2011 (Prog)

And so begins the end.

2011 was odd.

Where there are peaks there are valleys. The highest mountains of the Earth glisten in their majestic coats of snow and ice. They are the geographic rulers of the world. But the sun is higher. It melts their confidence from time to time, and they weep in the heat of their ignorance. Their melting tears run down through the canyons at their shoulders, the scars of their own weaknesses and occasional stirring of their glacial thoughts. The waters run into the caves at their feet--the dark, damp corners of their minds.

I've spent some time at the top this year. I've had one foot on the summit, and gazed momentarily at the view of the world below. Those memories are comparatively brief, so it seems. With one last, labored step to the top, I lost my grip and fell down thousands of feet, ricocheting off the rocks and breaking vital parts of myself. I've spent great lengths of time in the dark, damp misery of the crevasses in the shadows of the great peaks looming above. I have so much now to retrieve.

On the bright side, I've gained several friends to whom I have granted my deepest trust, friends that I hope will be with me until I exhaust my last breath. I've also watched dozens of my friends--some lifelong, some brief acquaintances, blink their eyes as I blinked mine. Mine opened again, to catch another glimpse of the world. Theirs did not. Nor will they ever--reminding me of the brevity of our experience in this realm.

I have stood on the tarmac just feet from aircraft roaring by--the planes that I've always read about and dreamed of witnessing in flight. I've also watched as one of those beautiful birds crashed into the stands, reminding me of the razor thin

I have floated through the deepest clouds of powdery snow I could have ever dreamed of in one of the most epic winters on record. I have bounded through forests and soared off of cliffs and pillows of sugar in what seemed to be an endless lucid dream. I've also sat cheerlessly in the dead of winter with nothing but cold, barren rock--no white room to escape to, to shed my troubles and worries if not just for a little while. Nature has reminded me of its power over the meek attempts by humanity to harness and control it.

I have succeeded as part of a dedicated, tight-knit team of people who share my passion in racing. Collectively, we donated hours of sleep, drops of blood and rivers of sweat, and accepted slag burns and damaged GPAs to build a racing legacy. With them, I succeeded in my first attempts in engineering. But I have also failed in engineering academically, to a degree that shocked me considering the effort I exerted. From this I have been reminded of the strenuousness and extreme complexity of the career I still intend to pursue, and the atmospheric level of concentration required to succeed in it.

If I've learned nothing else this year, it's that life, and everything good within, is fragile. I have learned that I must . I have learned that war emergency power may help escape danger, but it damages the machine. All decisions in life have compromise. Between the perigee and the apogee there is a journey through the cosmos. Between the lazy heat of the summer and the dark freeze of winter there are colorful transitions. Between Badwater and McKinley, the shores of the Dead Sea and Everest, there is a middle ground. I've been at the top this year, and I've been at the bottom. I

Engines

A healthy engine fires on all cylinders. It is well-oiled. Contently fueled. It may be coerced by my affection for things mechanical in nature, but I tend to apply the engine metaphor to many different systems and situations.

We all travel this journey that we call life in a body--a vehicle. For the sake of this metaphor, you can be whatever piston-engined vehicle you like. No metaphor is perfectly literal, which would defeat the purpose of metaphorical comparison--so combustion engines only, please. Thus, with turbofans out of the picture, my vehicle of choice is a Chance Vought F4U-4 Corsair. Within your vehicle lies your mind, your heart--combined, your soul. This is your engine. Reverting to literalism here for a moment--this answers the age-old questions (one recently hijacked by the U.S. Army's PR department,) "what drives you?" Your engine drives you, in your vehicle. Your soul drives you, in life.

Now, speaking to the technical and historical critics, the engine in my Corsair should be a Pratt & Whitney R-2800 Double Wasp, 18 cylinder radial engine. For the sake of colloquy, however, I will set my cylinder count at a smaller number. Now, assume that your engine is well-maintained. That is, by Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs, you are driving or flying a safe, fueled vehicle. You are, outside our metaphor, a living, breathing human being with the oft-discounted privilege of homeostasis (give or take some sleep for some of us.) Your engine is capable of running. Now, hereon, forget entirely Maslow's Hierarchy because it is not a sufficient parallel to our metaphor (of note, most principles in psychology are under debate anyway.)

