Since I am not doing what is necessary I am writing about the why not.

In this case I find I have several things that sit, in some stage or another, on my metaphorical plate (I actually dislike the analogy). I have family, professional, educational, and obligations to self that all require a piece of my time. My family, and by that I am defining family as Erin and CAMPER, require individual attention and time. I cannot just assume that by spending time with CAMPER while Erin is in proximity that I have sufficiently spent time with her. As a result, I find myself making time for both my wife and child and making sure I spend time with them.

Along with family resposibilities I have work responsibilities. To some extent these overlap in that I am the provider and have to work to make money so that we can afford to pay bills and buy food. Previously to my current job I was working at Wal-Mart (formerly “this place“) on the graveyard shift. Because of that, I slept during the day, didn’t really care to be awake on the weekends though I chose to alter my sleeping habits to, again, spend time with my family. As a result of not being awake when Erin and CAMPER were, I looked for and found another position where I work during the day and can now sleep at night. This is better but at the same time I have to give away some of my day to a commute that equals about three hours of time. I am in a better position than I was with Wal-Mart, but still searching for a state of equilibrium.

Along with family and work I have responsibilities to my degree – specifically a Master’s of Fine Arts in Writing. This program requires me to spend quite a few hours a day writing and reading and revising and writing and revising and reading and etc. and etc. with the outcome. Granted, everything gets to be set aside in about twenty-five days for ten days where I will be nicely sequestered on an island at a Franciscan Retreat Center talking about writing. After the retreat and residency I will have to find time (that may not exist) to write and read and revise and make sure that my novel actually does get written and revised and made ready for publication.

Finally, I have responsibilities to myself. I think this is the least defined as I want to spend time with Erin and CAMPER and I want to go to school and I need to (and to some extent want to) go to work. Along with all of that I need to start taking care of my body so that my IBS doesn’t get worse. The doctor think Yoga and meditation will help and Erin is currently looking for a Yoga class on a Saturday that I can start attend and that we can afford.

The outcome to all of this is not that I don’t realize what is needed or wanted or necessary, but that I haven’t found the magic combination of time and management and energy that will allow me to find the state of equilibrium that will also allow me to spend a few minutes (or more) updating the blog and making sure I expand my readership rather than have people who get here from Erin’s website or by spending some time searching for something like Assateague Island or Roommate Etiquette or the White Screen of Death on my Macbook.

Real Heroes Fly ]]> http://www.johnhattaway.com/2009/06/searching-for-a-state-of-equilibrium/feed/ 0 http://www.johnhattaway.com/2006/07/studio-60-and-aaron-sorkin/ http://www.johnhattaway.com/2006/07/studio-60-and-aaron-sorkin/#comments Thu, 13 Jul 2006 22:13:01 +0000 smokingpen http://www.johnhattaway.com/?p=390 Okay, let me talk TV for a moment. There are a handful of shows I will watch over and over again. Depending on the mood, I will watch different things. Specifically, a melancholy (that I can’t pull off as attractive, by the by) is often accompanied by my watching Sports Night. I absolutely love that show. It is by Aaron Sorkin. He did The West Wing and wrote the screenplay for The American President. I don’t like the politics of either show, but I have to tell you, he is an amazing creative presence and I have waited for a long, long time for him to come out with something that was as groundbreaking and funny and everpresent as Sports Night.

When Sports Night was on the air I would literally scan the channels to find it. Some weeks it would play on a Tuesday; other weeks Wednesday; it seemed like time slots kept getting shifted around. Really, it was a show that was shot in the foot and left to die a very painful and agonizing death before it was cancelled. The show was amazing from the get-go, and yet, when it become even more amazing and even more interesting, the network people said, “Okay, we’re done,” and off the air it went.

So, I get melancholy (remember, I can’t pull off melancholy) and in goes Sports Night and I get to walk through the life of a cable sports channel as they produce their headline show. I don’t like sports, I don’t care for sportscasters, and yet, I can watch that show over and over and over again and enjoy every little nuance and episode almost every time because Aaron Sorkin is a genius among television and movie writers and creators and because he has a pulse on dialogue and sophisticated storytelling that most people would give their left ventricular artery to achieve.

