Random Rant

I have just finished an act that has left me ridden with guilt.  Condemnation streamed from the heavens, not the heaven of angels and such, but the heaven of book lovers of old.  I have just damaged a precious page of this precious little book.  Yes, I just dog-eared a page in my book, and as I did, I caught myself imagining the excuses that I would give to those in class that might see my actions as an uneducated display of disrespect for the very foundation of "what we do." That got me to thinking; why should I feel guilty or even care for that matter?

It's strange to me that I should I feel that I have done something wrong.  I am struck by the illogical nature of the very idea that applying a helpful crease to MY book is such a crime.  Why should I feel guilty.  It's not like I'm cutting words out or ripping pages from the spine or running the thing through a wood chipper.  No, just a simple crease.  It's my freaking book!  If I want to write, crease, or create a an entire origami zoo out of every single page, I will.

Cultural Mysophobia

In my last post, I meticulously described in great detail how the sound of the human chew grated on my nerves like nails on a chalkboard.  I thought that I would explore this a little further.
My earliest memory of agitation with mastication brings me to my grandfather.  My grandparents were notorious for preparing a big breakfast every morning.  It was just a normal part of the day for them.  I'm not talking about cereal; it was eggs, bacon, biscuits, gravy, the works, and this was day in and day out.  I can remember as a youngster sitting there watching with awe as my grandfather prepared his food.  Naturally I was curious to see how he ate, how he prepared his food, how he approached his morning meal.  The truth was that whether I wanted to or not, I had to see it.  We ate at a bar that spread from the kitchen over into the living area.  It was a perfect place to sit, spread out the food, and eat.  The only problem was that when you were eating together, you were really eating together.  If you could have seen me and my grandparent's spacial bubbles while we sat at that bar, it would have looked like the Olympic rings.  We were in each other's space in the worst way.  You could see each pass of the fork to the mouth, each mucus coated guy wire stretching from the roof of the mouth to the tongue, each pouch of food being drawn to the stomach while the adam's apple pulsed and pumped like some type of industrial press forcing the food along an assembly line.  It was too much, too much.
I couldn't have been very old when I came to the conclusion that hearing bodily actions up close and personal was something that I just couldn't handle.  I'm guessing I was probably about 4 or 5 years old at the most.  Thinking about the "why" of this has led me to an even worse conclusion about myself.  I don't like being close to other humans, even family members.  Wow!  Did you just hear that?  That was the psycho alert that just went off.  Who doesn't like being next to their family member?  Now you know at least one person that fits that bill. But it's not just family members; if you  are in any way different than me, no let me rephrase that, if you're NOT me, I would rather you keep your distance.
As I look closer, it seems like my dislike of chewing  is more a function of just being close to people in general.  It seems that if I'm close enough to see what's really taking place in the lives of others as opposed to my ideal picture then I am uncomfortable.  I have to admit, this goes for emotional closeness as well, talk about messy.  Being close means you see and hear things that you ordinarily would not, so staying at a distance allows me to keep my assumptions about the world around me in place.  Because of this, I don't have to do much; I don't have to change or adjust to the reality of the human experience.  I mean if we really look at this, I am attempting live this life as if I were the only human who has the right to be fully human, the only one who can eat, breath, and live uninhibited.  With my rationale and my desire to make everyone else into exactly what I want them to be, I am separating myself from the possibility of a deeper human experience.
I used to think that I was a freak, boarder line Howie Mandel, but I think there is a principle here, or at the very least a type of behavior that many of us engage in on a regular basis.  I'm not trying to get all preachy here, but think about it for a second.  How many times have we locked ourselves in the bubble of our own world and our own reality and missed THE reality that there are actually others that think, act, and feel differently than we do?  Instead of distancing ourselves from the "different" in the world around us, it seems to me that if we would just take the time to move a little closer to those who we think are so different we just might see how similar we are.  That's the problem isn't it; taking the time to take a close look at others makes us take a closer look at ourselves, and that can be scary.        

Can You Please Die for Me?

Hate is such a strong word, and to be totally honest, you would be hard pressed to ever hear me just give in and say that I hate someone, but with that being said, I have no problem admitting that there is a group of human behavior's that I do hate, and hate with a passion.  The only problem here is that I'm not talking about your basic "bad" human behaviors like "I hate bullying," or "I hate cheating."  Those are terrible behaviors, and they definitely fall into my dislike category, but what I hate isn't necessarily good or bad; it's more trivial than anything.  These despised actions of the human condition don't hold any sway on world peace or any peace for that matter.  They in fact only affect one person; it's me that they disturb, me and only me. So yes, as I meander through this explanation, like cream rising to the top, my selfish self is going to spring out like a jack-in-the-box.  Right in your face.  More than likely after this little confession session, you're opinions of me as a person will be forever skewed.  So here goes...   