Suppose that each of your cylinders contains a piston which you consider to be a major operating piece of yourself. Not principles like achievement--those are contained within these cylinders, and are activated explosively with the periodic ignition of our spark plugs--instances that may be comparable to job promotions or simple boosts of morale or understanding within our cylinders. The pistons themselves are categories through which we very strongly prefer to reach our goals of belonging, esteem, and self-actualization. Examples of mine are (in no particular order,) academic learning, engineering, and travel / environmental exploration.

When all cylinders are firing in a majestic symphony of carbonization--that is when we drive the fastest or fly the highest. Those times when the stars seem to align, when we feel the might and motivation to take on the world one-handed--that is when the firing order is clean and the timing is golden. If a piston isn't too happy with its operation--that is when we need some maintenance in that category. If the chamber in any of them is devoid of a piston entirely--that is when we feel a overshadowing emptiness that lugs the engine and drops our altitude or drags the speedometer down from redline. When you lose oil pressure and your machine sputters and dies, you have time to revive it--or you can bail, but in this beast there are no parachutes. Your engine needs success, encouragement, fulfillment in all categories to keep you in flight.

My engine, for example, is missing at least one piston. Giving it more fuel or air will just upset the ratio. Regardless of what I do, I can't run any smoother without that last cylinder. I am airborne, for sure, but I don't feel fulfilled. The scope of my perspective on life is adequate, but I know the horizons can expand. To do so, you should learn about the things you want to and strive for success in the most important aspects of your life. Love the ones you feel deserve it--if they are the missing piston, find them. Overtake the speed you're running now; exceed your current cruising altitude. This road and atmosphere are limitless.

Current Mood: Distant

Listening To: "Swallowed in the Sea" by Coldplay

Moondew

I walked outside tonight, just to the curb. The moon was full. Fitting, I think, for the opening night of the last Harry Potter movie. There, on the sidewalk, I took a step back. Thirteen inches back, thirteen years. There was a day, I know, in 1998 when I looked at the full moon. It was around that time that I had begun to read the first Harry Potter book. Through the years, I read all of them, and watched all of the movies.

I am not at the premier tonight, trudging through the quagmire of kids who picked up the series once they were old enough. I am here, on this sidewalk. The one where I played four square when book two was published. Where I rollerbladed when book four hit the shelves. Where I sat, in the fading light of a summer afternoon, as I read the last pages of book seven. There are critics who call out this technicality and question that detail in the story. But Harry and I grew up together. We were the same age from the beginning. Those books, unlike any other, conjured the most vivid depictions in my imagination. Like magic.

Most friends, you know, you talk to from time to time. Some of them drift away from you. You don't really notice, at first. But then, at some offhanded remark, or for no reason at all, it occurs to you that you haven't heard from them in ten years. But the conclusion of the Potter series was like the severing of a very good friendship in an instant. I knew how their lives played out. I knew they were gone as I flipped the last page.

The moon is particularly round. I never recall the edge around its circumference being so defined. Like it was drafted with some celestial compass. It seems that every time I look at the moon, something has changed since the last time. Somebody died from cancer. Or in a car accident. Or something else terrible. Even all of the good things you've experienced have a melancholy sort of aura to them, tokens irretrievably fed to the slot machine. Whenever I take time to sit still, time takes me. Everything that ever happened in that particular spot--even the most trivial things--I can remember. I know all of the cars that have parked here by my driveway. My grandfather's Buick, and the Buick he had before that…he's gone now. I can see the old trees growing in the front yard, and then falling and being cut up, and then the new trees growing. Coat after coat of paint on the house. I see everything, remember everything.

If the Harry Potter stories had nothing else going for them, they in the very least held up a mirror for me as I've torn through the years. I watched Harry and his friends grow up, and became much more conscious of my own maturation. I think I learned to savor who I was at the time. Kids, you know, always want to be older--they want to have more freedom. Can't wait 'till they can sit in the front seat, 'till they can use the taller sink, 'till they can drive a car, 'till they can drink legally. Then, of course, we trip and fall off the end of the dock, cursing the haste with which we ran towards the dark, cold water of the real world. In a way, it's good for them to have something to look forward to. But reading Rowling's masterpieces helped me understand that although I couldn't do everything I wanted, I was on the greener side of a field that I would regret running through too quickly, if I did so.