As an additional note: It is said that he broke his teeth on Sports Night before moving on to bigger and more prominent projects. The man really is that good. Every actor from Sports Night, through searches on IMDB.com have worked very consistently since being on that show. Felicity Huffman, wife to super-actor William H. Macy stars in the show, stars in ABC’s Desperate Housewives. Actors have gone on to star in other shows, HBO’s Six Feet Under. These actors really are everywhere and it’s fun to have seen them cut their teeth with Aaron Sorkin.

Now, all of that was so I could say that he (Aaron Sorkin) has created another comedy TV series called Studio 60. This is so exciting to me. Granted, I have been watching way, way, way too much television of late. I admit that. It’s always on, except for where I am now living because… well… I can’t watch what I don’t have. However, there is a reason why people tune in and tune out every single day of their lives when it comes to new programming in shows that somehow speak to the human condition. Granted, I agree with people who say that there is very little positive or uplifting coming out of Hollywood or across Television; however, at the same time, it is entertainment and when you can find something worth watching, I say, do it. Don’t let it run your life, but do it.

So, Studio 60 is coming in the fall. It pulls Matthew Perry, a Friends alum in to play one of the leads. There are other faces you notice but not necessarily with names you’d know. But who really cares. It’s Aaron Sorkin.

Now, with all of that said, and out of the way, here’s a link to a six minute preview. Don’t click if you don’t have broadband.

I am really, really, really looking forward to this show.

The problem I have with the episode, or with the myth, isn’t that Blackbeard didn’t hide treasure on the island in an old weapons cache, but that he dug it down two hundred feet, one hundred feet, or even seventy five feet. The problem is that the water table, due to elevation above sea level is only about thirty to thirty-five feet beneath the surface. What that means is that you go beneath that mark and the hole fills up with water. That’s how a well works. Hit the water table and seepage from ground water fills the hole.

Blackbeard may not have known about water tables, or he may have been a freaking genius, it doesn’t matter, either way, to me. What is true is that for his crew to have created traps that allowed seawater to enter this hole he would’ve had to create long channels from his cache to the sea to allow water in. On top of that these channels would have to remain watertight for, what, three hundred years. That means that no water can seep through until the traps have been tripped. Sounds a lot like an Indiana Jones plot more than actual pirate treasure.

It would be great for treasure to be down there; for Blackbeard to be genius enough to create this complex hole where he hid his treasure, and god forbid, no one else on the whole planet being smart enough to find it, work past the traps, or work through the interstitions and find what professionals and others have found impossible. The word used, rather than impossible or non-existent, is curse.

Now, when you look at satellite imagery you can see that the ground has not been disturbed to create furrows or channels to allow seawater in. What this means is that unless Blackbeard had midgets tunneling for him, he would’ve had to dig a channel down from the surface, created support structures, and then backfilled.

Why I bring this up is that geological data from around the world shows that something like this doesn’t heal within three hundred years. There would be evidence when pictures are taken through satellite imagery.

Further, anytime you drop below a water table you automatically lose integrity of a hole. The walls lose stability. There are cave-ins. People die. Oh wait, I just described Blackbeard’s alleged treasure pit on Assateague Island. Go figure.

Treasure? Nope. Nice myth. Oh yeah.

One of these days I will write about my fascination with treasure, buried, sunken, and otherwise. Not tonight.

I was watching the trailer for a new movie, Brick, coming out in the very near future. I want to see this movie.

It deals with Crime Noir. As anyone who’s followed what I’ve been reading of late knows, I am really digging crime noir.

It’s got a life, in lit, that is so surrealistic you can’t believe what is being written about, and at the same time, you are drawn into the plot and story so fully you want to believe that there really are women and men out there like what is being written about.

I’d imagine it is how the world felt before Hollywood, television, and people trying to turn smut into art.

Nudity is smut.

Nudity is art.

Nudity in movies is never necessary and is always smut.

I like smut.

I try not to watch it.

And yet, that’s not really what I am writing about.

People have a tendency to want to watch things that fall in line with what they believe, what they want, and where they plan to go in life.

I want to see Brick because it matches some of my interests. For those interested, it goes where I want to go in life.

It’s a crime story set in a high school.

