On my cross-country bike trip

20 years ago I was on the cusp of turning 10, and I remember virtually nothing about that; 10 years ago I was months away from turning 20, and I was too self-absorbed to contemplate the future; and now I am 29 and may be too absorbed in the day-to-day to really remember what I was like and who I was in the past two decades.  What’s got me thinking about that un-medicated, chaotic and doubt-riddled person is a book I just finished titled Living With a Wild God: A Nonbeliever’s Search for the Truth about Everything, by Barbara Ehrenreich.  In the book, Ms. Ehrenreich uses the journal she kept during her teenage years as a springboard from which to revisit the doubts and dreams she had during that tumultuous time.

As soon as I finished reading—just hours after I began—I decided to look back through my own journal…hundreds of pages of frantic writing covering the years 2002 – 2005, when I was 18-21.  Before I delve into this, let me just review some facts about me during that time.  First, I was around 7 years from finally being diagnosed as, and treated for, mild bipolar disorder; as a result, I found myself jostling back and forth from unbearable bliss to the kind of depression that slows your synapses to a crawl.  Second, I kept this journal while I was an undergraduate at California State University Northridge (CSUN,) meaning that for a time I was living at my parent’s house in Tarzana, CA., and for a year I lived in Granada, Spain (studying abroad), and for several months I rode across the United States on my bicycle and then fought to intergrate that experience in whatever came next.  Third, I spent much of my time reading about Buddhism and philosophy; delving into the works of Romantic poets; and contemplating the nature of my existence and the meaning of it all.  And finally, I was a colossal pain-in-the-ass: self-righteous, pompous, filled with illusions of grandeur, judgmental, and so on.

The Pizza That Triggered a Memory

I am seated in a pizza parlor in downtown Chicago, passing the time until my 8 PM flight back to Providence.  The book I’m reading is called ‘American Gods,’ by Neil Gaiman.  Reading makes me want to write, and so I think about the book I should be working on.  Suddenly, a scent handcuffs itself to my neurons and is taken to a memory: I am standing before a lemon tree at my parent’s house, my grandmother next to me.  Baba’s expression is frozen.  I don’t see her, but rather a photograph of her; somehow the scent of lemon and childhood, however, is dynamic, alive.  Now I am holding a rolling pin, helping Baba make Peroshki.  Standing on my tippy-toes, my sight is filled with dough, flour…ingredients on their way to becoming food.  I haven’t thought about my grandmother much since she passed away nearly a year ago.  She was a difficult person and in her last years had lost her eyesight and much of her memory.  Yet a tenderness stabs at me like the knife that splits open an onion, releases its piquant odor.  Life is precious, cyclical, unique, linear, savage, brief, endless.  She is a part of me and I of her.  Just yesterday I could barely reach the table upon which we cooked.  Today I tower over my food.  Today my heart reaches for the slippery hands of greatness.  Tomorrow, whenever tomorrow comes, I will immortalize myself in ice: everything that comprises me will drip, drip, drip until I mix and mingle with everything that comprises the universe, until enough time passes that I re-discover myself among the detritus of the world and laugh at the glorious absurdity of it all.

I wanted to share a fantastic quote by Albert Einstein:

The efforts of most human-beings are consumed in the struggle for

their daily bread, but most of those who are, either through fortune

or some special gift, relieved of this struggle are largely absorbed

in further improving their worldly lot. Beneath the effort directed

toward the accumulation of worldly goods lies all too frequently the

illusion that this is the most substantial and desirable end to be

achieved; but there is, fortunately, a minority composed of those who

recognize early in their lives that the most beautiful and satisfying

experiences open to humankind are not derived from the outside, but

are bound up with the development of the individual’s own feeling,

thinking and acting. The genuine artists, investigators and thinkers

have always been persons of this kind. However inconspicuously the

life of these individuals runs its course, none the less the fruits of

their endeavors are the most valuable contributions which one

generation can make to its successors.

Last night the first flakes of snow fell on Providence.  When I awoke, the ground had been lightly covered by the white dust of snow, and everything from trees to cars to rooftops carried the brightness of sunlight stored in ice.  Due to Providence’s proximity to the water, we don’t get much snow here, and given that I grew up in the semi-arid climate of Los Angeles, I get very excited whenever meteorology conspires to bring these beautiful conditions to my backyard.  Granted, the novelty of snow wears off fairly quickly, as the purity soon turns to slush and muck, but I refuse to believe that idealism and perfectionism inherent to youth must inevitably give way to cynicism and doubt.  I feel very strongly that the entire cycle of beauty and passion are to be appreciated and celebrated–from the initial first rush, to the inevitable slush, to the crackle and decay of wood and leaves.  I wrote a poem dealing with this very issue last year. The poem, titled ”The First Snow,” expresses my firm belief that ideals–purity, idealism, beauty–are not the problem, rather, the problem is with people who are unable to do those ideals justice.  Read on for more musings and photos of the snow!