As I read books I fold the top corners of any pages that contain words that move me. Usually it’s something profound, or a line that resonates with what is going on in my life. Sometimes it’s only relevant in the moment. Like a line about a strangers outstanding beauty, which I read while at the beach and a stranger with outstanding beauty happens to walk by. Sometimes it is relevant to larger life questions/ethical-decisions/pursuits. Sometimes it’s just clever word-play.
Once I have finished the book, I go back through the dog-eared pages and read them again. I decided that I wouldn’t capture the quotations that I liked as I was reading so that my reading wasn’t interrupted and so that there was some form of quality-assurance. I find that I am unable to identify the quote on about half the dog-eared pages that I originally thought warranted the dog-earring. The ones that survive the QA process make it into a Google Spreadsheet document that I’ve been keeping. It documents the book, author, copyright date, chapter, page and of course the quotation itself. Every now and then (usually when I go to add a quotation to the document), I like to read through all the quotations that have made the cut. More importantly, all the quotations that have made an impact.
I love learning new things, and reading helps me to do that. I love reading that others have shared my feelings or thoughts before me (and have been clever enough to juice their mind grapes into written word). I love hearing stories about long ago, the future, and even the present. But mostly, I love being moved. I love music for those few songs that move me, and I love reading for those few lines (sometimes there are only one or two in a book) that move me. So naturally, I enjoy a collection of those lines, in a single Google Document. A spread-sheeted validation of my emotions, of my belonging, of my existence.
I often wonder while reading the quotes I have chosen to capture whether or not someone else would have chosen the same ones. By reading the lines from a book that moved me the most, could that give others insight into who I am and how to better emotionally invest in me, or at least how I invest emotionally in the world around me? I’m not sure. Maybe one day I’ll enjoy finding out. Until then, I’d like to leave you with a quote that I recently read. I won’t tell you who said it, or where it’s from, because the words themselves are significant enough to me without any greater context (other than my own life).
“Woman, you have lived! Did you think you could get through life with only scratches? That is not living. It’s hiding.”
I’d bet that if I imbibed alcohol, scotch would be my pick of poison. Alas, I am not (yet) a gambler, or (yet) consumer of alcohol. But everyone has a vice (as they should), and polar bears and I happen to share the same beverage of choice: Coca-Cola. It’s not something I keep on hand around the house, because I can’t. Not for lack of trying. If there is coke to be found in the house, I will consume it. This makes keeping it around the house an impossible task (even for someone whose restraint is as finely-tuned as my own).
Recently however another fluid has been filling the hole in my heart, and it was least expected (is this how it always works?). Many years ago, when I was a younger and more active version of my current self, I used to try drinking Gatorade and Powerade but they would usually result in headaches. Too sweet, too many electrolytes, who knows? I swore them off for a decade. Flash-forward to several months ago. I found myself half-way up a mountain and out of water, so I was left with no other option but to hydrate with the Gatorade that Aimee had brought with her. This was my first mistake. Like Jesus and his AA, Gatorade is designed to prey on the weak. Not only is it intended to hydrate you when you are in dire straights, but it is designed to do it so well that it replaces your urge to drink the fundamental element of life: water.
Several months later, and I am sitting here with neon yellow fluid surging through my body. In a glass, on the rocks, with a splash. I get lost somewhere between the Lemon and Lime. And it feels so good.
It’s the way I see everything I need, it’s the way to be. Higher and higher and higher.
On the eve of the weekend that most of this country will be celebrating the nations independence, I find myself gearing up to head back west (although not in a covered wagon). I’ll have been gone from May 20th to July 7th, not as long as my excursion last summer, but long enough. I’ve visited many of my good friends and family as well as many of the places on the mainland that I love. I had a fantastic time every step of the way (and I thank you all for that), but I’m ready to head back and figure out what it all has meant to me.
I’m not sure if it’s the distance at which all my friends now reside from me, or that I’m getting older and softer (don’t people usually get harder as they get older and more steadfast in their ways? Wouldn’t be the first time that I progress against the grain), or a combination of several factors, but there really isn’t anything better than being surrounded by those you love (well maybe the only thing better than that is if you are eating at the same time). Wow that was a long sentence. You stop writing for a few weeks and you forget your manners. Shit. Not only did I manage to see more of you this time around but everything was an upgrade. More friends, more destinations, longer road trips, longer music festivals, less rigid planning, more food, more fun, more smiles, more laughter, more comfort, more happiness, more going with the flow, and more independence.
