Philosophical Meanderings

I've been doing some thinking lately.  Dangerous, I know.  But typical of me being who I am.  This is sort of a cumulation of a couple of philosophical/deep discussions with Paul recently.  There are a multitude of reasons why I love him very much, and one of them is that I can talk to him.  Not talk at him or talk to him while he pretends to listen or passively listens, but really talk to him about what's going on in my head and he actively listens and gives me insights that facilitate me being a more aware, more complete person. 

I've always been completely fascinated with who we are as people, what makes us who we are, and why I'm different than another person who experiences similar circumstances.  What makes me who I am, basically.   The word "Character" has a multitude of definitions, and I believe being clear about what you mean is vastly important as words are beautiful and poignant, but highly individualistic in their interpretation.  I'm using character in the sense of "the aggregate of features and traits that form the individual nature of some person, especially the moral and ethical traits".

I agree with the fact that true depth of character, true depth as a person is cultivated through deep pain and traumatic events.  Events that shatter your world view, the construct of how you create yourself, and the how and why of what you believe.  These events are outside influences from your environment that have a large influence on how your character is developed, but there's a turning point when these traumatic events where you can take the lessons learned from it, analyze them, and learn from them, creating a better you - or you can simply push the issues aside and not develop as a person. 

Lots of people do this, neglect critical analyzation of themselves and their character - people who don't deeply think about their situations or themselves, who let life happen to them, who don't delve into the deep end of who they are and why they are the person they are.  They go to work, they have relationships, they eat and breathe and have fun.  But to not explore and be critical of who you are as a person - to give up the opportunity to develop that depth of character seems highly wasteful to me.  

The only thing we have in this world that we can (marginally) be sure exists, is ourselves, and that sometimes seems like a mirage to me.  But for the most part - the only thing I have a constant connection with is who I am as a person.  Developing that, keeping a constant progressive trend from one level of awareness to another is why I'm here - it's why I exist.  The so called search for enlightenment.  Facts and Deductions, analytical reasonings about external stimuli in the outside environment is useful, but everything starts self analysis.  The thought that only true enlightenment starts from within. 

I spent the past couple of years going through deep depression, being in a marriage that wasn't working, fighting with the truth of who I was and who I wanted to be, spending the seemly short, but psychologically eternal 12 hours or so of starting a divorce, and then enduring Richard's suicide, and subsequent recreation of myself and my life.  As a result of all that I've gone through quite a bit of self re-creation and some significant pain.  Once again, I find myself in the calm after the storm extremely grateful for all I've experienced.  I think of what I might have been like if I stayed in Kansas and married some plain boy and lived and bred and died within a couple hours of where I grew up and I shudder a bit.  Not experiencing the immensely varied, turbulent, violently chaotic and rich life I've had would have wouldn't have allowed me to be who I am today.

Like I've mentioned before in posts, negative experiences teach leagues more than positive experiences.  I know this is more of a musing post, but it's been a reaffirming realization lately that I'm thankful for everything I've ever endured - the "bad" almost more than the "good".  It's been a reoccurring thought since I was a child -

"If you never experienced true pitch black dark in your life, you wouldn't be able to appreciate the brilliant light that accompanies a perfect summer day. "

I'm grateful for the strength and depth of character I've been allowed to develop that's resulted from the harder periods of my life.  I stand in awe of the amaranthine nature of self-discovery and the leviathan depths of character and soul we possess as human beings.  The beauty of the nature of the construct of the human consciousness is transcendent - nothing short of marvelous.

"What lies behind us and what lies before us are small matters compared to what lies within us."  Ralph Waldo Emerson.

My Refrigerator

Verite - or Cupcake Royale - is the best darn cupcake place around!!!

btw - Jordaine....I'm still waiting for those pictures of the awesome gibberish we did with your magnetic poetry, and the pic of me with Mary.

Broken Thoughts about the Last Week

So I got off the evil medication that had been screwing with my thyroid last Sunday and around Tuesday/Wednesday I starting to feel much more like myself again. It's amazing how un-myself I get when every thing's out of whack. It feels like surfacing from the depths of the ocean when I get out form under one of these funks. Experiences like this ALWAYS make me appreciate how well I function when my body's working well.

Only memorable parts of this week were that I worked on all three of my bikes on Tuesday. It took two hours to clean/lube/swap out some parts/etc... Ironically after all of that Wednesday I start in to bike to get my blood drawn before going to work and the screw that holds the left crank/pedal in fell out. It was typical Seattle weather so it's rainy-gray-gray-gray-rainy-cold-rain some more so I couldn't find the screw and had to bike home one legged (over a mile). It sucked and I'm sure I looked really funny. Right now it's at a shop getting repaired and I probably won't get the bike back until about a week. I already miss it.

