I like [the United States of] America.

From my float down the Deschutes River

Identity is often thought of as this fixed sort of thing and I also find that my identity shifts depending on location.  Being on the West Coast, I cling to traits of an East Coaster - relishing the word "wicked" and venting about the humidity and unfriendly, abrupt, and grumpy people over there.  When in Scotland, I become an American - searching for tasty beer, using "awesome", and defending aspects of America's worldview and culture to people.  When in developing countries, I become a Westerner - mindful of individualism, efficiency, and competition.  When on the East Coast, I either become a New Englander in New Jersey or a Jersey-er in New England or a Northerner in the South. 

Being an American boils down to these instances at times (for me): 

I ask for coffee "to go" when abroad and walk with it in hand, down the street - and notice that I am the only person on the street doing this - and I feel, for some strange reason, satisfied. 

I pass through Times Square and feel this energy in the air - this vibe that I attribute to an "immigrant energy" or "anything is possible" still alive from all the people who first entered through there, and still do.  As I look around the streets, I can't get over the incredibly diverse amount of people walking alongside yellow taxis and beneath hovering skyscrapers.  

On the red dirt road of Uganda, I listen to my big white original Ipod while walking to my homestay.  I can see tall shadows in the dirt of a couple boys following behind me.  I stop and let them listen and they are beside themselves - squealing and laughing until they run away. 

I buy a Vitamin Water and a pack of gum.  I don't know what exactly is in a Vitamin Water but revel in the creative description on the label and the idea that they're created for different moods and personalities.  I chew this gum that I know will last longer than any other international kind. 

***

I'd like to say I feel proud to be an American (and I do), but at the same time, I didn't do anything to become it.  I feel grateful to have grown up here.  Despite traveling other places - and really loving life there, too - there's something about coming home.  I like my life here and I also struggle with it sometimes - the consumerism, white noise, stale air of shopping centers, not to mention a variety of other "issues".  I get angry with Americans and I love them, too.  When I see a person dressed and painted with red, white, and blue, waving that American flag and drinking a beer, I think, "Yep - I get that!"  

Cheers to this big ole mess of a crazy country. 

Ponder-osa

Ponderosa Pines
grow above our steps
from grass to grass.

Thin giants with
circles of years -
rings we'll never
live up to.

Mystified as to
how humans cry,
these trees remain
stumped.

Five songs blasted from a Jeep,
while wilderness girls lay
staring up at
memories in the sky
from sounds and words -

the feelings come out.

The trees,
confused by novels
about this life
and feeling -
anything -
grow roots -

while we get to feel it all.

Sunrise, Sunset

Sunset at Pilot Butte

"Of course she glared at Maytree that fall when he came by barefoot at daybreak and asked if she would like to see his dune shack.  Behind his head, color spread up sky.  In the act of diving, Orion, rigid, shoulder-first like a man falling, began to dissolve.  Then even the zenith and western stars paled and gulls squawked."  - Annie Dillard, The Maytrees, p. 11

I love that description of the Sunrise.  I think it even beats my drawing of the sunset... maybe.

:)

Thaw

"...as I had scarcely ever allowed myself to hope before." - Mr. Darcy, Pride and Prejudice

I'm afraid it is too soon to yell from the mountain tops, but I did feel a spirit of Spring in the air this morning when I started my car and it didn't sound like a garbage compactor with something lodged inside it.  

I opened my door to the smell of water - wet puddles growing along the road.  I saw pavement on our street that has otherwise been a luge runway.  I could run out and start my car without a jacket.  My hands didn't break into a million pieces without gloves on.  Water is dripping off the long icicles above our doorway.  Slush has taken the place of icy snowy embankments.  

Hope is a practice.  It's moments like this where I remember the importance of hope in all things.  It's not an emotion to cover all sins, but one to carry you through to new light even if the tunnel seems particularly long and dark.  

My friend gave me a book of poems by Mary Oliver, which I've been reading through lately and pasting on this blog.  Funny enough, one of my favorite podcasts On Being has recently recorded her reading her poems herself.   

They are here and they are lovely. 

May we all hope for the thaw of so many things. 

Chipping Away

Chip

Chip

Chipping away,

Chipping away

The entry way -

Brown, green, tan and white

The paint chips fell,

Away to the floor

Away to the floor

Chip

Chip

Downhill

Reminder

Breaking the Rules

Sometimes class feels filled with tedious questions about protocol, whereas, in one of my more adventure-related classes this was typed on one of the slides:

No rules works all the time.

Too much planning stresses me out.  I asked my brother for directions to where he and my family were on the Cape one time and he said, "Follow signs for The Cape."  When I drive somewhere, I just need to know the routes or the general direction - not every left or right turn.  Sometimes it feels like people are saying, "So, what if there's no street sign at the intersection, but there hasn't been a sign that says we need to turn right for the same route?  Do we still go straight?"  YES!  KEEP GOING!