The director said that when he positioned the crime story over the high school story they seemed to mesh very easily.

That makes sense. I was subjected to more shit in high school than I have since. Even though my life since high school would probably make an interesting biopic, high school was this entirely different beast.

People tried to get me to take drugs.

I had a gun pulled on me.

We broke a bulletproof window in front of the school late one night.

We did a lot of stupid, dumb ass things.

Yet, the whole notion of high school and life, in that vein, is renewal and getting away with the stupid because you can.

Ignore my previous post. I was experimenting with words.

And yet, here it is. A movie that meets many of the criteria of what I want to be doing.

Writing.

Creating.

Art.

Drawing.

Painting a portrait of life. My life. Of the life I think I’ve lived.

Literally.

Figuratively.

Corporeally.

High school.

I deal with a lot of kids who seem to be fresh out of high school; or fresh off their missions. It feels like the same thing, to me.

And yet, they don’t see it.

To them, there are worlds of differences between where they are at, now, and where someone, say two years younger, is, now.

And yet, when you look back on those ages – 18 to 25 – all you can see is how similar and alike they are. All of them. Missionary. Return missionary. No mission. Ugly. Pretty. Thin. Fat. Beautiful hair. No hair. Ugly hair. Thin hair. Wigged heads.

They are all the same.

There are no differences.

It’s difficult to deal with.

And yet, that’s what I do on a daily basis.

I deal.

With them.

Every day. In classes. On the quads. In the cafeteria’s. On the roads. I read their work. I watch them struggle and dance through life.

They date.

They get engaged.

They marry.

And I watch.

Because there is no substantive difference between them.

And them.

They just stand there being so similar it is sick.

Automatons marching to the same tune -

And all of them thinking they are marching to something entirely different.

Read the college newspaper.

The more they speak out on how different he is, or she is, the more they sound the same.

High school. College. Career.

They have a plan.

I have a plan.

My plan is not their plan.

Their goals are not my goals.

My directions, their directions, we diverged when in the woods I took an entirely different path?

And then tried to come back to the same path they were, are, on.

It’s not easy.

Think about it.

We are different people.

25,000 distinctely different personalities all at the same institution doing similar things, walking similar paths, carrying similar themes, and yet, of all the similarities, the one that should matter the most, doesn’t.

Student.

Sure. I’m a student. I get up in the morning. I come to school. I study and work. I pay my bills. I struggle to get the kinds of grades I want out of life.

And yet, that’s not exactly enough.

Because…

I make more money simply because I have more experience. I get preferential treatment because I am somebody that has struggled and then taken a step back and has tried to start over again.

I am single.

They are all alike and I am all alone.

And at the same time I know I am not alone. Just older. Different. Different in a way that can make some people uncomfortable.

And I will continue to sit here.

Watching

Waiting

Wondering when life and realization will dawn upon the masses and they will realize that their bra burning comments and their speaking against the establishment is out of naivety and not out of understanding or some scholarly attempt at making a statement. They are stupid.

They are like everyone that has walked these halls before; like everyone who has studied and graduated; like the mass of people who’ve made college, strike that, university, their financial savior because you can make more money here than anywhere else.

Not immediately.

It’s over a lifetime.

Once you’ve found yourself established.

Ready.

Rolling.

Paradigm.

Brick.

Superimposing one image over another and then see how well they mesh.

Click. Click. Spin…

Bang!

I know more than you do and you don’t even realize it.

That’s crime noir. That’s high school. That’s the college, no university, graduate.

That’s me.

Yeah, that’s the right kind of imagery.

Morbid.

Delightfully so.

Things: what are they?

Who really knows.

I mean, I was reading an article on Evangeline Lilly, the main hottie on Lost ABC’s sleeper hit last year and the only thought I had was that she is on a sinking ship. Sure, she’s hot and, yes, the show may make a turnaround and find a pace that keeps with audience expectations, but truth told, when you can go in excess of a standard 22 episodes and still only get approximately 30 days into a plane wreck and the basis of reason still doesn’t exist, well… J.J. Abrams turns into a George Lucas in my mind. He’s got great ideas and, unlike Lucas, he may be able to execute the first stage of some of those ideas, but in the end, he should executive produce his little machinations and not try to helm them as closely as he has.

