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402 days. 402 (plus or minus… mostly minus) posts.

Category: Philosophy

September 2, 2013

Day 281: Weathertime Blues

There are so many complex, frightening, amazing and mind-boggling things happening in the world right now.

I’m going to ignore all of them and blog about the weather.

It smelled like fall yesterday, after a week of the kind of hot humidity that almost knocks you over when you step outside. The sky was a little grey and the trees rustled in this kind of brusque way that makes you think they know a long nap is coming soon.

So. I went to the gym. I made tea. I bought some music. I cleaned my apartment. I lamented that Brian Boitano didn’t seem as impressed with my cleanliness as I did. I tried to write a toast for my sister’s upcoming wedding. I took a shower. I thought about buying new running shoes for my sister’s upcoming wedding (there’s a pre-rehearsal 5K I should probably spend the next week training for). I harvested my basil. I ate a caprese salad. I looked at General Electric’s Instagram feed. I watered my plants. I felt sad.

In general, I had a lovely Sunday. But there is something about the coming of autumn that breeds a little melancholy. Whatever ease and frivolity summer brought will be swapped out with something a little more serious and measured soon. The kids feel it, especially – they’re all headed back to school to prep for becoming little adults.

Autumn is crisp and cool, and my nearly translucent skin is built for that sideways fall sunlight, but the summertime mourning period has officially begun.

Wherever you are (but especially if you’re in the Midwest), may you enjoy the green grass and bright flowers for just a few more weeks.

Happy Labor Day.

SummerSummer.

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August 19, 2013

Day 267: The Thing About Art

The thing about art is that everyone should make it.

If you’ve been to a museum, gallery, sculpture garden, dance performance, theater show, opera, etc., you’ve witnessed art that someone else has created. And maybe you thought it was beautiful, inspiring and insightful. Or maybe you thought it was weird, more weird and just totally weird. If the later is closer to your experience, you probably went home afterwards promising yourself that you’ll only attend another artsy thing if someone you deeply, deeply care about is involved. Or if Google and your TV both break at the same time.

The thing about the second scenario is that it’s awfully common. And it’s a crying shame. Witnessing something someone else has created is like getting to peek inside another human being’s brain while they’re dreaming. And if the dreamer has taken the time to be trained as an artist, it can be an extra-moving experience.

Because maybe their dreams are filled with bright colors, winding stories and fantastical creatures you never thought to imagine. Or maybe they contain complex scientific concepts and questions, and experiments that make the questions visibly grow and shrink. Or perhaps the dreamer’s mind is a dark, disorganized and messy tumbling whirlpool, and they’re using art to pull everything apart and examine the pieces.

Either way, it’s a privilege to witness art, even when it’s ugly.

But making art is more than a privilege. It’s a necessity. It’s a complicated and vulnerable process that gives a person equal parts frustration and joy. Creating art lets us organize, categorize, identify, explode, imagine, be selfish, ask questions, make answers, connect to God, refute God, reach to each other and find common ground.

We’re all born artists, but some of us grow up to be self-conscious adults. But for the entirety of our lives, creativity is an outlet we can access just by turning inward. And it doesn’t require anything other than a brain and a body. (And some other stuff, if you want to get complicated.)

So that’s the thing about art. Happy making.

Gerhard-Richter_4One of Gerhard Richter’s Übermalte Fotografien (painted photographs).

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July 18, 2013

Day 235: Beautiful and Heartbreaking

We live in an extremely complex country.

We are the same, in that we live here. But we are different in nearly every other way. We think differently and look different. We seek different opportunities and see success in different ways. We are protected under the same laws and enjoy the same freedoms, but we experience them differently.

And some of us are racist. Incredibly. Loudly. Publicly. In blog comments and on Twitter feeds. Sometimes we don’t care whether or not anonymity separates our words from our names. We know if we put our racism out there, someone, somewhere will agree.

But even more of us will disagree. Determinedly. Passionately. At our jobs and in our coffee shops. On our Facebook walls and in the laws we pass. We’ll have the conversations and remind ourselves that this is a complex country and we don’t all think the same way.

And isn’t that beautiful and heartbreaking.

