Thank you Loren Eisley for the key to life.

Once upon a time, there was a wise man who used to go to the ocean to do his writing. He had a habit of walking on the beach before he began his work.

One day, as he was walking along the shore, he looked down the beach and saw a human figure moving like a dancer. He smiled to himself at the thought of someone who would dance to the day, and so, he walked faster to catch up.

As he got closer, he noticed that the figure was that of a young man, and that what he was doing was not dancing at all. The young man was reaching down to the shore, picking up small objects, and throwing them into the ocean.

He came closer still and called out "Good morning! May I ask what it is that you are doing?"

The young man paused, looked up, and replied "Throwing starfish into the ocean."

"I must ask, then, why are you throwing starfish into the ocean?" asked the somewhat startled wise man.

To this, the young man replied, "The sun is up and the tide is going out. If I don't throw them in, they'll die."

Upon hearing this, the wise man commented, "But, young man, do you not realize that there are miles and miles of beach and there are starfish all along every mile? You can't possibly make a difference!"

At this, the young man bent down, picked up yet another starfish, and threw it into the ocean. As it met the water, he said, "It made a difference for that one."

Whatever kind of crisis happens when you're nineteen rather than 54.

So, I've found myself once again looking for somewhere to go.

Money is tight, jobs are non-existent, fulfillment is like some sort of intangible phantom that I saw out of the corner of my eye once then realized I was dreaming and woke up to a reality as flimsy as the walls of my unconscious idealisms. And I still sucked at making sense.

I'm spending a little time at home to recharge and get my head in the game, which basically equals out to "making enough money to keep eating until you're given the magic shovel that will grant you entrance into your own personal grave of college debt". And that grave, I suspect, must have embellished walls with beautiful views to keep you comfortably fooled for just long enough, because everyone living university life is much more carefree than that sort of consequence might allow for. I'm thinking more and more though, that I may soon justify all my teachers who rolled their eyes at me for devising this whole residency plan to go to U of O. "it's dangerous, you may not want to go back to school." and admittedly I've been bitten by the "youthful unrealistic young person" bug. I'm not so sure tying myself down with over a hundred thousand dollars in debt to avoid the social stigma of skipping college is really my thing. I'm as cynical and arrogant as the day is long I know.

I want you to consider for a moment, how much of your life is lived according to social stigmas and norms. If you are in college, the most likely reason you are there is to increase the chances you'll end up with heaps of recreational moolah later in life. To insure that you end up with a nice home, a drivable car, a well-bred labradoodle, and the satisfaction of perseverance. And the reason for that is assuredly because the world you grew up in has equated that lifestyle with success. And the most direct route to validating your success, be it intellectual or otherwise, is to have a fancy degree that shows you're good enough.

However!

Success is happiness.
Success is balance of all parts of yourself, painted out onto the giant mural-to-be that is your waking life.

Maybe I don't need to go to college. I've got love and libraries and youth on my side and lives to change and a novel to write. I'll think much too much about it and get back to you on my decision.

Things-

Places
http://www.stumbleupon.com/to/s/81wR3U

Ways
http://www.stumbleupon.com/to/s/2Ly8E7

Music
http://www.stumbleupon.com/to/s/1ZdfIv

Typical.

Be still these rolling thunderheads behind my open eyes
If I recall this visage one more time 
You've lost yourself and I've misplaced mine. 

I've come back to greet the eye of the storm 
With youthful pride gone brave and blind. 
 just short of kissing the withdrawals goodbye.
It's good to see you my love. 

The best.