That’s my opinion there.

I was watching Boston Legal another ABC show the other night. Alan Shore (played by the increasingly impressive James Spader) and Denny Crane (played by Star Trek Alum William Shatner) had a lover tiff. That is not to say that they are lovers on the show or ever will be. But their characters, who are friends, had a heart to heart where you discover that Alan is in the law firm to watch out for Denny. Denny is egotistical and doesn’t want anyone looking out for him; and in the end, in order to preserve Denny’s ego and to satisfy Alan’s needs, Alan admits that he would really miss the tet-a-tet’s he and Denny have on the balcony at the end of each episode (allegedly at the end of each workday).

The whole premise of the show is that Denny has all this power with a law firm because he founded the firm and is a named partner, and in the end the only solution he can come up with is, “I have the keys,” to the freight elevator so that Alan can keep coming up for their little meetings if Alan were to leave the practice at some future, unspecified, point.

One of my guilty pleasures in life is sitting down and watching M*A*S*H on the Hallmark Channel starting at about 9 p.m. each night. They are repeats from an earlier broadcast in the day, and obviously rebroadcasts of shows that were on the air for eleven years in the 80’s; but that’s kind of the point, for me. Watching something that is entertaining and that I don’t have to worry about so much. So, I watch M*A*S*H and I enjoy it. I think my roommate thinks I’m weird for allowing that to play in the background a lot, but hey, we still get along and I am more than willing to turn it off in lieu of almost anything he wants to put on when he gets tired of listening to the crew of the 4077th Mobile Army Surgical Hospital go through their unrealistic, and yet strangely entertaining hijinks.

For a few years I’ve been thinking about this idea for a new iteration of Star Trek. The original series took place at some specific point in the future. Something like 300 years away from today (keep in mind that today = 40 years ago). The crew was dealt with social issues through the guise of aliens and planets and alternate realities. As a result of this, Star Trek became a fan favorite and had this massive following which caused the crew to return in the early 80’s in a major motion picture, Star Trek: The Motion Picture, which was originally slated as a pilot for a new series and turned into a series of movie franchises.

Back when, when I was assigned to child watch my youngest siblings, my trick to get them to sleep or be absorbed in whatever was to put Star Trek: The Motion Picture in the VCR and set them in front of the T.V. and invariably they would go to sleep. Don’t think that work so well now, but at the same time child watching has really changed for me. Just ask me about New Hampshire sometime and if I don’t tell you to go to hell, I might talk about watching little people.

Regardless, Star Trek’s second iteration, The Next Generation, came into being about 70 years in the future. And you get Patrick Stewart playing Captain Jean Luc Piccard with a whole cast of supporting characters. With this iteration you get the Star Trek mold and ever iteration since then has flowed within that mold. Strong captain dealing with the moral dilemma of being a captain and officers who dealt with moral dilemmas on their own. Star Trek became this cookie cutter show where you could, practically, watch any iteration and get the same awful message from it.

Thank whoever was smart enough to take it off the air. No matter how much I like Scott Bakula, I just thought the studio was grinding the show more and more into the dust.

However, I have an idea for an iteration. A rethinking of the way the original Trek brought various elements into being and how it changed with all of the iterations that have followed into a future that is darker and more sinister than what has been imagined previously. I think, just for my own sake, I won’t go into any real details and leave it with, my iteration would take place about 200 years after the final episode of Voyager.

What gets me thinking about this is an article I read in BYU’s Daily Universe the other day about a BYU alum whose first fictional novel was coming out. He’d originally started writing it as a Star Wars Universe book and when Lucas’ office told him hit was a waste of his time to continue writing the book, he removed Star Wars from the insides and published it as a stand alone sci-fi title. It’s about clones and a war they are fighting. Sure, the basic theme sounds a lot like Star Wars, but he claims to have removed Star Wars from the book and lets it stand on its own.

That may happen with me and my Star Trek iteration. A creation that is good within one universe, but could, and may, stand alone in a very different fictional universe because the powers that be have no real ability for independent thought. Take note Paramount. You lose viewers not because you have bad ideas; but because your ideas become stale because they become a rehashing of something already done.

Enough there.

Moving on.