The year is only (already?!) half over, I’m going to canoe 18 miles this weekend, go camping, barbecue, and then fly home where one of my best friends will be moving into my home with me for a year or so. Since flights are getting cheaper, I’ll be sure to have even more visitors stopping by for good times in Hawaii, and I’ll be making more frequent trips to places that warrant further marination and exploration, LA being at the top of the list (a story for another day). Sure I should be saving, my money and my miles. Sure I should be focusing, on my work and furthering my career. Sure I shouldn’t need to adventure so much, since I live in Hawaii and everyday is a vacation. But I just can’t help myself. It’s the way I see everything I need, it’s the way to be. Higher and higher and higher.
In an attempt to spend less time thinking about more immediate aspects of my life (introspection can mean progress, but sometimes I push it to the point of monotonous self-destruction, a broken record of broken me), I’ve been putting my brain to use on some larger reflections. One of these larger reflections happens to be our universe. Um, what?
I was listening to this What Made Milwaukee Famous song ‘And The Grief Goes On…” and the first line (which you already should have read above) is ‘Maybe in time we could see how the world began.” It’s only the first-line in the song, but since I had so many spare brain-cycles lying around I started to harp on it. It’s becoming more and more unlikely with each passing day that we’ll get to see how the world began. I know you silly holy scripture types think you already know because a group of teenagers got drunk together on a beach a couple thousand years ago and wrote a storybook about giant turtles dragging the planets here on their backs, or a bored bearded man who had all the power beyond imagination that took seven days to make it all (if I had all the power in the universes to make universes it would have only taken me six days), or whatever is popular to believe this millennium in your geographic location.
But back in the real world, we are running out of time to figure it out. I’m no astrophysicist or historian, but I know (or think I know) that the universe is expanding, all the time. If you don’t understand this (at least the concept of this), it’s because your brain stopped expanding a long time ago, and you were convinced that being narrow-minded would be beneficial in life, and that makes me feel great sorrow for you. But back on topic, the technological advancements of the world that enable scientists to look out into the far reaches of our universe are getting better and better all the time, which is exciting because we learn new things all the time. Sure it means planets become un-planets, and we have to change what we think we know about the universe. (Remember when people thought the Earth was at the center? HAHA. Remember when people thought there were lots of Gods and Goddesses that spoke Greek hanging out in the clouds watching us all and playing chess with us and making the weather change? HAHA. Remember when people thought there was only ONE god? HAHA, what’s that? Oh we aren’t over that yet? Maybe next century. Here’s to hoping.)
So we learn and unlearn and the instruments improve and we can see further back, but all the while the universe is still expanding, and exponentially at that. So there comes a point, where the rate of expansion will be greater than the rate of growth in the technologies that allow us to peer out into the past. I’m sure there is a fancy name for that point in time, but I’ll just call it ‘a sad day’. See, I love truths. I love learning, I love knowledge, and I love knowing/learning truths. I love mysteries because the process of uncovering truths turns me on. I love that tomorrow people sprinkled all over this planet will come up with new ideas about how things are and how things came to be, and they will be improvements upon (or departures from) what we thought we knew yesterday about how things are and how things came to be. I love knowing what I know to be true today will be far from what I know to be true a few years from now and that the growth of my understanding of myself over that time will also be a growth of my understanding of the worlds around me.
It saddens me that one day, the best telescope at the greatest observatory won’t be able to see as far as it used to, because the rate of expansion of the known universe will be ever so slightly faster then the rate of production of that new telescope and observatory. But maybe we’ll figure it all out before then? (That’s a joke and if you don’t get it, re-read the end of the last paragraph twice and stick some rusty scissors in your eyes please).
I’m going to Coney Island have myself a dog
And reminisce why I still hate it here
It’s all these people with their cotton candy eyes
It’s so sweet, now put the train in gear
But I can’t let this go I’m on my way
You can only hold my diamond ring
But I’ll go crawling back to the city I love
Cause it’s already taken everything
Once you’ve lived here, you can never leave. Sure you can move and reside elsewhere for the remainder of your days (and become a hoer), but a piece of you never gets around to leaving. When you come back, the piece of you that you left behind finds you in the first few moments, and helps you to remember how much you love and hate it here. It is the city that fails to fall on the spectrum that all other cities/places fall on. It’s where a weekend can consist of seeing several people you don’t want to see from your high school days, falling asleep at 5:00AM, stepping in dog shit with your bare feet, and calling 911 at 4:15AM in the morning, and after all that, you can still consider it a great weekend.
It’s a place where the only constants are the randomness and change that consume the people that walk it’s streets and fill it’s buildings. It’s a place where drinks cost so much that they give away free pizza’s with each purchase. It’s a place where drivers honk their horns at the cars in front of them before the light has even changed back to green from red.
I won’t pretend that the changes that have taken place in this city over the last year aren’t mirrored somewhat within myself. I won’t pretend that I haven’t knocked down some old parts of me and put up some newer (and maybe uglier ones). I won’t pretend that I only come here to see the people I love to spend time with. I won’t pretend that I love it here anymore than I actually do, but I’ll go crawling back to the city I love, cause it’s already taken everything.
Some nights ago I was sitting on the roof of my parents apartment building down in Waikiki, on Mother’s day. Dad was at the grill, grilling up the Chicken Satay skewers that I had prepared the day before and the vegetables that he prepared just before coming up to the roof (clearly I would have no part in preparing vegetables). I was sitting at the table, enjoying the sunset with mom, Grandpa and Carol. Grandpa and I were talking about my upcoming travels, and he asked me why he had not seen any blogs of mine recently.
My grandfather doesn’t have a computer, so usually my father prints out any posts I write that he thinks my grandfather will particularly enjoy. Clearly there have been none of those recently. So he asked me if I’d be blogging on the road for the next two months. I told him I wasn’t sure, but that I could promise five posts before I left. I only wrote one. I have failed him so. At his age, I’m sure he is used to broken promises (I know at only about a quarter of his years into my life I certainly am). That does not make it easier, so hopefully I can make it up to him somehow.
I’m pretty sure my grandfathers inquiry was intended to encourage me to write some posts so that he could look forward to reading some tales of my adventures. I’m not sure the adventures I plan on getting into are the adventures that my grandfather would enjoy reading about though. This excursion on the mainland isn’t so much about indulging my inner Odysseus, but more about reminding myself that there is a world out here. That there are people out here. That despite my great efforts to remove myself from the bulk of this world, I still love much of it. That despite my great efforts to remove myself from much of the people in it, I still love many of them. That despite how logic-bound I am at times, how much of my life appears to be governed by to-do lists and calculated risks, despite how borg-inspired the title of this post is (yes I did catch the new Star Trek flick today), that I am in fact human after all.
Tonight I was chatting with Amanda on IM about what we’d both been up to lately. It’s funny how busy we are that even though I do much work for her, we lose track of the other things happening in each others lives. It’s a far cry from the days we spent crammed into the same office, but the price we pay for having our own pursuits. She has three wonderful pursuits which she can only take partial credit for, those come in the form of her amazing husband and amazing 2.0 children. She also has some wonderful pursuits for which she can take even more credit for, like DailyWorth and Soapbxx.
We were discussing these pursuits of hers on IM, and she asked me what I had been up to, since clearly she knew I hadn’t been working. I answered that I had been at the beach, the cousin of a friend who was visiting had called me up and so I went to chill, and I intended to spend the remainder of the night on two projects that I am currently working on. To which she replied:
Amanda: sounds like a typical simon day
Amanda: friend, beach, code
Amanda: repeat
We then finished our conversation and she went to get some much-needed sleep. So I was left reflecting on her words while listening to the song that I have chosen to accompany this post (it happened to be playing on my iTunes which is often just set to shuffle). At the right time of day, with the right soundtrack, the simplest of statements can resonate so loudly with me. With some loose interpretation, the essence of my very being can be refined down into that simple but eloquent observation. Friend, beach, code. Repeat. These are the three most important things in my life, in the order of importance.