I don't know where I'm going. If you sit down with a topic in mind, with a very clear outline, and a thesis and all of the other elements your high school english teachers required you to use, you would theoretically produce a concise piece of writing. But that isn't always realistic. Veritably, the outlines in your life are often scrambled by some depth charge of reality. Sometimes, writing by free association is a better sampling of how things really work.

Richard Harris passed away after the second movie--he was the first Dumbledore. I loved the Harris Dumbledore. Although he was just a one and a half hour presence on the movie screen in front of me when I watched the first film, I felt comforted by him somehow. The same was the case when I read the books. He had a wise, grandfatherly sort of presence that put me at ease. Dumbledore is dead. Harris is dead. Both of my grandfathers are dead. But there up in the sky, is the moon. It seems to offer the same sort of security that they all did. Maybe it is my best friend, for life. I think it is for all of is--it was there, after all, before we were, and it isn't switching planets anytime soon.

I can see the Sea of Tranquility; a moment ago it was cloaked in fog. Sometimes in life, the understanding of what to do next is temporarily obscured like that. It changes as abruptly as the marine layer does, carried by a low-altitude midnight breeze. There it goes again. It's blinking.

I'll go and see the last movie at some point. Really, the story ended for me with the last page in the book. I'm sure watching 7.2 will reignite some of the things that I felt as I closed the back cover. Regardless, the legend of Harry Potter is one in which I am glad I got to partake. Although I'm not eating an eight pound bucket of popcorn drenched in three quarts of margarine, while watching the movie premiere with several hundred of my closest friends, I feel perfectly satisfied at present with what J.K. Rowling has given me. Now that it's all over, it's just me, here on this sidewalk. Me, and the ghosts of the past thirteen years. And the moon.

Current Mood: Reminiscent

Listening To: "Spirit of '76" by The Alarm

Death Of A Decade

Being twenty years old, it was my intention to celebrate the entrance of 2011 in a more sensational manner than watching the ball drop whilst sipping iced tea with my grandparents. I supposed I would like to exercise my social side and join the throngs bustling through the streets of old Sacramento to watch the fireworks over the Tower Bridge, or join in at a house party (events at which I rarely appear.) As I stood on the drive in the crisp afternoon at 000 Treehouse Lane and watched the sky darken, I felt a change of heart. This New Years, as in several past, I would stay home, accompanied only by my grandparents. This night marks the 65th New Year's Eve my grandparents have spent together, and it brings me great joy to be able to witness this transition with them.

The clouds dimmed from a dull gray to a deeper ashen shade and then to black; a subtle and unspectacular conclusion to another year. Another decade in fact--a decade as chaotic as any prior, as filled with death and birth, misery and tragedy, triumph and overwhelming exultation as the human presence can comprehend. I glanced upward at a 737 in the departure pattern from Sacramento International, nearly identical to one of several hijacked on the morning of September 11, 2001. The earliest event of the decade, it seems, that has failed to escape my memory--not the entrance of the new millenium nor the first day of middle school remain. Just that unusually bright, blue morning.

A decade ago it seems, and so it was. So much has happened--one wonders how time has the capacity to contain all of the happenings of the world. Unnoticeable, such changes are, in the blurred continuum in which we move onward, at varying speeds it seems. Sometimes we sprint, sometimes crawl--yet always keeping pace with the clock, being hindered or accelerated by the laws of our existence. At times like these we take a glance over the shoulder, shocked to see our place of origination and the distance we have traveled. New Year's for me has always been one of these turning points, a station along a railroad through the heartland of my life, and past the events destined to define the past of the future. At such stations I attempt to recall the monuments passed along the way. Much is simply lost to the truck driver's amnesia of life as an unvaried landscape, largely unmemorable however beautiful.