The high point was that since the road bike was out of commission I went mountain biking with Andrew at Soaring Eagle Park on Thursday, which is amazing. The terrain was great - lots of rolly single track, root encrusted, HUGE mud puddles filled with water everywhere and some nice stretches that you could get up some great speed. Anyway, it made me really appreciate Iri. It was definitely what she was made for and I realized why exactly I love mountain biking.

1. I get to get dirty. As my mom can attest, I LOVED playing in the mud and the dirt when I was a kid. I can remember one time in particular that it rained really hard and there was a massive amount of standing water/mud in our backyard and neighbors garden. When I knocked on the back door before coming back in the house my mom looked at me shocked through the screen door with a face I'll never forget. She told my brother and I "Stay there!". Putting paper bags on the floor in between the backdoor and the bathroom she told us to jump into the tub with all our clothes on. We were COVERED in mud. I can't imagine how much of a pain it was for her to clean up after us, especially me, when we were young.

2. Mud puddles, moguls, going down fast, etc... I love fun nifty things that make me do things/experience a feeling with my body I wouldn't normally get to.

3. I get to bike.

It's a total bonus I get to do all those things all at once with mountain biking.

Things are going well otherwise. Dwight, Paul's friend is coming down this weekend and there's the Tour de French Fry we're checking out on Saturday. Since I don't have Damian, I won't be participating, but it should be fun to take some good pictures. I ?think? Andrew's racing on Saturday and if he is I might go watch/play myself. Work's kinda sucked this last week, I've got a lot on my plate with 4 or 5 different projects going on and things are deadline sensitive right now, which always makes it a little worse. As usual, everyone thinks I'm their top priority...it's part of my job, but it gets tiring sometimes. I just finished The Autobiography of Malcom X, which I hadn't read in over 7 years and is one of my ALL TIME FAVORITE books. Very well written and a beautiful story of an amazing personality.

A word I came across I like

deliquesce \'de-li-'kwes\ v *1: to dissolve or melt away 2: to become soft or liquid with age or maturity

Busy Weekend!

So this weekend both rocked and sucked.  Saturday was super fun.  Andrew had a mountain bike race, and I got to ride Iri (my new mountain bike) on real trails for the first time on some trails and dirty her up.  Plus, Sunday I did the longest ride I've ever done.

Saturday was really cool.  Andrew, Paul, and I headed out around 7:20ish after strapping Iri to the back of Andrew's truck.  We *just* made the ferry and went to Port Gamble, which is far north and kind of out in the middle of nowhere.  There were only about 20 people racing, 8 or so girls, 12 or so boys.  What was totally awesome about it was:

1. There was a lot of girls there, and I got to talk to them about bikes. I've never really got to talk to girls who bike, it's really predominated by the boys, and seeing so many of them out there was really awesome.

2. I forgot how AWESOME the before/during/after competition glow is.  Even though I wasn't racing, and not even really watching Andrew since it was a 14 mile out and back lap, I got to be there to be his cheerleader, something Paul's going to be doing a lot of in the next few years.  Seeing him suit up, register, warm-up, get started, and his "coming down" routine really reminded me of all of the awesome feelings I had when I competed in debate and forensics.  I LOVED the excitement, the focus, the anticipation, the dedication and mind obliterating absorption into what you did, then the come down afterwards, the routines and the butterflies and the glow of doing well.  I'm looking forward to getting to experience that again.

3. There was deep soul sucking mud I played around with forever while Andrew was mountain biking - Paul got some great pictures of both him and me.  

Before we got to the mud - this is me.  Happy.  On my Bike.  :)

Me fighting ferociously to keep Iri going through the deep icky mud.

Ahhhh....no more mud!  

I like how the picture has my face in focus 

and the legs/wheels all blurry like I'm going super fast.

Here's a picture of Andrew starting and finishing....he did awesome!

He's the guy in red in the middle.

And a Mud Flecked Andrew finishing first in his age division!

I'm going to enter into the really chill lax competitiveness mountain bike races out near Sea-Tack that are going to happen on Wednesday nights starting in April.  I'm not sure I'm going to be ANY good at all - my thyroid is a little worse lately which is KILLING my ability to do...well most of anything with my body.  Anyway, I figure it'll be great to practice racing, increase my technical skills, and really push myself.

Saturday was bad because I didn't eat enough, and my body/emotions had a minor breakdown. I had a really bad evening and was exhausted.  It sucked, but whatever.

Sunday was great because I did 79 miles on the road bike.  That's right - 79 miles.  I was still feeling really blah from my body being stupid, and wasn't really into going out, but I wanted to do 76 (to beat Paul's record) and so I started and rode, and rode, and rode....and then eventually finished.  I did the Lake Washington loop with a lot of deviations (cutting out the big hill on Juanita).  

The sucky part of Sunday was that on the long ride my right knee started complaining 25 miles in, 55 miles in started really complaining, started screaming at 65 and then really was crunchy Monday morning, but is working itself out this afternoon.  It was a long day and oddly enough, I expected to feel more Go Me! after doing 79 miles.  But I kind of just feel like, "Yep, I did a long ride."  I suppose I'll feel another Go Me! when I pass 100.  