On most days, my friends are my friends. Everyday, my family are my friends. Not because I don’t have the choice as to who my family is, but because I choose to spend time with them when I don’t have to. I hang out with my family on a Tuesday afternoon, or on a Sunday night. I go to the beach with them, or out on the boat, or to a new restaurant, or to one of our favorites. No matter how often we do things, the day/night never goes by without someone saying we don’t see each other enough. Of course my friends are my friends not purely by circumstance or genetics, but by choice. My friends are a finite pool of haves and have-nots, and some how in some way we manage to mutually benefit from talking/singing/listening/loving/hating/breathing/watching/eating/being with each other. If you put all my friends in a room together and asked anyone in the world to tell me what they had in common, no one would ever guess it was me. Whatever that is, there is no substitute, and so it stands to reason that there is no substitute for my friends. I love my friends.
The beach is the best place on earth. Whether it’s the over-crowded Jersey shore on 4th of July weekend, or an uninhabitable island in Fiji, the beach is an iconic place of respite and/or joy. The sun, the water, the sand/rocks, the waves, the birds, the winds, the heat, the smell. The feeling of the beach is unparalleled. I’ve chosen to spend my days living in a home several blocks from the beach, in a beach town, on an island chain that is furthest one can get from any other land mass on this planet. Next to the company we keep, the environment in which we choose to spend our time impacts our enjoyment of our lives the most. This is why I’ve chosen to spend my time in a place where most people dream of spending a week-long vacation at most. I love the beach.
I live by the code and I will die by the code. On the surface, the code is the various programming and database languages that I use to build applications for non-profits all over the U.S. On the surface, the code Amanda was referring to is the code that I spend all of my working hours and a good portion of my non-working hours pouring over, soaking up, and even thinking in. I see 1’s and 0’s. But dig a little deeper and it’s evident that everything I do, and most things I feel, are part of a larger non-web-specific code. It is a continuously evolving code, a code not bound by any traditional boundaries, or a moral/ethical compass pulled from any ancient scripture or influenced greatly by any popular culture or western society. It is a code that has resulted over nearly 26 years of eating, traveling, living, loving, losing, witnessing, feeling and bettering. It is a code that is intended to be hackable by anyone who cares to, and is guided gently by a ghost in the machine. I love the code.
Amanda ended our conversation with:
Amanda: programmers aren’t supposed to write well
No need to be stumped Amanda, I am not a programmer. I just happen to love the code. Cause the code got me to 25 years of age. The code got me to day-after-day of loving where I am, the beach. The beach got me to being okay being alone, and more importantly got me to knowing how much I love my friends. My friends, the beach, the code. I should be so lucky that this record stays skipping the rest of my life.
Tonight I learned a very valuable lesson. You can not live your life regretting actions you took in the past. Obviously I can’t say this as some global principal that everyone should live by, since I’ve never killed anyone (who didn’t deserve it) or anything like that where I might find living life with an ever-present regret a reasonable way to live life. But for the most part, we can’t regret what we did, or in this case, what we didn’t.
Tonight I learned that I’ve been living a lie. Our story begins when I was just a wee little tot back in the red brick house off of Springfield Avenue in Essex County New Jersey. It was the same hood that Lauryn Hill and Queen Latifah called home just a decade or two before I. It was the first time I lived in the Continental United States, my first residency in any of the 50 states, and it was a year or two before my life really jumped off (in which I rode the crazy train to Tokyo). It was also the home in which my brother and I received our first video game console.
A shared Christmas present sponsored by a consortium/joint-venture between Mr. and Mrs. Baumer and Mr. and Mrs. Claus, a Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) was bestowed upon us. It was more than just the best present we had ever gotten (and ever would get), it would set the tone for what would be the rest of my life. I write you now, nearly twenty years later, a proud owner of both an Xbox 360 and Nintendo Wii. That NES helped sculpt me into the fine citizen that I am today (fuck all of you ‘video games make children violent’ idiots, I’ll kill you and steal your car).
At the time, that console was bundled with a game cartridge that had both the original Super Mario Bros. on it as well as the Duck Hunt shooting game (with light pistol included). Also not to beat a dead anti-video game horse while it’s down, but to this day I’ve never eaten mushrooms that have made me feel larger than myself, nor have I indulged in ever firing a gun. I have lived in countries where both are perfectly legal, and am regularly handed coupons to firing ranges here in Hawaii. So there’s Exhibit your an Asshole. But that’s besides the point. The point is, many many many hours were spent on that NES machine with my brother.