I hate the sound of someone chewing food. Yes, that's right, chewing food, not gum or candy but food.  Yes, I hate something that every human does on a daily basis, and something that every human has to do to live I might add. The grinding of molars upon bits of feed, the crunching of starchy morsels, the wishy-washy sound of saliva moistening the food as it's passed back and forth in the mouth by the strange and muscular tongue; it drives me crazy.  The gulping sound of a long anticipated swallow, the low "um, um" that accompanies each gnash of the teeth in a rhythmic cadence as the jaw completes its cycle of the chomping chew, that is what I hate.  I can deal with my own mammal chewing tendencies, my own cud chomping doesn't present a problem at all, but you put someone beside me in any eating environment chomping through a meal, and you better have some ambient sound, or it's going to get ugly.  I'm not talking about ugly in the sense that I might lash out and judo chop you across your pie hole, but if I have to hear unabated chewing for too long, I'm likely to vomit up a comment like Lardass' blueberry explosion in Stand by Me.  It wouldn't be a mean comment either, and in fact, the chewer wouldn't have a clue what I was even talking about, but by saying some inside-jokeish snide remark, like a pressure valve, I am able to release the build-up of inner tension and thus safe face.

This exact scenario took place just last week. This is no lie; I had a guy in one of my classes come in with an entire fried chicken dinner.  We're talking roll, cole slaw, beans, mashed potatoes, the whole works.  It was all neatly packaged in that squeaking styrofoam to-go box.  I knew this was going to get bad quick.  So class starts, and as the seats in the class were slowly filling up, in comes lunch-boy.  Disheveled in appearance and only minutes from rolling out of bed (it's noon by the way).  I watch him as he slowly scans the room.  First he looks to the left, no seats, and then he looks to the right, no (I grumbled in that slow-motion growl).  His eyes connect with the seat right next to me.  Peering over his chicken dinner he makes his way to the boundaries of my bubble.  Here we go, giddy-up.  He sits right next to me and commences his pre-meal prep.  You would have thought this guy was sitting down to dinner at some five-star restaurant.  He spreads out his napkin placing his plastic scarf tools parallel to one another like a surgeon preparing to extract some internal organ.  Then he takes the first bite.  His heavy breathing and the whistling of nasal air being pulled quickly though his snout makes me wonder when was the last time this guy ate.  Due to the sheer mass of chicken meat that he had stuffed into his gullet, I know the whistling of air over nose hair and clogged sinuses would be lasting through the entire meal.  Eating and chewing and swallowing and the squeaking of that dang styrofoam box went on and on.  Between his heavy breathing, the crunching of deep fried chicken skin, and that styrofoam box, I just about had a fit.  I'm over here twitching like a junky in rehab, and I'm trying not to be noticed, but I know people are starting to stare at me.  By now I've given him several unapproving glances at no avail.  Luckily, he finished his scarf session before I blew a gasket, but I was seriously about to boil over.  I thought to myself, "You just about made a complete fool of yourself," and as I was both comforting and giving myself the proverbial pat not he back for my great self control, I glanced back and my chicken eating classmate launched the death blow.  There was a piece of cabbage from his cole slaw, and it was hanging from his scraggly beard like a Christmas ornament.   Watching that remnant of vegetation sway back and forth as his tongue made laps around his mouth cleaning the remains of his feast, I sat in amazement. It was taunting me.  Seriously, how do you not know you have a giant piece of cabbage hanging from your beard?   Can you not feel it pulling down on the skin of your face?!  Please wipe it off!  He never did.  

Look, I truly do feel guilty for hating these basic human behaviors, and I feel even more guilty after telling this story.  Just think of what I am asking, "Please stop nourishing your body so you can live; stop eating so I can be comfortable."  It's ridiculous I know, and I couldn't even tell you why I hate it so much, but I do.  Look, I'm in no way making a defense for what I have just told you.  It's wrong any way you look at it, and the strangest part about this whole peeve of mine is that I am the worst chewer of all.  Being so versed in chewing, I know that I fit right into the category of behavior that I hate so much; I am a loud, saliva ridden chewer of the highest order.  It doesn't matter what I'm eating, it always sounds like I've got a mouth full of Captain Crunch.  I'm like a horse eating oats.  Maybe my hatred for chewing is a function of my own chewing; maybe I hate the way I chew, and I project that hatred onto others.  Who knows?  

I've Got Your Expansion and Contraction Right Here

I am almost positive that I have read or heard from at least one source that if one knows his or her own weakness, and if one is able to come to grips with said weakness, there is some type of strength gathered from it.  I'm not sure how true this is, but if it is true in any sense, I should be able to leap tall buildings in a single bound.  Seriously, where else would one go to find something to write about besides the thing that occupies so much of our time.  The more I think about it, how much I suck at something seems to hover around me like I'm Pig Pen from Charlie Brown.  There is this inescapable cloud of crap that seems to envelop me.  