My entire youthhood--middle school, high school, half of college--has somehow dissolved with the acidic nature of time's progression in the past ten years. Looking through my Facebook photos (and even Myspace,) I recall each and every one "as if it were yesterday." As if it were just this afternoon. Behind the camera and in the frame, my memory unfreezes the stills and allows those events to replay like a video montage of my experiences. Fascinating.

New Year's is a celebration of sorts, as a perhaps solemn personal accomplishment of surviving another year. But it is for me more a time of bittersweet reflection--sometimes sweeter, sometimes overpoweringly bitter--for auld lang syne. This year, as in all 18 of my January firsts, I did not receive a New Year's kiss in the traditional sense. But in a sagacious, almost sarcastic sense, I did receive a kiss--the kiss of life, a deep breath with the promise of another decade of the most fulfilling experiences chance may offer. And as much as I strain to forget the pain inflicted upon me by the past ten years, I cannot help but feel satiated by the positive experiences bestowed unto me, like the celebrating of this new year with my grandparents. Perhaps not the most adrenaline-packed New Year's, but symbolic in every way.

Current Mood: Reflective

Listening To: Auld Lang Syne by Robert Burns

Perfection

Perfection is not acheivable. It is approachable, and by all means should be approached. It should be the ultimate goal for all aspects of life, all endeavors and all dreams. But true perfection is impossible. People sometimes pout at my refusal to accept something as perfect. "The paint job on this Porsche is absolutely flawless!" "Ah," I say, "there is a little nick the front quarter panel." It does make people angry, for some reason. "Yeah, but other than that it looks professional and amazing." That it may, but perfection is far beyond "professional and amazing." I think the refusal to accept anything as completely perfect is generally viewed as pessimistic. "Well if that isn't perfect than what is?" "A paint job without a nick in the front quarter panel might be an improvement." On the contrary, I think it is a rather optimistic philosophy. There is always room for improvement. Why else has the "fastest" gotten continually faster? Why else has the "furthest" gone further? Records are not meant to be broken. The fastest sprinter on Earth wants to keep the title of the fastest sprinter on Earth. But records in sports, in engineering, in science--they are all broken. New ideas, new technology, new approaches to old problems--they advance us. They break records. A true pessimist would ask, "why attempt to achieve something if someone else will eventually do it better?" I answer, "because without reaching your goals, others will not be inspired to reach over your achievements." Achieving perfection is a ridiculous notion. Striving towards it, however, is the greatest thing we can accomplish.

Current Mood: Inquizzitive

Listening To: "Learning to Fly (Live)" by Tom Petty

Happy Birthday Peter

I'm getting three days of vacation this summer, between a 5 credit calculus class and working almost full time. For the first day of my break, I decided to haul up to Rocklin where a friend from college lives. On Sunday night he took me around to the shred spots he knew of in the area (locals are aware that there are many.) One of these spots was a well-known hill where my friend's friend, Peter Ramirez, liked to bomb before he was killed on 20 October, 2008 while riding in Loomis. He's well-known in the longboarding community. Although I never met Peter, I felt obligated to write a little something for him, having successfully bombed one of his favorite runs for the first time. I felt badly for him, his close friends, and his family before when I first heard about the incident, but being there on that hill brought it a little closer to home. It was coincidental that I rode Backside the same weekend as what would have been Peter's eighteenth birthday, a day that should have been cheerful but I'm sure was instead depressing for a lot of people. More than 700 people are on his memorial Facebook page, and seeing how well-loved he was, I found myself pretty depressed after shredding his spot (following the initial stoke of course,) and I still am.