We played Duck Hunt quite a bit. Each waiting our turn to hunt those purple and blue faced ducks out of the single hue blue sky in hopes of seeing the giggle puppy come up full-handed and sans his giggles. Never, never, never, did it occur to us that the game was two players. Tonight, while quickly catching up on some bookmarked threads in some forums that I frequent, I see a quick note about how Duck Hunt was in fact two players and my brain left my head (by way of my ears).
Destroyer Of Worlds
That’s right folks. You could control the fucking ducks. I hope your mind is blown as much as mine was. So there/here I stood (I was actually sitting), uncertain of how I should react. Should I pine for those years back in which me and my brother could have taken the helm and directed the ducks out of each others scopes which would have resulted in us both being much better shooters? Would that extra challenge have laid the foundation to make my brother an even better Buck Hunter than he grew up to be? (That’s right it says: “Baumer is one of the most lethal shots on the East Side”). Had we known, could that have been ‘the most lethal shots on all of Manhattan’ or perhaps ‘the world’?
We’ll never know. And I’m fine with that. Well maybe not tonight, but tomorrow I’ll be fine with that. Well maybe not tomorrow either, but someday soon I’m sure I’ll be fine with the fact that I never knew until almost twenty-six years of age that Duck Hunt was two players and that you could control the ducks. Today I learned that one day I’ll let go of the past. Until then, I’ll just let go of the pants.
Distant flickerings, it’s greener scenery, this weather’s bringing it all back again.
Great adventures, faces in condensation, I’m going outside to take it all in.
Often times I leave my iTunes on shuffle when sitting at my computer working. I used to maintain a ‘work’ playlist but then I’d get sick of those songs, so now I just throw it on random and skip any songs that begin to play and I’m not in the mood to hear. It’s working better for me than the playlist was, for the most part.
Every now and then a song comes on that is one of ‘those songs’. One of those songs that evokes such an overwhelmingly emotional surge. One of those songs that not only presents my mind with such vivid imagery of a time and place from my past, but also the smells, taste, and even temperatures that I felt and experienced at the time. Imogen Heap’s Speak For Yourself album is twelve songs of just that. A trip. A trip on sounds, a trip into my past, a trip to the winter after graduation.
I was 21 years into life. I’d been living in Manhattan for a few months, and had recently started my first job in the ‘real world’ as a full-time web consultant/rover/coder/content-migrator/convio-tweaker/torture-document-search-engine-creator/anything-that-Amanda-wanted-to-do-but-didn’t-have-time-for at the ACLU. I had just discovered the album (I don’t even remember how, surprisingly), and had thrown it on my iPod Nano. I was listening to it everyday in my headphones on the walk to the subway, on the subway, and the walk from the subway to the office on Broad Street, all day at work, and then back again.
At the time I was sharing an office with Amanda, who was pregnant with her first child, and also (unbeknown to me) was binging on some good old fashion Imogen too. I still remember the day when Amanda asked if I minded if she put on some music (which she often did, and which I never minded), and out of the speakers came the sweet twinkling sounds of snowflakes falling (that’s what they are in my mind) that make-up the first few seconds of Headlock. She said something to me like “I’ve been listening to this Imogen Heap chick a lot lately, do you know her?” I proceeded to share that I was addicted to the album as well and for the next few weeks we listened to more Imogen then any two people should ever consciously do.
It was winter in the city (always a depressing time for me), I had just split with my girlfriend of four years (always a depressing time for me), and I found solace in how lost the album allowed me to get. I would wander in her voice and the sounds that she (more than any other experimental electronic artist I’ve ever heard) manages to couple together in such marvelous and enlightening ways.
Now, years later, whenever one of those twelve songs come out of my speakers, my skin gets cold, I smell the condensation of my breath in a subway station, I feel the ice slush in my socks, and I see the carpet in the office that Amanda and I shared for those first few months. I didn’t know then how much the album would come to mean to me. I didn’t know then how much that job would also come to mean to me. I didn’t know then how much the fact that Amanda also loved that album would mean to me.
Both the album and my job were bright lights in what was an otherwise dark time of my life. Almost five years later, even though I am in a much brighter place, they both still shine bright The album holds so much weight with me that it’s the only thing that makes me miss winter in a winter-less place. That says a lot. The job (more importantly the person who gave me the job despite my 0% experience/formal-education in the field) held so much weight with me that I forwent the opportunity of a full-time salaried/benefited employment in hopes that we could make it work as a tag-team of self-employed information/knowledge workers. That says a lot.