It was definitely a busy weekend!

PIE!!!

Now I finally have the access to the pictures I take w/ my point and shoot camera....here's a picture of the most delicious flaky tasty crust on the awesome apple pie I made.    Yay for pie.

Being Invisible

For most of my life I've been invisible.

I was a kid in a poor region of Kansas and I was a bookworm. For as active and as ....free spirited...as I was, I was pretty quiet and unobtrusive. In grade and middle school I always had my nose in a book and was a teacher's pet for the teachers who earned my respect. I was a quiet thorn in the side of teachers who were too stupid, unenlightened, or unimaginative to earn my respect. But generally I blended into the background a lot.

I didn't avoid life. I had a lot of acquaintances, not a lot of close friends. I moved from group to group...jocks to tokers to slackers to cheerleaders to nerds and back again. I wasn't particularly slim or typically pretty or interested in dressing "right" growing up either, and that's apparently a lot about getting noticed. I preferred the benefit of being able to observe and watch others. They were interesting. Besides, being a center of attention never really seemed appealing. I would have had to work really hard to be the center of attention and there just weren't a lot of benefits to it. Too much negative attention and too many people just wanting to use you. It also seemed a little petty and selfish, too. It ranked really low on my cost/benefit analysis scale. Something I've lived by for quite a while. How much the benefit outweighs the cost directly translates into how much effort I put into something.

In the past week I've felt a huge erosion to my superpowers of invisibility. Wearing makeup, hair color changes, wearing nicer clothes, and dropping this weight - things I'm naturally doing and not really doing for anyone in particular except myself - it's really changed the way people interact with me. They notice me. Look at me. Comment on how "You're recreating yourself!" "You look really great today" "I'm really impressed with your strength of will and determination" "You look so good!" etc....

This isn't me complaining people are commenting positively on me, but rather the realization I'm uncomfortable with people noticing me. Before, people only noticed me when I wanted them to notice me. Now people I don't know/don't care about are paying attention to me. It's different and odd. I don't believe people should notice me unless I want them to. This doesn't change my goal and I'm not going to live my life any differently than I have been, but this is a paradigm shift I wasn't really prepared for. It's strange, sometimes, how when you accept and go after a goal you encounter side effects on your life you weren't expecting.

This is one of them. I've lived almost all of my life invisible and I'm not sure I know how to proceed being seen.

!!MY BIKE!!

I've been saving up some money for two bikes - a mountain bike and a road/cyclocross bike for the last couple of months now. My first priority was the cyclocross bike because the only road bike I have right now is borrowed from a friend (which I'll have to return around August) and road bikes are more expensive. However, a pretty sweet deal came up on craigslist this past week. It's a 2006 Cannondale Prophet, the reviews of it are fantastic, it was a $1300ish bike selling for $500, and it hardly ever riden, in perfect condition (some chain rust was the only weak point), and it had great shock absorption. Oh, and it's RED. Great bike, really cheap, totally going to change the way I mountain bike, and in a color I prefer. I'd have been stupid not to get it, so I ended up becoming a pround parent of Iri. See below for photos.

I name all of my bikes, and some that aren't mine.

Gordon is Rich's old mountian bike I've given now to Paul. Gordon was Rich's middle name and I thought it fitting. It means "Large fortification". The bike is DEFINITLY too big for me, and it's a mountain bike, so the idea of fortificaiton fits well.

Dorthy is the Cypress hybrid Paul gave to me, also my grandmother. It reminds me of her. She was older, slower, not super agressive, but a really good thing in your life and fun. Switching gears was difficult for her, she definitly had a particular way of thinking, and switching gears on the Cypress was also the bane of my existence with that bike.

Damian is Andrew's Kona Jake I'm riding. Besides the whole OMEN reference, the name Damian's background is Greek in origin possibly meaning "to tame, subdue" although also close to the word for "Sprit" It also comes from the Sanskrit word "dam", meaning "who can give". It's fitting as the Kona Damian brings out in me someone who rides fast, sometimes needed to tame or subdue myself. In the first week I had the bike, I was told about 20 times by both Paul and Andrew "This bike goes fast. Don't do anything stupid." :) It has tremendous spirit and fittingly it ties in very well with the fact it was given to me by someone for a while.

Iri is my new mountian bike. It's a very unique bike, with really interesting geometry and I decided it needed a unique name. It's really cushy, like sitting in a soft armchair, and the name creates cushy mouth movements when said. IRI is hebrew and means fire, light. The bike is lipstick red, which is bright light and like irridescent fire. Besides, I'm going to burn some trails up on it :)

IRI, MY BIKE:

Searched for some better images on the web

(my camera's still not functional yet)

and found the below: