Nothing Is Lost Forever: 2009

1) There is a lot of gray area between loving someone and trusting someone; best to steer clear of the gray...

2) There is a fine line between being honest and fair with others and being cruel and insensitive with others; its worth it to find that line...

3) The Russian words for cruelty and toughness are very similar. (жестокость / жёсткость )

4) Watching out for number one does not preclude watching out for my fellows; precious few are those who understand this...

5) Looking for the good and beautiful in everyone I meet is still a worthwhile way to live; perceiving the bad and the ugly in them is also very worthwhile; being able to see all of it and not judge them for it is hard...

6) Listening to those with whom I categorically disagree can be fun; trying to learn something from them is hard, but worth it...

8) When you speak a language more often than the one in which your character was formed, your character changes; be aware...

9) No matter what the conservative and moralists may say--moral and cultural relativism is a reality; it is impossible to understand and therefore judge others and other societies by your own personal and societal values; that said--some societies just don't get it...

10)It is nice--more than nice--to have people near you who have known you for many many years.

11) It is also nice--but not so nice--to live somewhere where no one knows who you are, where you came from, and why you are who you are...

12) It is easier to be kind in a society where kindness is valued and where that value is reflected in a society's history, art, business and government; where is that society?

13) Listening to Diana Ross and the Supremes (or anything Motown-ish) and letting the beat move you on the Moscow Metro can make tough and cruel Russians smile...

14) It is 100% true that everything depends on me; it is also true that everyday there are a million and one variables that are completely out of my control; the paradox has the power to paralyze a man; don't let it...

The Girls--Amy and Emily

Because I know many of you wonder why I have not blogged in nearly 2 months:

Not to be entirely cryptic, but I'll simply say that m'life life here in Moscow for the past couple months has been....hmmm....tough. And it's all my fault. Not that "fault" is something I am really into--at least I like to think I am not into fault and blame, but I do look for reasons in the way life turns out--reasons for life's situations and....and...and....stuff 'n stuff. Not for "meaning" really, just for reasons--like cause and effect. And because of this general view--because I believe that much in life depends on our own actions, I can pretty conclusively state that it is my fault that life has been...what did I say? Yeah, tough...

Why, you ask? Well, I think I have this self-defeating drive that compels me to make my life as complicated and as...heavy as possible. I do this in many diverse and disturbing ways.

Here's one example: I spent three plus years in New York City at Columbia working on an MFA in playwriting, building a network of contacts and colleagues in the theatre, receiving that MFA (not without, of course, going into enormous debt for that MFA) and then I promptly up and went to Russia to teach business English for an indefinite amount of time...hehehehe (coy, nervous laugh)...ha ha (short simply nervous laugh)....(long pause)....WHAT?

Mind you, everyone--and I mean EVERYONE (even my friends in Moscow) was like: "Now....whyyyyyy are you doing this?"

I had some really awesome, not- even- very-convincing, bullS**** answers prepared for such confrontations. I made it sound like it was financially really...umm....smart. Which maybe in some way, may have been true, but probably it wasn't....At any rate, I think I did convinced myself---sorta. Not really...

The real question is not some cosmological, fateful, search for the deep, eternal, heavy meaning in my life's experiences, but how do I actually stop myself, as the--let's face it--only person ultimately responsible for my own life's experiences, from making such lame decisions--which, the best I can tell, are designed (by myself) to make my life as complicated, circuitous, cryptic, and as unsuccessfully heavy as friggidy liggidy possible. Hmmmmmm.

Yes, one can say that every crisis is also a possibility and that we assign our own meaning to life's experiences. Yes, indeed. I agree! True dat! But tell me, o ye existentialists, why not avoid the crisis to begin with?

Am I making any sense? No? ...I know.

So--let me get to the Indigo Girls then:

When I was 16 or 17 I became acquainted with the Indigo Girls. They were awesome and they still are. I really dig 'em.

My favorite song was "Ghost" from the Girls' "Rites of Passage" album. "Ghost" is ridiculously lyrical and romantic and melodic and poetically stunning in that naive early-twenty-something in-love-for-the-first-time-with irony, allusion, alliteration, assonance, and just the beauty of language-kind-of-way. So, for a barely 17 year old junior in high school, listening to that song made me feel smart, deep, forward thinking and...heavy.

(I also think the eruption of bottled-up gay yearning resonated with me in some way...ya think?)

I remember Kathy Aitchison let me borrow their copy of the CD and I listened to it all the time in my bedroom on my new Sony 3-Disc CD changer. One time I made my Dad sit with me and listen to it--I think I even made him follow along with the lyrics in the CD booklet. So, we sat on the floor in my room and listened to it and both really enjoyed it and then we talked for while...

I remember at one point my Dad saying something like: "You know, these are really beautiful lyrics. But," he continued, "I remember listening to Dylan and Joni Mitchell and all those folk artists when I was your age and thinking 'wow, these lyrics are so deep'. Now, I'll go back sometimes and listen and I think: What does that even mean?" And he chuckled.

And I remember, nodding 'yeah' but also being kinda miffed. More so, I think my mind was a little blown because I knew he was right in some way.

At the same time, though, over the years, as I go back and listen to "Ghost" and as I think about the lyrics, I realize its actually a pretty explicable piece of poetry--(have a listen and explicate away--its fun)

Truthfully, it's the "Indigo Girls" later stuff that really makes you go "Now...WHAT are they saying?"

