Hope

The DC Circuit Court came down today on the right side, upholding greenhouse gas regulations on all counts.  The country can move forward, progress can be made.  Did my small contribution in preparation for the arguments change history?  No.  Undoubtedly it did not.  But I did contribute to something I believe in and saw history take the right step forward.  The cause of B by A seems, to me, a dream.  But I know intellectually the connection between the laborious research of February and positive progress of Today is genuine.  Hundreds of hours by dozens of minds have led to one tick forward that we all share.

I Pray

I told everyone I had a funeral to attend. I was given condolences and long faces.  Leah suggested a "second funeral" event, and friends deflected the idea. But as I sat in the middle of a magnificent stone church, eyes closed, a tear running down my cheek, and chin tilted slightly upward, open to the choir's mystic energy resounding through the hall, I felt love.  I barely knew him save through the his beautiful daughter, but I felt the laughter, love, joy, and sadness of his life.  Perhaps it is because I am not naturally prone to compassion that I find the ceremony around the most humbling of experiences enlivening.  He brought me to life.  He is not dead.  He did not die.

Paragraph #1

Andy roamed through Boulder this week, fresh off of his launch into high-altitude photography.  Naturally (I guess) I become overwhelmed with thoughts about how green the grass is on just the other side.  I imagine how exceptional a life might be when its based on paychecks for exploration in faraway locales, practicing a creative artistic craft.  But I catch myself rationally, if not emotionally, and remember that every dream job has its nightmares - whether endless travel or monotonous movement or impossibility of balance between family and adventure.  Creativity can be found right here, too - and it needn't be found at a place of employ.  It does demand discipline, though, lest time slip entirely away to worldly pursuits.  And time does slip.  Huge projects I always delay.  My proximal goal is hereby launched: to put a paragraph a day, and no more, upon this page.  We'll see if my discipline can survive a bit longer than that doomed photo experiment.

Badass

I just came from movement rock gym, where over the intercom were read the letters and numbers of a license plate that was parked illegally - in the Quizno's parking lot, rather than the gym parking lot. I didn't even listen as they were read, because I knew they weren't mine for I had biked in to the movement.

But I knew why they were parked there. They were parked there because every day at 5 pm the parking lot for movement is packed full. People fill the front lot. Then they park parallel along the side of the building. Then they fill the back lot. Then they start overflowing into adjacent, and illegal, lots. Neighboring businesses must hate the movement.

As I exited the gym on my way to my bike, to see four cars driving around in circles looking for spots in the lot. I saw two climbers with rope in hand coming from across the street, where they had parked in the Target lot.

This. Is. Completely. Insane.

Climbers are supposed to be the outdoorsiest of all outdoorsy people. We have our roots in dirtbaggery. We sleep in vans. We don't shower. Even if we had money, we wouldn't spend it on "stuff" unless that stuff got us outside more. And what the hell better way to be outside than on a bike, right?

And yet, there are approximately 6 bikes next to mine in the bike rack, next to all of the zillions of cars people drove.

You might say that I live fairly close by, and this is true. I rode 1.7 miles to get there. But I checked out Google Maps, and the farthest fathomable place from movement I can find that's still in Boulder, CO is only 6 miles away. My 1.7 mile ride took me 5 minutes, and Google tells me it should take 10. And the 6 mile ride, according to Google, should take 30. So, what, 15 or 20 minutes to get to the gym from anywhere you could possibly be in Boulder, Colorado?

You might point out that it's cold outside. This is bunk. Wear clothes. Plus, if you're going at all uphill, you'll be sweating and complaining about how hot it is in no time.

You might also point out that it's dark outside and thus dangerous. Also bunk. Buy bike lights. Plus, it's Boulder - and there's a bike path or bike lane anyplace you could possibly want to go (which, as an aside, often makes the journey faster than driving, because you duck under major roads via underpasses rather than wasting your life waiting at traffic lights.)