If there's a detour, should we follow it?
If we turn down a street, and there's a dead end, should we try to keep going?
What if the light is not turning green, but it's night time, and no other cars are around?  Should we go?
What if I'm holding a coffee and eating a sandwich, is it okay to take my hands off the wheel for a second?
If the speed limit is 65, would I get a ticket if I go 67?  What if everyone is doing 80?

Sometimes there is an obvious answer - YES FOLLOW THE DETOUR - and other times there is not.  This is where ethics comes in and some conversations involving ethical decisions are more interesting than others.  What if your client's girlfriend is standing outside with a gun, and the police say they can't do anything unless something happens, do you let them leave?  One of my professors did.

This same professor said that one of her big breakthroughs was when she realized that the clients she was working with had lives.  When I sit in class, I can imagine one can get so caught up in organizing that they the bigger picture.

Meanwhile, back in Adventure Therapy class, I lost $2.10.  An auction was being run by my professor.  What were we bidding on?  A $1.00 bill.  The winner takes all, but the second and third place people still have to pay.  What?  Right.  Best game ever to play if you're a professor.  You could go home with a little extra at the end of the class.

He started with a $1.00.  For the first round, three people played, eventually bidding $1.00.  What happens is that when you're bidding, you get to a point where you can't afford to lose.  Or, you start thinking, "Well, I'd rather lose $.50 than $.75, if I get the $1.00."  The other problem is that, you're not exempt unless you were the fourth person bidding.  The next round was an auction of $3.00.  I was at $2.10 when I decided to stop, but the other two people kept going until $3.55.  The person who won actually lost $.50, but that's less than my $2.10.  The second place person was the biggest loser: $3.50 or something like that.

Human behavior.  What would YOU do?  Rather than sit and ask question after question, we play games.  Games quietly pull us out of our social selves and might begin to scratch away at our true selves.  Family dynamics come out as everyone is absorbed in an activity.  Suddenly your favorite uncle is pushing you out of the way to get a touchdown, your mom is changing the rules so that she doesn't lose, and your normally silent friend has proven himself the smartest in the room.  I read a quote from Plato once that said, "You can learn more about a person in an hour of play than a year of conversation."  We get so caught up in the game, we drop our cover.

Apparently my professor facilitated this same activity with a corporate group at a conference and ended up with $580 at the end.  What?  Yes.  He gave it to the service crew and they had the most awesome beerfest the last night.  Where did my money go?  To a student/friend who went to a conference over the weekend.  If only all gambled money went towards charity.

Life is about values.  We speed because we're keeping up with traffic, we go through red lights because it's night and no one is around, we text while we're driving because we care about communication.  Values are constantly being juggled and balanced: THAT'S LIFE.  It's one big grayscale, but that's what makes it so captivating... so stop talking about the rules and trying to organize everything, people....

Filosofia

(Drawn awhile ago, but found recently)

"We all start with preconceived notions of what we want from life.  These include the basic needs programmed by our genes to ensure survival - the need for food, comfort, sex, dominance over other beings.  They also include the desires that our specific culture has inculcated to us - to be slim, rich, educated, and well liked.  If we embrace these goals and are lucky, we may replicate the ideal physical and social image for our historical time and place.  But is this the best sure of our psychic energy?  And what if we cannot realize these ends?

We will never become aware of other possibilities unless, like the painter who watches with care what is happening on the canvas, we pay attention to what is happening around us, and evaluate events on the basis of their direct impact on how we feel, rather than evaluating them exclusively in terms of preconceived notions.  If we do so we may discover that, contrary to what we were led to believe, it is more satisfying to help another person than to beat him down, or that it is more enjoyable to talk with one's two-year-old than to play golf with the company president."

- Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience

The Great Salt Lake

Down the Street

"As you say, I knew I wanted to make a change from the previous urban landscape work I'd been doing, and I was keen for a new kind of challenge. I'd been curious about forests for a variety of reasons: their importance as linchpins of biodiversity, the role that their destruction has played in species extinction, and the magnificent way that vast, lush, unpeopled stretches of wilderness can remind us that life extends beyond the world of human development and time, and that that is, in fact, the point from whence human life evolved.

Robert Adams once said that what photographers are often doing is trying to find a good example of something they already know. That is one of the essential tasks of photography: to recognize those salient facts which can become a vehicle for metaphor.

That's my ambition right now. To take what I've learned as a photographer and a human being, and see how much of that I can put in to pictures. It's a great challenge.

Richard Rothman Stanley, Ahorn Magazine

Salt Lake City. Dry, hot, hilly, and hot-pressed into the mountains like a panini. I could fry an egg on the sidewalk or pavement, but I haven't tried. The sun bakes my whole body when I move around the city, yet in the shade I can sport a sweater and pants. When my sweat mixes with my dry hair, it gives it that I-just-swam-in-the-ocean soft stiffness that crunches when I try to put my fingers through it. My eyes are dry and I drink five gallons of water a day plus a drink or two. A cool breeze is blowing just now and the air feels absolutely weightless.