Don't get me wrong, I know that most other people don't necessarily see it as crap, especially in today's PC climate.  More than likely for the PC crowd, I'm just "challenged,"but to me, mostly because I know the truth as I will describe shortly, it's just straight crap.  Here's the part where you probably think I'm going to tell you I'm learning disabled, or maybe I'm dyslexic, or  maybe I've been raised by foster parents because my real mom and dad abandon me when I was just a child.  Your not even close, and this is where the real embarrassment begins. Here's my big problem; I want to be good at stuff.  Actually in the honor of full disclosure I need to make it a bit more clear; I want to great at everything I do.  I know, it really doesn't sound that bad, but this is where Pig Pen's sweet little swirling cloud quickly turns into a raging tornado.  I wish I had some grand reason for wanting to be good at everything I do, but the truth is I don't.  I simply want to be the best at what I do no matter what it is. I know that sounds innocent enough, but wanting to be good and wanting to be the best are miles apart, especially when you know the real reason behind your motivation.  See, being the best as opposed to simply being good means that my focus is not on mastering some new concept or skill to better myself and those around me, no; my sole focus is to be standing on the podium while being sprayed with champaign, swigging from some giant jug of milk, surrounded by models, and  all the while holding the biggest bouquet of flowers none to man.  There it is, and there is no way around it; I am prideful, and yes, prideful people are constantly worried about what they cannot do, and that takes me right back to square one, the swirling cloud of crap.  The only difference between me and Pig Pen is that I have mastered hiding the cloud.  

Pushing the Limits

You fit so nicely around your wonderful fleshy holder.  Perfectly placed and literally within arm's reach.  You're visible and easy to read with just a simple glance.  I find it both strange and ironic to admit that with all of your wonderful features, visibility, and uses for ordering my daily affairs that I simply don't take the time to interact with you on a more regular basis.  I simply don't consider you important enough to pay attention to.  Don't get me wrong however, I want to have a viable and thriving relationship with you.  One where I don't have to enter a room with excuse in hand, one where I don't have to write papers while watching the amazing feats of Ron Popeil's Magic Pasta Maker.  

I want to put you first, let you direct my day, but for some reason, I think I am better of just doing this life on my own.  It's like an addiction.  I know better, but I can't seem to break the habit.  I know those sweet little hands innocently wrapping around every minute of every single day are just waiting to draw me closer to efficiency and punctuality, but again and again I turn away only to have you staring back into my eyes the very next morning.  

Here is the question though, is it really a bad thing.  I mean do we really have to be together every moment of everyday.  I keep asking myself what is more important?  Is it how I get there and who I bring with me, or is it that fact that I get there?  Seriously, if I'm good enough my mom will never know that I bought her Mother's Day card at Kung Woo's Kwik-E-Mart on the way to her house, right?  If she thinks that I thought ahead isn't that all that matters?  Time, you make this life so frustrating.

Finding My Groove

At 7,500 ft., the trailhead that leads into the Chicago Basin rest at the bottom of a 5,000 vertical foot rise that is stretched over a punishing 7 miles.  This 7 mile gut-wrenching hike ends in belly of one of Colorado's most scenic areas, the Chicago Basic.  The Chicago Basis rests in the middle of the Needle Mountains, and the beauty of these mountains lead one to believe that the hike ahead will be just as breath-taking as the view from the trailhead; it is; however, not all for the same reasons.

Oklahoma air and Colorado air don't have much in common, and every summer when I arrive in Colorado to make this same hike, I am quickly reminded of this as my lungs scratch and bite for ever breath.  My trip starts in Durango, Colorado where I board the Durango-Silverton train and take it high into the mountains.  A three-hour trip that tip-toes along sheer cliffs, rushing rivers filled with the summer's snow melt, and rows and rows of pines that stretch to the horizon leads me to the heart of the Needle Mountains.

Once off the train, the air is crisp, and the adrenaline is flowing, but it's not long before reality sets in; this is going to take some hard work.  For the next six hours, a forty-five pound pack digs into your shoulders while your quads feel like you've bathed them in molten lava. The air gets thinner and thinner, and the closer you get to the end the harder it gets. Really, the the whole thing is like some type of sick human tractor-pull, but as painful as it is, the pay-off is well worth it. The view from 14,000ft. is beyond description.

These trips to Colorado have meant a lot to me, and I have found that most of what takes place in life in general is not much different in terms of principle than my experience climbing in the Colorado mountains, one foot in front of the other until you reach the top.  For me, the progression of events that take place when heading up the mountain translate well to just about any endeavor.  The thing that I have found so helpful from my time in Colorado is this: the next step is that most important one.  In the mountains one step is worth quite a lot, and looking too far ahead or too far behind can have a severe penalty. 

I think I can...I think I can

I guess it's natural to have a little apprehension when shoving off the shores of the known world, and I'm no exception.  When faced with something new, there is no doubt that the thought of falling off the edge of the earth works to set up camp in my thinking, but for me, it's not long before the excitement of learning and experiencing something new quickly overshadows any anxiety that accompanies any new venture.  It's not often that I say "no" when it comes to attempting something new; I have a simple schema that I follow: if another human is able to do it, then the only thing that separates me from doing it is time and effort (excluding the obvious gender limitations).  However, I must admit that there are limits to my desire to experience something new, and when the "uncharted waters" that I'm venturing into could sink the entire ship, the risk-reward curve quickly takes the helm.