We All See It Coming, Until We Don't

When we are alone in driving out our demons

We wonder if we can truly call ourselves free men
Standing at the edge of a cliff
Just to get the taste of fresh air
Weeds of thorn and thistle consume my garden
While I become the one uproot
Been lying that there are four sides to my square
Because I can still only find three
Just gave up a little good conscience
But promised more to tomorrow
Needed a little more time to continue my dream
Or just a little less time awake
Keeping my thoughts in my pockets
And can't decide what to do with my hands
Tried belief as a form of relief
But my soul still tastes dry and light
Though the trials have been wearing
I have many illusions left to maintain
So my drawing of you remains a crumpled piece of paper on the floor
Among all my other failed attempts at discovering life

Ultra Deep

Some may ask why I used a picture of some bright dots in the sky in my first blog entry. This picture is actually called the Hubble Ultra Deep Field and is a composition of images taken by the telescope. To begin with, here is an extremely high resolution example of the image (you can continue reading while it loads)...
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/0d/Hubble_ultra_deep_field_high_rez_edit1.jpg
There are many stunning realizations that this picture has caused in me, one of which is how big the universe is, and another, more important, one is how small and insignificant I am. The reason for this? Well lets take a look at the picture... While this may look like a nice pretty picture of the night sky taken from Earth, in actuality it is the deepest look into our universe ever taken. Each of the large or insignificantly small dots of light in this image represents a galaxy, over 10,000 in all. And each of these galaxies has hundreds of billions of stars, each just like or likely larger than our own sun. The amount of matter that these galaxies represent in comparison to even the entire Earth is just unfathomable. So how much of the sky are we looking at here? You see the few bright white dots that have a cross pattern on them? (Look about one third to the left of the very top right and a little to the lower right of the very center for a couple) Those are only a few of the billions of stars in our own galaxy. The Hubble is looking out of our own galaxy, so a small area with only a few stars was chosen to look through. This view of the sky is so small that holding a piece of paper 1mm x 1mm at 1m away would just barely cover it. To be exact, it is one thirteen millionth of what we perceive as the sky.
So yeah, there's a lot of stuff out there. But whats really amazing about this image is that it's not just a look at what's out there, it's really a look into the past, a history of the universe itself. Light travels astoundingly fast at our level of existence, but when it comes to the scope of the universe, light moves extremely slow. The photons of light from the galaxies in these pictures actually left them billions of years ago and are just now reaching us around the Earth. Because of this, the image actually represents a time span of billions of years, from the largest galaxies in the image at an age close to that of our own, about 13.2 billion years, to those that are just specs of light at only a a few hundred million years old. This image represents how insignificant not only our size is in the universe, but also the length of our time in it. I mean, accounting for the speed information can travel throughout the universe, at 22 years old less than one nonillionth (that's 1 followed by 30 zeros, or 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000, whichever has the greatest effect) of the universe could even possible know that I exist.
The amount of time the universe has been around coupled with how massive it is also brings into focus the possibility of life forming out there somewhere. Now I don't really believe in intelligent life so much, but it seems naive to think that in the huge expanse of the universe the same conditions as on Earth have never been present such that some form of extra-terrestrial life could form similarly to how ours did. There is a great debate among scientists on whether the conditions of the Earth are extremely rare or not, but for it to have only happened once the probability of it occurring would be one in one sextillion (one followed by 21 zeros/ 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000). I think this even goes above and beyond the definition of extremely rare. Though I believe it exists, you may wonder why I don't think intelligent life exists out there. That can be easily explained by my definition of "intelligence," which I believe God bestowed on the human race at the same moment he infused a soul into our person. Because of my belief that humans are the only beings with souls in this universe, I don't believe that there could be any intelligent life out there. For that matter, I don't believe that the existence of life outside of Earth will have a bearing on human existence, and am doubtful that it will ever occur, because it is not a part of the purpose for which I believe God made the universe. I believe that God made the universe as an unsolvable mystery for humans, but something that human nature drives us to fully understand. I mean, think about it if our universe were only as big as the sky above us and beyond that was just an impenetrable wall. Although seemingly oxymoronic, it would make me feel pretty claustrophobic. As humans, I believe our minds need to be able to imagine a limitless "out there," and the size of our current universe provides pretty much that. It is my belief that God made the universe just big and complicated enough that humans would never be able to understand it fully. I also apply this to our understanding of the tiniest forms of matter, which go just as far in the expansion of how big we are compared the constituents of which we are made, and which we are no closer to fully understanding (are you getting a feel for why I like physics so much?). But I also believe that God will grant us this knowledge on the day he welcomes us into the knowledge of Himself. For now I will just have to imagine the amazing things that the creation of this universe has entailed, most of which humans on this plane of existence will never know, but which I hope someday to finally discover...