Although two years younger, he was at age 16 far better than I am now at 20. Peter wasn't just another skater. A long explanation: longboarding has been around for decades, with a number of shredders cast into legends, it has really only recently become wildly popular. With more awareness come improvements to the sport. Technology is influenced by a number of different factors, I can (as a racecar engineer, aerospace engineer, and history nerd) refer to two major catalysts for change in a number of different industries (longboarding included.) Those are: war and racing. War is clearly not an influence on longboard design. Racing, however, is. Slalom racing, DH racing, and I'm sure a few other racing genres have pushed the sport to what it is today. New ideas, competitive design, refinement in tech--all from racing. Peter was a racer, which is one of the reasons I respect him. These kids (and many of them are kids,) are evolving gravity sports. Look at what we had ten years ago in terms of deck materials and design, flex options, truck geometry, urethane development--compared to today. I guess it's like anything else; back in 2001 my iBook had a 9 gig hard drive in it. But in this sport, it's the racers like Peter who are responsible for the advancements in design. Peter wasn't a fucking dumbass skaterboy wannabe rebel who spray painted stop signs and tormented neighborhood cats. He contributed to the community and to interest in the sport. I know of at least several people who have started boarding specifically because he wanted to share his love of riding. He seemed to have a bright future in front of him as well.

Now, I will never fully commit to the belief that there is an afterlife. I sincerely hope there is though--if not for me, if not for folks who have lived long, fulfilled lives--for kids like Peter who are killed doing what makes them happy. I was walking around Squaw Valley today, I was reminded of a quote from C.R. Johnson, who was killed there last February when he fell onto some rocks while skiing. After recovering from a near-fatal brain injury the previous year that had him in a coma for days and required a lengthy recovery, he said "the joy I get from skiing--that's worth dying for." And some might call him crazy, but I fully agree. There's a lot of pain in this life, a lot of suffering, a lot of stress, a lot of negative vibes. Kids like Peter, like C.R., like myself, like you--we turn to extreme sports to escape that. The folks who say we're nuts, that it isn't worth the risk, that we're going to kill ourselves--they don't understand. Like a belief, like an emotion, like love--it's something we can't explain. It drives us. They all say "live life to the fullest," but those are words. We aren't fueled by words. We are fueled by true, unadulterated emotion, by speed, by hangtime, by wind in our faces and the world at our backs. Words spoken or written without feeling carry no weight. Hollow words. Even if a quote made you question your very existence, it would be an empty thought unless the writer first questioned theirs. But we don't have that problem because many of us live more in one still-frame than a lot of people do in a lifetime. They can question the danger we intentionally expose ourselves to, but we know what we're in for. We pass the red backcountry signs cheerfully reminding us "YOU CAN DIE." We know there may be cars down the road when we strap on our pads and bomb. That is the only baggage we carry with us when we shred. It's at the back of our minds, but when we're up there, we have to let it go.

Every so often one of us is killed not by what we run from, not some malevolent force, but by what we run to, by the thing that keeps us happy. We walk a fine line. We walk a tightrope. Sometimes it is a misstep, sometimes a lack of concentration, sometimes an external, uncontrollable gust of wind that knocks us off. Is it by design? I don't know. But all we can do is hang our heads and lay the flowers at the foot of another friend gone. Gone somewhere else, somewhere better, somewhere worse, some heaven or hell, some wishing well, somewhere the grass is green and the skies are a crisp, clear blue, where the powder is deep, the roads are freshly paved--somewhere we can shred, bomb, huck, and rip till the eternal snow melts, till the road gets torn to shit, till the system caves in, till the end of fucking time. We hope. But we don't know; they're gone.

I can't find solace in that "Peter died doing what he loved." What I can squeeze a little bit of comfort from, though, is the fact that he loved boarding like I love boarding, and the joy he got from it was powerful enough for everything to be alright when he was screaming down a hill somewhere. Even though I never met the kid, don't know his story, don't know much about his life--I still know how he would have answered one question: "Would you change anything if you could?" the same question C.R. Johnson was asked. I can smile because like the rest of us hotdogging, badass motherfuckers, he would say he'd do it all over again. You see, while a lot of stunts pulled by the likes of pro riders appear to be showy calls for attention, they generally aren't. Aside from the occasional asshat showboat, we do it for ourselves--everyone else can watch if they want. The ultra-high, ultra-fast, lightening storm of stoke emitted by shredding is what makes us feel alive. And "there is no point in living if you cannot feel alive."