I read a personal essay last night from a classmate. The guy is pretty smart. I mean smart in a James kind of way. Where he’s probably got a lot of book smarts, but lacks the basic common sense to apply the book smarts in a way that allows people to endear themselves to him. I’ve not made him feel threatened, at least, not directly, and so I don’t know what his reaction would be… however, he is getting married, so I am probably wrong.

Anyway, he wrote about learning to paint. It was an incomplete thought. Imagine that, a three page incomplete thought. There was a lot of structure to the way his thought was formed and yet, regardless of the amount of structure, it was still incomplete. He didn’t bother to finish what he was doing. I have to wonder if he really knew what it was he was doing.

The writing was good.

The outcome was bad.

Where have I heard something like that before? Probably something that was said about my own writing. Who knows? My thoughts are becoming increasingly complex and I just don’t bother to write them down for fear of having to spend far too much time exploring them linearly rather than allowing them to float in my head.

Okay, that’s a lie and a truth. The lie is that I write a lot of things down. Enough that the thought doesn’t end up dead somewhere; and at the same time I still allow them to float around in my head.

Ask me about The United Order and socialism. That’s a complex thought that’s been floating for a lot of years.

Lately, some of those thoughts have been on education.

Other thoughts have been on dating and marriage.

Still others are on art.

The classmate was writing about art and painting. At 17 he was writing a play about art. Then he learned to paint. Then he wrote the play. There’s a progression there. Idea, education, execution.

My current plan is art. Drawing and painting to be specific. I want to look into an Art minor. Which really means I am probably going to extend my stay at BYU another semester. But I think it’s a good plan and a good idea. Of course, you can talk to me again around January 2007 and things might be different. We’ll see then.

Enough. I think this is enough.

With that said, I went to the follow-up appointment with the doctor today. I found out that he’d only done one test on one marker for Celiac Disease and not all four as I’d asked him. The one thing that I’ve heard and read, multiple times, is that you have to test all four markers or you don’t, necessarily, get an accurate test. The other thing that is important, in this, is that you have to be eating gluten to get a positive test for Celiac when the tests are performed. I stopped eating gluten about a week and a half ago, I am feeling better, and the doctor didn’t test for all four markers with the one he did test for coming back negative.

What came back positive, however, was a marker for Type II Diabetes.

Congratulations John, you are the winner of a life threatening disease that can be controlled through diet and exercise. My cholesterol is fine and I am a little low on Iron, but beyond that, he thinks I am suffering from IBS (irritable bowel syndrome) and prescribed some medication to help with any discomfort. He has missed, repeatedly, that I am feeling better not ingesting gluten and as such I am wondering whether or not I should to IBS seriously or keep on the regime I am on.

When you research Celiac Disease you find out a lot of things. Like: Type II Diabetes can be caused by Celiac.

Like: IBS has a high incidence rate among Celiac sufferers.

Like: even with IBS the removal of gluten from the diet can help alleviate the symptoms.

Like: most doctors prescribe around Celiac but, outside of a specialist, rarely have the expertise to diagnose Celiac, Crohn’s, or IBS.

Like: Celiac is tested through a small intestine biopsy.

Like: Iron and other deficiencies can be directly caused by the damage to the cilia in the small intestine.

Like: a Celiac diet can help control blood sugar in those with diabetes.

In short, I think it is safe to say that I will be living life under the assumption that I have Celiac and am gluten intolerant; especially if it’s working.

Sure, it makes shopping a bit hard, but hey, you know, it’s all about finding what works and then following the regime. I do admit that I need to increase my activity level, but that is a part of changing ones life. You adapt. You eat differently. You get off you fat ass and go and do something. Maybe that was a little harsh, but I think it is becoming time for me to make time for more activity than I have in the past.

Anyway, I go back to see the doctor in about a month. I wanted an appointment on the 6th of April. It kind of surprised me that the doctor didn’t have any appointments that day and so, instead of a Thursday I get to see him on Friday for more tests.

Have I ever told anyone that I HATE doctors?

This weekend: I went to Colorado, down to Cortez, for the weekend. My intention (successful, by the by) was to register my car and look into getting another vanity plate to replace the one I was losing by registering in Colorado. The cost is not a great deal more than what I paid in New Hampshire.

