be of use"

I hate to whine. I don't like to complain, and I hate to wake up in the morning without being excited to be alive. 

I think not wanting to be here, not wanting to feel so alone takes my mind so far away from my studies. It is my reason to fail. I feel as if I am falling, as if my darkest fears are materializing, that I will become like my parents. In the Cider House Rules, it is often said that an orphan sometimes knows the value of not hearing the truth. I can relate to this. I don't want to fail my kids by becoming a sort of uninspiring man.

Another phrase from the Cider House Rules is "to be of use." Even though I am not an orphan, I still feel so far away from family, always have, to know the value of being "of use to somebody." I often search for a career where I can give back, help people, play a dynamic role, or really dig into the issues. I thought that was going to be law. Yet it just feels like another hoop to nowhere, and I can't get rid of the sinking feeling that I'm investing in something (this law school) that will really get me nowhere.

I just want to work a good, hard day's work, feel accomplished and as if I am actually working on something. I hate toiling away in academia. 

And all this really does is make it so everyone is so much further away. I feel more alone than ever.

law school: 1, Brian: 0

My legs tighten, my impulses fire ... Run! Run! Anywhere! Just Run. Find those crimson cliffs that once settled out the wrinkles of your soul. Find the old woman from Portland with her gentle wisdom. Find that cliff you once climbed on the worst of days. Find the cliff in southern Colorado that you once sat on as a young boy. Get drunk on margaritas, jump into Lake Powell and float away while laughing in the hot summer wind! Find a slot canyon and lose yourself in it!

I now understand what Albert Camus meant when he said, "In the midst of winter, I found there was, within me, an invincible summer."

The darkness is like a hole. As the soul becomes more dense, gravity begins to tug, more and more. Yet, I find my thoughts drifting to a rock in Snow Canyon, meditating, finding some strength in the setting sun.

My hands hold the bottle from whence the wine doth flow.

The cold air hardens.

I swim to the side of the pond. I sit near its bank, my toes squishing in the clay, the warm water encapsulating me. The outside air, so shrill and cold, brushes against the top of my bald head. It says with its frigid touch, "Hey, kid. You're going to be cold if you get up. It's going to be pretty miserable. You should think twice - or maybe even thrice - about all this."

So, after a moment of thought, I stand up. The wild wind beats at me. It is unrelenting. When I look back at the pond, it is no more. It is unwelcoming. I am its pariah.

A friend comes to my side. He offers me another beer, a mindful conversation of the moment, of the peculiarity of the wind. "The wind will reside," he insists. However, I think maybe he is wrong about the nature of the wind, and maybe, I reason, it is the skin that will get thicker, not the wind milder.

And again, I stare at this frigid medium. Let my heart sink to its touch.  Feel it caress me further down and let it harden me. Harden to a world that is harsh, that gives no quarter, and takes no prisoners.

I shall not succumb. I shall harden. I shall draw from the fire and forge anew.