Meeting in the Aisle

On the right you will see, and probably hear, a song by Radiohead called Meeting in the Aisle. As music is such a great influence on my life, and by extension my compositions, I have made it a requirement that this song be listened to while reading my blog (pauses allowed when listening to/viewing other blog material). You, of course, are on the honor system, but if you want to fully appreciate what it is to be in the world of Reed, this is one of the steps in doing so. To give you a glimpse of what I mean, I have listened to this song 783 times on iTunes since I purchased it on October 8, 2008, which does not even include the times I have listened to it on my iPod. The melodic and calming nature of the music, along with its delightful absence of lyrics, makes this an ideal candidate for my obsession with putting music on repeat and listening to the same song for hours on end. I have done this with many songs in the past, but this one has had a staying power that far surpasses any other song I have played before. So what is it about this song that makes it so easy for me to listen to? I'm not exactly sure what it is, and that may be it in itself. It has a certain mystery to it. But beyond that, no matter how many times I listen to it, there are certain moments when I sit back and let the music take me, and its like I'm listening to it for the first time all over again. No other song has done that for me. If I must, I can take it beyond the scope of music, and while I certainly will not feel this same way about this song forever, I know that the feelings of freshness and renewal unique to my experience of this song will be the same that I experience when I realize I have found that special person with whom it will be a delight to spend the rest of my life because every moment with them will have the same joy and excitement as the first. So please, click on that little circling arrow and let the music repeat as you take in whatever thoughts I may have added to this continuing testament to the gift of life.

A Preview of Things to Come

The only thing that I never mentioned in those early journal entries from high school that I'm disappointed I never mentioned was the music I listened to at the time. High school was the time I really came into my own in the music I listened to (or at least came to realize there were better artists than Korn and Limp Bizkit), but not a word about it in them. Maybe I’ll find some references it in my other two resources from the time, AIM profiles that I have saved (yeah, putting too much thought and effort into my AIM profile started in high school for those of you who wondered where that came from) and also the deep AIM conversations that I had with my friends during high school that I decided to save. Now, I'm not saying it will be my next post, since I already have some others I'm working on, but I thought I'd mention that it will eventually occur and that I’m looking forward to re-reading those two sources to maybe find some music references, but more so to see if I can find any other deep meanings that I can share.

In the meantime, here are a few songs from back then that I always had trouble getting out of my head...

On My Pop-Pop

I’m not really sure how to begin this, so I’ll just go right into it. My grandfather passed away exactly two weeks ago, and I was right there when it happened. In the immediate moments after his passing was the only time that I wept. In these moments I remember asking myself why I was crying, but recall the immense power that the tears had over me. I refused to let myself cry the whole time I was there, because I was there. I truly felt that God had enabled me to be there for my grandfather’s passing, that he had allowed my grandfather to live until his two daughters and his grandchildren (my mother, aunt, sister and I, who had all attended my graduation commencement two days earlier), could be there by his side. I was grateful to be there, and for the life that my grandfather had lived. He was a great and joy-filled man. With his white beard, he will always remind me of a jolly St. Nick, just as giving and loving as the revered saint. At the services after his death, I felt welts of tears come, but these were for those who would miss him the most, my mother, my aunt and uncle, and my dear sweet young cousins who got to spend time with him almost daily. I was sorry that they had to lose a part of their lives that was much bigger than the part that I lost. But I will always remember the moment that I had at the foot of his bed as he passed away. I may have wondered why I was crying when this great man was leaving this world for a better place, where he would no longer have to suffer, but I can realize now I was allowing myself to cry for myself, because it was the moment I lost MY grandfather, a person who I dearly cared for and will always miss. Now I can only vow to live up to him in the joy that he brought, and hope that the rest of the world will follow in his footsteps.