I don't think I mentioned earlier that while I was standing at the top of Backside, with no one but my friend around and in a pervasive, dead silence, a large jackrabbit jumped out of the bushes into the street. It stopped for a minute and looked straight at me, and then turned around and went not left or right into the bushes to hide, but straight down backside in the middle of the street. All the way down. I don't know if that rabbit has any significance, but I'd like to think it does. I never knew you Peter, but I miss you buddy. Happy 18th Birthday.

Current Mood: Depressed

Listening To: "Miss You" by Blink 182

Twenty

Today is my twentieth birthday. This is the point when I begin to count my age in decades. Twenty is not old, but it is 22% of the way to 90, an average lifetime in my genealogy. Of course, a lot of people don't make it to twenty. I know of a few people who were not able to see their twentieth birthday. They were either taken from this world unnaturally early via disease or accident, or took themselves. I have lived longer than they were able to. Given my aggressively empirical philosophy of life, high-adrenaline, high-speed, and (calculatedly) higher-risk choice of sports and hobbies, I have to be thankful for the intact body and mind I still hold. I am certainly fortunate. Maybe it is luck that allows some of us to live and leaves others to die. Or maybe choice of actions and decisions. Or fate. Destiny. Who knows. All I know is that I am twenty years old, and through any combination of the above, I am very much still alive.

Yesterday (really just a few hours ago,) I attended the graduation ceremony for the class of 2010 at Amador. I know quite a few kids who are graduating, namely siblings of my friends, so it was nice to see them experience the grand closing of their high school years. But I set them aside for awhile as I sat there in the AVHS bleachers and watched graduation unfold, this time as a spectator instead of a participant. "It seems like it was just yesterday" is a phrase that is revoltingly cliché, but I still have to use it. It seems like it was just yesterday that I was sitting down there on that field. The tent was in the same place, the stage, the perfectly aligned white folding chairs. The sun went down at the same angle in the sky (although this time it wasn't reddened by giant clouds of ash.) The six hundred some-odd purple-cloaked figures entered the field in nearly the same formation, past the same black-robed teachers. It was like experiencing our graduation over again in third-person.

I wasn't really thinking about where these new graduates will go in life. After all, they will have plenty of time to think that through individually. I did congratulate them before and after the ceremony, and bid them good luck on the new stretch of open road before them. During the ceremony, though, I was lost in the moment all over again. Lost in the sea of purple. I remembered quite clearly where I sat on June 13th of 2008. I remembered what I saw, what I felt, and what I thought about my future. That was point A. I am now at point B. I was Link. I placed the Master Sword back in the stone. The two elapsed years of my college education were not relevant, not individual events anyway. They became a blur. It was only myself, and myself on graduation day, in row 5, seat six, at 19:48.

As always, things have not turned out quite as I expected. Some things are better than I had anticipated, some much worse, and some depressingly or in some cases thankfully unchanged. I wish I could talk to young Link. It would certainly be an interesting conversation. People sometimes ask the question "if you could go back in time and talk to one person, who would it be?" I often surprise them by answering "myself." I think the two of us would agree that where I am now is largely satisfactory.

And twenty is a good age. I don't really have anything life-threatening to worry about. Most people don't begin to show any serious concern for their age and rethinking their philosophy and goals until their forties and fifties. I think I'm an anomaly in the sense that I seem to be in a perpetual state of mid-life crisis: always questioning, pondering what I have done and should do next. It's not really a bad thing--I am not depressed nor do I regret any of my decisions or actions. I simply have an active mind. And with that inquisitiveness, I think I will hold fast to the goals I have previously set for myself--my plan seems to be working. At age twenty, I would like to continue to learn--learn on all fronts, academically, kinesthetically, logically, artistically--to apply myself in my work, and to have fun incessantly.

Here I am. 02:27 on my twentieth birthday, alone, drinking a Kiwi-Strawberry Hansen's soda and listening to Tom Petty. At first I thought I'd rather be doing something more interesting on this milestone. Maybe at a party with friends. Maybe doing something adrenaline-packed like I usually do. Maybe out under the stars. Maybe with a girlfriend. But after looking back on graduation, and the goals I set for myself then, this is just fine. There's nowhere else I'd rather be.

Happy Birthday, to me.

Current Mood: Satisfied

Listening To: "A Face In The Crown" by Tom Petty