And just to add insult to injury, no doubt 90% people spent their days at desks at jobs they don't like so that they could pay for the car and the gas to get them to the gym.

Meanwhile, because I started biking everywhere I need to go with more fervor, and because Jenny commutes by biking to the bus, and then biking from the bus to work, (making her the most badass of all wives to ever be wived) our gas bill this month is $50. Even that could be nixed if we biked to family and friend's houses in Denver instead of splurging on comfy rides that make our muscles atrophy.

So given a complete lack of rational basis for not biking, what gives? Why is our culture so completely backwards?

(I admit, the seed of this rant was planted by another post, and as such is not at all original. But, first, what is? And second, who cares? It's all part of launching the movement.)

Bliss

The big red box is bigger now. But that is perhaps the most profound change of all, which is to say it's all much the same as how I left it. And how I always leave it. We don't skip a beat either, with endless powder turns on A and the Doglegs and Four Pines. My passion is creeping back in, almost overflowing. But perhaps still put in check as memories of flecks of kneecap are always in my subconscious. And that's probably a good thing - because there are things in my life that are more important than tales of Central at the VC.

But when it all goes blue, it's hard to be anywhere but here. Bardon yells "I LOVE SKIING" at the top of his lungs to the tram line - and even in their silence every other person is thinking the same thing, and loving him for saying it.

There is more to life than Love and Mountains. But it really only seems that way when I'm not loving or I'm not skiing. When she's with me, there's nowhere I'd rather be. And when I'm surrounded in white, capped in blue, and watching that red box float by, this is all there is and all there needs to be. If only they could both happen together - then this would truly be bliss.

Valleys

As we pass pristine valleys spotted with golden leaves and ringed by blue peaks touching a pillowed white sky, the scars of interstates, Kum & Go’s, sprawl, and hurry mar perfection. In my ears, Mahler’s 5 serves its funeral march for what once was – and what could still be. We are a temporary community of humanity marching uniformly on one track towards calm shared future through untouched lands framed by powers bigger than ourselves.

Mahler’s is a lamentation of the loss of humility, perhaps. For reverence. And for community.

When will come the resurrection?

The Hangboard

Staring at my fingers, yelling at them, scraping with them at the slivered rough slots in the hangboard with all my might - I peel off. I jump back up, grab hold, slip back, hit the ground. Jump up. 10 seconds. Ground. Jump. 5 seconds. Ground. Jump. 2 seconds. Ground. Jump. Ground. Hands to knees. Suck wind. It's over. But it's not. Jump. 2 seconds. Ground. Minute's up. Hopeless.

Despair hits as there is no hope of improvement. If I can't stay on for even 1 second, how can I possibly get stronger? What's the point,aside from masochistically tearing skin from my fingers? But the clock hasn't stopped, my rest is over, and it's time to jump again into the frivolous exercise of watching weak fingers peel back repeatedly. So I jump and the flailing repeats again and again. When the hour is up, I ride home and wonder why I bother.

But then a week passes and the cycle resets and I'm on the hangboard again; and through a profound paradox the act of tumbling off the grains repeatedly actually has made me stronger. 10 seconds becomes 15. 5 becomes 10. I march slowly, but I march.

So it is in my endeavors. I struggle to find traction. Ideas prove fleeting, or at the least ever-evolving. Motivation comes and goes. But somehow I do move forward slowly - so perhaps even those times laying on the floor wondering what in the hell the next step should be, and how in the hell I'm possibly going to find the motivation to take it, actually do help me grow stronger. Help the ideas grow stronger. Help the project grow stronger.

And maybe slowly I actually can put something in motion to change Stone's "Tyranny of the Now" resulting from society's collective amnesia-myopia combo. Perhaps I can contribute just a tiny bit of useful energy to solving the "Historical Illiteracy" described by McCullough. And perhaps I can realize a piece of my desire to move a corner of society forward.

And all of this by slipping off the hangboard. Repeatedly.