The Beginning

So apparently, as I look back, I have been at this existential problem for a while, dating way back to my childhood, as can easily be seen in this picture of me contemplating the numerous questions of the universe... Just kidding of course, I have no idea what I was thinking about at the time. Likely the delicious caramel corn they have at the boardwalk, or why I'm at the beach when its obviously too cold since I have a sweatshirt on. At least we can all agree that I was stunningly cute (what the hell happened?).
Moving on...
The first evidence of the thoughts of my former self (without having to go through all my old school papers) and that which was written just for myself are a few journal entries that I wrote on my now antique computer that still sits, monitor-less, in my room. These sparing entries date from Sunday, May 19, 2002 at 12:18 a.m. to Sunday, September 14, 2003 at 2:04 a.m. (end of my freshman year to the beginning of my junior year of high school) and comprise a 15 page Word document. It's mostly me just rambling on about video games, how much I hate being stuck at home during the summer, all of my crushes, and the random and trivial things I got in trouble for. Some funny/embarrassing tidbits...

"YOU, Who is you? Am I writing to myself as I addressed in some entries, or to the computer as I did in others? Who knows? I guess I’m really just writing to myself in the present. Just getting my feelings out in words."

"That means that I’ll probably only be putting $150 in there [the bank], although you’ll probably yell at me for not putting in more."

"Well, back to my money calculations and evil conspiracies. TTYL."

"You may have noticed that I did not use @ in replace of “at” is it is commonly used. That is because I am boycotting its use unless necessary such as in e-mail addresses. This is because “at” is such an easy word to type and an abbreviation should replace a long word not a short. The other reason is that there is another word that it could represent that not only fits perfectly with the symbol, but is also actually long. That word is “around.” Thought I’d just add that thought since I believe in it so much and have already gotten support from others so I may start a movement :-)."

And now to the more juicy ones (or just embarrassingly funny). All of the following entries still have eerie meaning to my life. Each characterizes something that bothers or inspires me to this day, so I have written after each the effect they still have on my life.

"During the day today I felt a real urge to type on here again. I hadn’t in such a while and it was a load off my back. I don’t have too much more to add, but some stuff I still want to get out."
To begin with, I thought I’d just throw in this little quip about how psychologically beneficial journaling (or blogging ;-) ) can be (yeah, you can rub it in my face Gloria), and how I haven’t really done it in a while. As I'm now entering a new phase in my life after graduating college, I think it’s as good a time as any to start again. While I stated that this blog is going to be for you, it’s obviously going to be for me as well in being able to reflect back on my life so far and recount the lessons I have already learned from, and that maybe you can learn from as well. And now on to the true meat of my old journaling…

"My crushes from last year are starting to haunt me again. First, I will talk about X. I now sit next to her in Trig class and we actually make some conversation (Like two or three sentences, if u can call that conversation). So its very small talk, but still an improvement to say the least."
This one is quite funny looking at it now, but I’ve really never had the whole conversationalist thing going for me. Now around friends it’s never usually a problem, we can talk about the most random and dumbest stuff, but when I’m trying to have a civil conversation with someone, my mind just always goes blank. And it is my fault too, because I just don’t keep up with the news enough. I can remember last summer when I had to eat lunch with my research lab mates, which would seem to be the worst case scenario for me, but I was actually able to contribute to and even create conversation (wow, really?!, yeah sorry this is so boring, it gets better eventually, I promise...) because I would read the Metro newspaper on the metro every morning. But of course I fell out of that at school, and many can recall the excessively boring conversation I had with that girl on the bus ride to the Cubs game because I just had no material and she wasn’t really coming up with anything herself either. So there’s one goal I can set for myself, and if you have the same problem set it for yourself too, to stay in the know so you don’t have to worry about going blank when a real conversation is needed (not that our conversations weren’t real, guys ;-) ).

