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!