My intention was to go down early Friday morning, get there in the morning hours, take care of what needed to be taken care of, then go and see Denton (he owns a used bookstore) and then make my way to the property where I would be sleeping and doing… you know… whatever.

I was supposed to be reading Hamlet this weekend and, for whatever reason, didn’t.

Friday I got up and hit snooze about a dozen times and then got up and packed my bag and, in the process, talked to J.D. for a while before he took off and then I took off. I think I left Springville somewhere around 9:30 a.m. rather than 8 a.m. or 6 a.m. I got to Cortez around 2:30, had the VIN Inspection (the place that did it didn’t charge and didn’t actually look at the VIN on my car) and then registered the car.

First objective (and principle reason for going) – check.

The second objective was to see Denton and talk about potentially acquiring some pulp novels. Denton really isn’t the best source for these. I think I knew that in advance of my driving down. The reason he is not the best source is because he is an academic that spent his professional career teaching English and working as the Dean of his English department. He knows literature and poetry (it seems to me that most professors revert to poetry as a means of achieving some notoriety) but has never been great at discussing really popular (read cheap and easy) fiction. When I tried discussing some scifi with him, his suggestions were good, literarily, but lacked when it came to the raw grit I was actually looking for.

He wasn’t at his shop. He and his wife were not at home. They, from what I understand, had a water main break in their home and are now staying in a motel until it is fixed. Mom said they were in Phoenix for the week and I ran into Denton’s wife in church on Sunday. She asked why I hadn’t come by to pick up more books (they generally give me as many as I buy when I go in).

When I couldn’t get a hold of Denton, I decided, on a lark, to drive over to Durango and look into the used bookstore there. I said to the guy, “I am looking for old pulp fiction, specifically science fiction and fantasy, but also old mystery pulps.”

He said, “I’ve got thousands. I don’t have them here. Next time you’re in town call me 24 hours in advance and I will bring some over.”

So, I found someone with pulp novels and pulp magazines and the next time I go south I will probably be purchasing some of them.

Part of the weekend was spent just talking to the parents, independent of each other. Mom and I talked about family and the struggles associated with various members of the family (and my thinking of writing stuff that deals with it with the intent to publish) and with dad we discussed pulps and art and the possibly next direction in my life.

I went to church with both parents and got to say, “hi,” to several people and then we had lunch, watched a movie, and got into our different cars to head out. Mom and dad to Wellington, UT and me home. I got home around 11:00 p.m. after leaving them in Wellington.

Midway through Price I realized that a weird vibration and noise had gotten worse and I stopped to check things out. What I’d discovered is that two of the four lugs on my right front tire had come off and the other two were loose. The noise was the two lugs bouncing around inside the hub cap. I put them back on, retightened everything down, and was back on my way.

It was a little harrowing to realize that, had I not stopped when I did, I would’ve lost that tire while driving along the winding roads either leading up to Soldier Summit or down into Spanish Fork from Soldier Summit. In short, off the road and dead seemed to leap to mind.

Regardless, got home safe, took the daily quiz on Hamlet and did well, and got back my paper on short stories with a nearly perfect grade (woo-hoo). I is doing better, thank you very much.

Who is Marco? I don’t know. He is a secondary character you catch glimpses of in High Fidelity. Marco Polo was an explorer. And the game Marco Polo is played in a pool with someone wandering around, eyes closed, yelling, “Marco,” and all players, not tagged, responding, “Polo.”

However, the History of the World According to Marco is merely a non-sequitur that came to mind as I was plugging in the address for the website. I looked and noticed that I haven’t updated in a few days and that I probably needed to think about doing an update, and so, here is my poor attempt at actually doing an update.

Yesterday in Honors 200: Wilderness Writing, we were set to do a “Rush Write”. A rush write is someone giving a topic and then you taking five minutes and writing about that subject without really thinking about it. Reminds me, a lot, of “Finding Forrester,” where William Forrester (played by Sean Connery) says, “Don’t think, write,” and then he sits down at his typewriter and starts to pound away at the keys producing, in a very short time, one page that he pulls and hands to Jamal.

That’s really what it comes down to. Not thinking about what you want to write; rather, just writing what you’re thinking about.