"So, I’m starting to try to ease X and I back into a friendly relationship, since I don't (didn’t) have a crush on her [I'm obviously in denial here] and I really want to be friends with her because I think she’s a really cool and interesting person. But then I have the dream. I dream that I'm on a bus with X and Y, her best friend, and all the sudden they both turn to me and X says “Reed, I like you.” That may sound cheesy but it was just enough to bring back my crush that I had had on her (stupid crushes, as I did and still do think they are)."
"Darn those dreams, complicating my life (and I always say that I wish I could remember my dreams, and the ones I do ruin my balance in life so I may have to retract that statement)."
These two separate entries bring up a very important factor in my life, my dreams (I’m going to forgo an entry on the evils of crushes for now, as that came to a head in my freshman year of college and which I have much more journal material to add from that time, but I will say that I still agree with myself here). You know I don’t think I’ve ever gotten a solid response from anyone on whether this happens to them or not, but when my dreams involve someone I know, they have this property of sticking in my mind and affecting my life to excess. My brain has this weird capability of convincing me that the actions of those in my dreams are those that they would actually perform if put in the same circumstance. Now this is not always true, such as the skinny-dipping dream I recently had ;-), but when it is, I can’t help but wonder if my brain is right about them or if it’s just an idealization. Either way, this character in my head just adds to my anguish because it refers to a static situation that I just don’t have the guts to change. If you couldn’t tell by now, I’m talking of dreaming about people I’ve had crushes on (or recently broke up with… ugh, that was the worst of it). Now, to be honest, I haven’t had a crush in a while, but now I have all my friends from school that I’ve left behind and there have already been a few days where I’ve had dreams that stuck with me the same way the old crush ones did because you guys are just as far from me as my crushes once were (That's me trying to say I miss you guys). There doesn’t really seem to be anything I can do about having dreams, so it has been a recurring theme in my poetry, which I will eventually add to the blog.

"My first impression theory: See, for me I almost always leave a great first impression, but I don't go anywhere with it. Last year I put great first impressions on everyone but I didn't follow through with an invite over my house for the guys or asking the girl out on a date."
This excerpt is of special importance now that I’m kind of restarting my life here in Maryland. This one I find very interesting because I really think it’s still true. I’m not sure what it is about me, my quirky or random nature, but people seem to take to me pretty easily upon first introduction, but then I just seem to get old. A perfect example was in my freshman year of college when I went to a party with Ryan Downy and his friend, and they immediately invited me back and seemed to welcome me in their group enthusiastically, but eventually I got old and they pretty much shoved me out. Same thing happened my freshman year of high school, I was really popular at the beginning of the year, but that just fell apart by year’s end. So, if anyone has any clues as to what that quality is that seems interesting at first, but then drives people away, it would be appreciated so that I fix it and then conquer the world with my limitless popularity :-).

"All of the crushes that I had, and that are now coming back to haunt me, I always liked them, but when I imagined myself going out with them, it always seemed as though it could never work."
This one I’m going to take a step past how I meant it (which was that the whole hanging out together and circle of friends stuff would not mesh) and blame it for the reason I perceive my first real relationship ended, though it was actually due to this concern on the other side. But anyway, this one was also pretty much the main reason I didn’t look for a relationship the rest of my college career and efficiently avoided getting any crushes (high five!). I couldn’t really see a college relationship going anywhere so I didn’t put much effort into attempting another. It’s a fear we probably all have in starting a relationship, where’s it going to go if it does work. Personally I like the “we’ll figure it out when we get there” approach rather than the “it can’t possibly work later, but let’s keep it going for now” approach. But I digress, love will happen where it’s meant to and I truly believe it can overcome any obstacle. Moving on…