P.S. A video:

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July 2, 2013

Day 219: Discomfort over Comfort

I get this funny feeling that a lot of people’s lives are spent figuring out how to be comfortable. How to have a comfortable home, a comfortable job, live with a comfortable person, eat comfortable food, wear comfortable clothes, etc.

And I’m all about comfortable stuff—especially clothing—but I think it’s really important to be uncomfortable sometimes. Here’s why:

Discomfort opens up entire worlds that you’d never know about otherwise.

In yoga, for example, there are lots of weird, uncomfortable postures that appear to be designed specifically to make the practitioner feel like a total failure. But if you stick with those contorted shapes long enough, you start to understand the difference between pain (which is something that should be avoided like the plague that it is) and the uncomfortable sensations that come with growth. If you’re gritty and patient, interesting things start to happen. Muscles you were certain had deserted you kick back into action. Stiff joints become relaxed. Hard stuff becomes easier. Dark things become lighter. And once you’re comfortable again, you’re ready and eager to try something new.

Discomfort challenges you to define yourself. 

I don’t mean “definition” in the sense that you can say with conviction that you love dogs and hate mean people. On a much deeper level, discomfort forces you to turn inward and conduct an actual self-examination. Determining why discomfort rears it’s ugly-ish head in certain situations or with certain people helps you learn more about your insecurities and passions. And acting on that knowledge puts you on a path to actual happiness, not the comfortable, “these sweatpants feel awesome” kind of happiness.

Discomfort helps you grow. 

Humans are magically built to morph. Our neurological systems are constantly learning, reorganizing and building new pathways, and our bodies can alter themselves based on what we consume and what we expend. We can adapt to new stimuli and make snap decisions based on information that is never, ever static. We’re amazing, growing creatures up until the day we die.

But without challenges and pressures, our growth opportunities diminish. The beautiful nuances of life are left unexperienced and unexplored. A life of comfort is the life of an orchestra playing the same song over and over—never exploring all the other harmonies, melodies, dips and dives it’s designed to play.

A life of comfort literally sounds terrible.

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May 7, 2013

Day 164: Stuff and Things and Letting Go

Things strangely collect our emotions.

I posted a couple weeks ago about how giving away my loveseat on Craigslist was a tearful disaster (more because of the recipients than the item—but still). And today, my parents are moving. They packed up their Chicago house and are headed to the northwest.

We’ve never been a terribly nostalgic family when it comes to structures and stuff. Growing up, we moved more often than most of our friends, and settled ourselves in different parts of the country for the sake of adventure. We collected people and shed things every time we left a house, and always (almost) enjoyed the newness and excitement of reorganizing somewhere new.

But this move feels a little different. My parents are doing it without my sisters and me. We don’t have our own bedrooms in the new place (much to my mom’s chagrin), and there will be no school orientations, no track meets and no yearbook functions. It’s an adult move and they’re paring down.

Even our old art projects, skating ribbons and American Girl dolls aren’t going along for the ride. The remaining evidence of my sisters’ and my youth is heading into a storage unit outside of Chicago, where we can come and pilfer as we have time and space.

So for the last couple of months, my parents have been selling, donating and free-Craigslisting (sans tears) many of their belongings. I’ve seen the “come and get it” Facebook posts and waited on the phone as a 9-1-1 fallback while strangers picked up their couches and end tables. I was well aware that their things were going to new homes.

And I was fine with it until my mom posted a picture of my dad’s charcoal Weber grill (the one he received for college graduation and has been using ever since), and called it up for grabs.

Instinctually, I grabbed. Out of sheer terror. I mean, what would my parents be without the Weber? I grew up understanding its timelessness, its durability and its knack for producing the perfect, patiently grilled steak. I knew I had to hang on to it for them, lest their personalities disappear completely with this move.

The Weber

There she is.

Two text messages with my mom proved logically otherwise. They don’t need it anymore. And I’m a vegetarian living in a one-bedroom apartment with no outdoor space. Though I remember the grill being a fine roommate when it had a deck to itself, in my current arrangement it would coat my wispy curtains with soot and be the centerpiece of my living room. And it doesn’t do so well with veggies. She gave it to a grateful neighbor instead.

The bottom line is that stuff gets you sometimes. And then you have to let it go.

Because really, stuff is nothing without people.

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