In the case of yesterday, the topic was, “Will you find love in a snow cave?”

NOTE: We, as a class, are going snow caving this weekend and will be building and then sleeping in our snow caves. I have to admit that I am a little… err… frightened at the prospect as the two professors like to talk about the mishaps they get into. That, and I haven’t been feeling well and don?t really know whether or not I want to go out and do something like that.

However, with that introduction, this is what I came up with (nothing edited):

Love in a snow cave?

No. Though some people want to say, “Yes,” chances are that love will not be found in a snow cave. One of the reasons for this is because I am not looking for love in cold places. Cold places are not very conducive to the way in which I think. They are cold. They are not comfortable. They are cold. In case you missed it, cold places are cold.

With that said, snow caves, are designed as temporary shelter. One might think that the notion of finding “love” within a temporary shelter would lead to temporary love. True, ever person is different and as such, finding love in a temporary shelter can lead to a more substantial and permanent love, but the idea, the feeling, the notion that you have “found” something in a temporary place puts the stigmatism of brevity to that very thing.

Will it end tomorrow? Or when the snow melts? Or maybe when we leave the cave and find sunshine and shelter in a place far more conducive to life and the long term preservation thereof.

Love in a teepee is far more practical. Sure, it too can be considered a temporary shelter, but a teepee can be taken with you, set up somewhere else, and lived in. Teepee?s were designed to be lived in. They were designed as nomadic homes. Like a Winnebago or a trailer home. They are places, though small, where love can be found, where it can grow, and when it is time to move on, where it can be moved with the individual to a new location. Love in a Winnebago is far more realistic and practical than love in a snow cave.

In a Winnebago you don’t have to worry about rain, the sun, warm weather, or other natural disasters for the snow cave. You don’t have to worry about the reality that the snow cave is going to disappear. Instead, you worry about simple things like running out of gas or not having sufficient quantities of natural gas to fuel the stove.

The outcome isn’t really all that important. So what? It’s a writing exercise and I don’t have to show up to class. I’ve just organized my schedule to accommodate that class and haven’t decided on how better to fill my time rather than going. So, I sit and listen to conversations and then plug in topics and see what quick (and dirty) supporting information I can find on the web. That’s a far more enjoyable exercise to me. But then, as I’ve admitted before, I am a little weird.

Regardless, the whole of the experience is such that I am in the class for the outings, camping, etc., and not to learn to write… which is what the class is designed for. Years ago I took the necessary requirements for writing in the college environment, and passed with more than flying colors. Now, I sit and participate, I surf the web, when appropriate I flirt, and I make fun of people who think they are old and going to die alone when in reality they are young and don’t know what it means to be old and die alone. (I’m not saying that I know it any better.)

Which then leads me back to “High Fidelity”. A movie about love, loss, and love, again. Rob, the protagonist (which, we learned in lit 251 the other week, is the central character in the story and not necessarily a hero) starts the story listening to music and having his live-in girlfriend packing her things and walking out on him. This leads the viewer (or reader, depending on how you came across the story, it?s both a book and a movie) to be introduced to Rob’s “Top Five” lists. Top five musicians. Top five records. Top five breakups. That’s where he starts, the all-time top five breakups. And he lists them, in order.

Then you get to Charlie. Charlie is a girl he dated in college and when they broke up, she was with Marco and Rob was on his own. He flunked out of college. Started his own record store, and, at 26, decided he was going to be alone for the rest of his life. Obviously, with this, he?s not tried finding love in a snow cave. Not that I would want to try and find love in a snow cave, I’m just saying. Love ≠ snow cave. Keep that in mind.

It’s worth noting that you find what you are looking for when you are looking for it. Which, through a poorly logical movement, I can’t possibly be looking for love because I am not finding it. But that’s me and that leads into a whole different dimension of conversation that I won’t bother with. The point, in case, is that you find what you are looking for when you are looking for it. For Rob, it was in the arms of a woman who, like him, was 26 and out of love. For the person who identified the topique de conversation yesterday it was finding something that is complete nonsense as boys and girls on BYU approved outings do not share sleeping spaces.

Anyway, The History of the World According to Marco. A new element to my website. Let’s see how this one goes.