Ten years later, my friend Gretchen burned me a copy of the Girls' "Become You" album.

It was the summer I turned 27--It was the summer I did my first three triathlons and the summer I spent just about every spare minute I had rock-climbing, bouldering, running, swimming, or biking.

A guy I really thought I was in love with (it is so funny now-- it always is, right?) had broken up with me in April and in July I still wasn't over it.

I jammed my fingers and my unrequited love into the cracks of the Wasatch and into the sandy red-rock ledges of Moab and Maple Canyon with my friend Heidi.

I sliced that sense of loss and loneliness through the gray-brown waters of Pine View and Jordanelle and Deer Creek Reservoirs training with my friend Jeff.

Alone, on 90 degree plus afternoons, I'd run that yearning into the blacktop of side-streets in Clearfield or onto the rocky trails above the Weber State campus.

Never completely able to cover the 'real me' with the hours spent on the rock or in the gym or in the water or on the bike or running, I sang that pain like crazy at the top of my lungs and sang the f-ing hell outta the Girls' "Become You" lyrics driving in my air-conditioner-less 1988 red 2-door Honda Accord.

I drove back and forth between Ogden and Orem and Salt Lake and Moab and Zion and Maple Canyon and Jordanelle and Park City and I sang and sang the Girls' beautifully cryptic lyrics and my pain was either met or assuaged or both while I sang and the wind whipped through the open windows and tugged at the straps on my red climbing pack in the back-seat.

My favorite song from that album is " She's Saving Me" which is really...heavy. Most of it is so painfully beautiful it doesn't make one friggin bit of sense whatsoever.

Here's the first verse:

We were sittin' 'round a dyin' fire
Somebody lit incense
Somebody lit a cigarette
and passed the bottle around

It was just strawberry season
back-breakin' pickers in the patches
every thing's burnin' down to ashes
and down to the ground

I mean its gorgeous, right? But...what...does...it mean? The first stanza is pretty straightforward--its setting the scene. Beautifully, of course--very rustic, very earthy, very....lesbian-y . I like it.

Before I get to the chorus, I want to go--sorta unfairly, I suppose--to the 2nd verse. That's where you are really like: WHAAAAT?

I try to put it aside
but its too much bigger than me
There's a big brown hawk in the tree
lightin' and leavin'

And there's tea leaves tossin'
Its the pennies in my pocket
Dead star like a rocket
The arc of my grievin'

Right? Like excruciatingly beautiful, but.....WHAAAAT??????

So, maybe if I throw you the chorus that "magic access-point" into the meaning of every poem will appear.

She's saving me
I don't even think she knows it
It's a strange way to show it
as distant as last night's dream unravels

She's saving me
I'm a very lost soul
I was born with a hole in my heart
the size of my land-locked travels

Did it appear for you--that" magic access-point" to the deep heavy meaning?

It hasn't for me either, but I will say this-- the final two lines of the last stanza:

"I was born with a hole in my heart the size of my land-lock travels"

...These lines just about capture in poetry the best excuse I can muster for this morbid drive I have to defeat myself at every turn.

My travels lead me nowhere except away from my last journey and though the distance I cover and the dust I kick up is vast it still has failed to fill what I see as this gaping awareness since birth that I am destined to yearn for the unfulfillable. And since I long ago became convinced that the only destiny I have is the one I create for myself through my own choices and actions, I can't seem to understand why I constantly perseverate on that damn hole in my heart!!!

O' Stupid Soulful, Beautiful, Heavy Lyrics, why do you pull at my soul so? When I hear you, why do my neurons fire and why do the adrenaline and dopamine rush through my brain making me feel full of life and purpose and connection? In the end, you mean nothing more than the sum of these chemical reactions in my body propelling me on and convincing me that living another day as brilliant me is a worthy endeavor...

Tonight, after a rather pointless evening--after a week filled with heavy drama and complications of my own making, I walked home from the Metro contemplating these tough past two months. Bemoaning where they have led me and trying to come up with some reason for it all, I actually thought of this lame excuse:

"I was born with a hole in my heart the size of my land-locked travels"

I pulled my ipod out of my pocket, popped in the earbuds, scrolled through the artist list to the Girls', clicked on "Become You", toggled down to "She's Saving Me", pushed play and let the dopamine flow.

I sang as I walked through the dirty Moscow snow-rain and I indulged my pain. Instead of using that brisk walk to constructively think about what the f*** I can do to get me off this tough journey and onto something productive, I had myself a little cryptic, complex, beautiful and meaningless HEAVY!

I am pretty sure that Heavy is bad. So why do I always go for the easy rush that heavy and deep and complex and beautiful give instead of actually doing something?

I like to think that I don't have a problem with substances--no drugs, no cigarettes, no alcohol really (wine like three times a year)--but complicated, circuitous, heavy situations to make me feel that my life is full of meaning. Well, let me tell you--I need my hit!

But no more. I don't wanna use the same excuse I've been using since I first heard that painfully beautiful heavy lyric to explain away the choices I've made and I am too tired tonight to assign my own meaning to these past 6 months in Moscow and so...like any addict, I light up and throw back a few of the Girls' songs to forget about life for a while--I let heavy take me in his arms and I sing along...