The grass in front of me is green because a lawn sprinkler waters it for an hour each night. In the back it's all dried up and looks like Mexico. I am sitting on the porch of a house on a street with a 90 degree incline. Descending it on my bicycle was terrifying. There is a Vespa in the driveway that is still waiting for me to ride it, which I WILL do once I work up the courage.

I met two gold diggers from Nevada at the local brewery last night. That's right - Nevada, and yes - geologists who ACTUALLY search for gold, send it to refineries, and have it turned into whatever people want it to be. They had already had a bottle of Jim Beam before the bar and were headed to a concert. They insisted we go, but we were already headed to see The National, who played in the park for five freakin dollars. Sitting on my friend's husband's shoulders for the last song was thrilling. It was my third time seeing The National, not particularly intentionally - he just always seems to show up whenever I'm travelling. Once in Santiago, Chile, then in Providence, and now in Salt Lake City. He feels almost like my musical, troubled, alcoholic traveling companion.

Does America realize that Utah is hogging most of the country's beauty? There is no shortage of amazing natural wonders to see in this state. It's ridiculous. Just look up pictures of Staircase Escalante, Devil's Garden, Sunset Arch, Zion Narrows, Coral Pink Sand Dunes and you'll see what I mean if you don't know what I'm talking about already.

Being out in such an expansive wilderness always does tend to illuminate the reality that life extends farther than our eyes can see and our minds can comprehend. There's a huge intricately woven complex world, planet, solar system, galaxy, history, genealogy and evolution that we are all members of. There is nothing new under the sun, just different ways of molding and innovating what grows there. The projects, tasks and innovations that are sometimes clung to so tightly will never fulfill anyone in the way that things unseen can, yet it's a challenge to try and capture those salient factors, but that is the above photographer's take on his own work. I think it's mine too, whether that be in writing, pictures or photos, in order to do what Robert Doisneau, that awesome French photographer, stated:

"The most beautiful and simplest reflex of all is the spontaneous desire to preserve a moment of joy destined to disappear. The act of quickly trying to capture the fleeting moment is more calculated - an image to prove one's own world exists."

Power Line Outline

Blue on Yellow

The Ten Minute Crossing

Hello Brigham Young

View from a Bicycle

Freedom (Tower)

It's so nice to see the New York skyline.  I saw it this morning at around 5:30 AM and it basically looked like this.  After September 11th, the hole that the two towers had left was a reminder that something had happened.  I still remember driving to New York in October 2001 for my birthday and finding it hard to believe that these two dominant buildings that used to overshadow the Empire State Building were just gone.  Seeing the Freedom Tower in its place really does make me feel just a little proud of our stubborn American spirit, sometimes of course a bit arrogant, but obstinate enough to refuse to let such a vibrant and energetic city, full of that optimistic you-can-be-anything-you-want energy, survive with such a hole in it's skyline and infrastructure.  Although I also know that this area is prime real estate, for just a moment or two, I like to believe that this building proves our resilient and ambitious nature that I really love so much and hope we never lose.

Mad Happiness

I began to notice of look of horror come over Meredith's face as we were finishing up lunch in a cafe downtown.  I turned around to see through the window oceans of water being released from the heavens.  We had no choice but to run through them, since there was a meeting she had to return to at work.  Completely unprepared, except for a take-out container that Meredith decided to use as a hat, we opened the door to the street and began sprinting through the sheets of rain.  We were SUCH renegades.

There's a quote that I've always loved from Nine Hills to Nambonkaha that says, "Rain is living breathing happiness.  Mad happiness."   It does feel like crazy joy when you embrace the rain, screaming and zigzagging through the streets - even barefoot (just one of us).  You are reminded that you're living, you're breathing and that it's nice to feel a little crazy sometimes.

Amateur Hour

The Golden Hour

"But originally, “amateur,” from the Latin verb amare, “to love,” referred to a person who loved what he was doing.  Similarly, a “dilettante,” from the Latin delectare, “to find delight in,” was someone who enjoyed a given activity. The earliest meanings of these words therefore drew attention to experiences rather than accomplishments; they described the subjective rewards individuals gained from doing things, instead of focusing on how well they were achieving.  

Nothing illustrates as clearly our changing attitudes toward the value of experience as the fate of these two words.  There was a time when it was admirable to be an amateur poet or a dilettante scientist, because it meant that the quality of life could be improved by engaging in such activities.  But increasingly the emphasis has been to value behavior over subjective states; what is admired is success, achievement, the quality of performance rather than the quality of experience.  Consequently it has become embarrassing to be called a dilettante, even though to be a dilettante is to achieve was counts most – the enjoyment one’s actions provide." 

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience

Conditions

The heat has been brutal lately.  I've been exposed to the elements for the past three days now, being out on ropes courses.  All I can think is, "Survive, survive, survive."  It's worth it, in the end.  I like to think I'm embracing nature despite its attempts to destroy me.  However, I would like to drag an air conditioner along with me, as if that would help cool down such a gigantic section of air.  But then, there'd be no struggle for survival and I would forget that I'm human.

Grow!

Pacing