Sincerest apologies for being a lazy bum and not writing in like nine years, but i've returned with all varieties of exciting news.
Firstly!
I can definitively state that this weekend was the greatest of all the weekends in the weekend world. I spent Friday beasting it up, biking what seemed to be a nearly vertical face of asphalt with a beautiful spectacular girl named Morgen. This was en route to Spencer's Butte in our current city of Eugene, Oregon, where we would hike for a bit in the light rain, spend a significant chunk of time absolutely agape at the way the light green moss gave the trees their fluorescent glow toward their tops, then sit our little butts down under a natural overhang of branches and eat Brie cheese and grapes and three kinds of chocolate and granny smith apples. Being out in a place like that seems to heighten every sense and emotion to their greatest degrees, which I suppose must be why everything tastes freaking glorious when you're out hiking. I don't know that the words or company of any person could comfort me in the same way as the company of the wild.
In a seemingly endless succession of uncanny shit that just worked out swimmingly, Morgen and I spent the rest of our day dodging death while careening at roughly 27637382 mph down those vertical hills we'd climbed up so slowly before (which were also wet and muddy by this point, mind you), wandering around Valley River Center buying vitamins and undergarments, then living the absolute high life at Anatolia restaurant downtown, trading bites of Mediterranean deliciousness and reveling in how wonderful this girl date had been. We hugged goodbye as she waited for the EmX and I scurried across Eugene station to catch the 13 Centennial home (does the city just look at some people and say, "Welp, we've assessed you thoroughly and you're a complete creep, here's a dirty baseball cap and a bus pass!). And as I walked, I caught myself with one of those giant smiles on my face that must have looked really silly to anyone who wasn't reading my mind. But I was just so stoked on life. Two of life's greatest essentials are relationships with 1) a beautiful view that you can't get to in nice shoes 2) someone who makes you just want to break out a quality fist pump, because they balance and uplift you and make you laugh your little face off for no reason.
And that was just FRIDAY! Check ittttt-
If days are typically separated and denoted by sleep in between them, I pretty much had one giant Saturday that's still going on and will be until this blog has been posted. And I spent most of this adventure with my newest and among my very best friends, qui s'appelle Diego. I met a majority of his immediate family, who was in Eugene to watch Diego's younger brother take vicious stabs at the opposing soccer team's dignity. We huddled under umbrellas, cheered and clapped, congratulated Edwin on his win, ate tamales, and went home. At which point I decided concretely to someday learn fluent Spanish. And how to make tamales. Love is family, and family is love, and it doesn't even have to be yours to feel it.
Later, born of the inherent insomnia which is bound to happen after a four hour nap at 6:00 pm, I invited Diego over for a late night jam session since he had done the same thing, ironically. We sang, and talked, and speculated about tomorrow's plans until about 4:00 a.m. when some ambiguous force (youth, perhaps) possessed us into agreeing without hesitation to road trip at that very moment to Lincoln City to watch the sun come up over the ocean, then spend the day taking pictures and exploring beaches and watching waves and adventuring. So, teeny mandarin oranges and camera in hand, we hit the open road. Arriving in Lincoln City just as it really started to get light out. Little bit of walking on the beach, a few pictures, an hour car nap in the sun, glorious. We later drove south a bit, ending up in Newport for lunch at Mo's on the one day that will assuredly go down in history as the ONLY sunny day every to befall the city of Newport, Oregon. Things could not have worked out better.

This weekend really got me thinking introspectively about circumstance and outwardly manifested reality. It seems to me like a completely legitimate possibility that this visible, tangible reality that we see before us is nothing but outward reflections of ourselves, which exist for the sole purpose of experiential growth of our minds, hearts and souls. In which case, weekends that work out wonderfully are just visual manifestations of some balance you've achieved within yourself. The more likely possibility though, I think, is that there is one over reaching reality experienced by everyone subjectively, and it looks and feels varied depending on where you're figuratively standing. And reality is constant, though only in the way that it is ever-changing, and one's soul and mind cast different arrays of shadow and light over this scene, making it just as subjective as the first idea, where reality does not really exist at all. We can draw nearly the same conclusions from either, to learn about ourselves, to discover the circumstances in which we function best, or the times we are most perfectly balanced. Remember, just be.

Also, slightly less recently, I discovered I was able to run short distances again (I've had a recurring stress fracture since in my metatarsal bone since last July), and my first 5k in nearly 8 months nearly made me want to cry tears of "this is the best day of my life". I've been taking it easy, and will continue to do so until I'm runnin' ultramarathons left and right and I have so many muscles in my calves it's borderline inhuman and kiiinda gross! Score!

Grain-free raw vegan as of tomorrow, I'll keep you updated with that as well.

Au revoir, belles!