"Anyways, how I could ever make a school relationship ever work out is beyond me... Plus the jealousy that I would no doubt go through."
Oh the jealously… I’m gonna let this one apply to my first relationship too. Jealousy was something that I did notice during that relationship, something I apparently could predict would happen way back in high school. I was excessively jealous, but I noticed that it was more over the lack of communication in our relationship that I was sure was occurring outside it than an actually fear of other guys up in my territory. But if there’s one thing that I learned in that relationship it was that you can’t really have a relationship without communication and it was my fault that I felt jealous because I wasn't working on it. So, lesson learned and I’m not really worried about this one as much.

"I need an outside of school girlfriend. Wow, how that reminds me of Z (hostess at Captain Billy‘s last summer). Why I turned her down I shall never know, although I technically wasn't looking for a girlfriend at the time and I didn't know her that well so I just didn't give it a chance."
On rejecting girls… Thankfully this didn’t have to happen a lot (ok, at all) during my last couple years at college, but I have actually only fairly recently (four –ly words in a row, SCORE!) realized that I am an ass in turning down girls who are interested in me (hmm, guess I should take away those points on that note :-( ). Ok, maybe I’m a little harsh on myself, but for only having been in one relationship (and worse, complaining about it), I’ve turned down more than my share of girls. Of those I can currently recall, including high school, there have been three direct turn downs, and four others who obviously had a crush on me but never said anything. So I guess this is an apology for being shallow or emotionally unavailable and a reminder that I am still single... Anyways, speaking of the emotional unavailability, the excuse I used in this journal entry is especially eerie, because I actually wrote that exact same excuse (not looking for a girlfriend) another time after rejecting another girl. I still don’t understand why since it seems to un-Reed to me, but maybe I’ll figure it out when I get to analyzing those journals.

"I really wish that people would be more open and less shallow. These are the two qualities that would most improve my love life. If I could only be open with my feelings about others I would never have crushes, which haunt my life which I have said before, and people would actually know how I feel about them which would actually give me a chance with some people. One of the drawbacks of everyone being open, though, is that those people who I find unattractive and unappealing (I know it’s mean, but you know everyone feels this way) who do like me would be open to me. This is where the other quality that I need, being less shallow, would come in and would hopefully make me see the inner beauty of the person (kind of like Shallow Hal, which I coincidentally just saw today). Well, they’re just dreams, but hopefully as I mature at least I will grow in these qualities."
So for this one I’ll address the shallow part first, really just continuing from the last entry. I obviously still need to work on being less shallow because I didn't reject all those girls on "I don't want a girlfriend" grounds, but still i think college has really helped me out in this respect. Having such a diverse set of friends has allowed me the privilege of seeing the value and uniqueness of every person. Now, I’m still a guy and obviously still shallow to some degree (what was that saying I had about boobs?), but I’ve learned the value of really getting to know someone, no matter what they look like or where they come from.
Now to the second part, that on being open. This is really to the point of this whole blog. If there’s one thing that I’ve learned so far in this life, it’s that feelings are not meant to be held up inside. Even though I speak on the subject in this quote with such enthusiasm, here I am six years later only slightly closer to the same ideal. It’s really all a matter of pride and protecting oneself. No one wants to throw themselves out there at the chance of being rejected, singled out or laughed at. But if we really want to live our lives, we can’t just leave these things inside ourselves. Many people can find release, confiding in their best friend, keeping a journal, sending a postcard to Postsecret.com, or, as I seem to have found, blogging. These are only small steps, but good steps. But I don’t want to, and don’t think you should stop there. So beyond just an obvious ego-booster trying to get people to care about what I have to say, this blog is a challenge, to myself, and to all who read it, to be true to yourself and to others, to, as I, the typical college student, wrote on my late loft, "LET YOUR FEELINGS BE FREE." This is a path that I can only hope will lead to true happiness for all those involved.