Snow Day

     Snow day! I was up at 6 am, a bit early to try to shovel the drive way better so my car wouldn’t get stuck on the way to work. It got stuck after ten feet. Two hours of shovelling, trying to drive, then shovelling again I managed to get back to the garage! So now after the trials and tribulations of the morning I realized I wasn’t going to work.  In honesty I feel a bit bored and isolated; I’ve started thinking about life unhindered and the concept of my last blog - living one’s life authentically as if it were art. In these thoughts the champion of that pathos, and one of my personal heroes, Ken Kessey immediately came to mind.

      Lots of travelers idolize Jack Kerouac for his stream of consciousness writing, but Ken Kessey, the author of “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest”, has always been my guy. Not only was Ken a writer of superior imagination and talent, OFOTCN is one of the quintessential novels of the individual standing up to society, but he was also an individual who was unashamed to live life with pure authenticity.  His wild experiences during the 1960’s were chronicled in the classic of new Journalism “The Electric Kool Aid Acid Test” by Tom Wolfe. (A book along with OFOTCN I recommend to anyone to read in succession)Never one to preach how to live specifically, his only rule was to live unhindered by society or the media and to be true to yourself. What I took from him was the idea to be myself no matter what and to live each day with passion.  Though I often may not succeed at those ideals they stand above me as my own personal idols in the sky.

      Back in 2000 I wanted to escape the forces of vanity, materialism and most importantly external expectations so I went traveling. Of course, it was somewhat a flight of fancy to believe those forces would disappear once I stepped on a plane, but life abroad was mainly about establishing relationships, unhindered conversation, and new experience. Fast forward to 2011 – the snow day – with the spirit of Kessey above me, I can feel the compulsion to try to live this way again. To step away from the reality I am in and return to Europe once more. I still do want to weigh my actions with thoughts for the future, but really I just want to live. I’ve felt so restrained, snowed in if you will, for too long.

Perfectly Imperfect

     While I was at work doing my menial, boring job I got to thinking about what is it that makes a person like someone else? Often people think of others in terms of specific traits. When I was younger, like many I suspect, I judged people in terms of absolutely positive attributes. I’d see people as intelligent, pretty, outgoing, etc. etc... and generally take a positive view of people who had traits that I held highly. However, time and experience has come to show me that without the negative - positive can’t exist. If a person was fully graced with positive traits than what could stand out from the rest, what would define them? They’d seem plastic and unreal.  Really it’s the flaws that make people interesting.

     Considering that last comment deeper...   every person sees things different and has different distortions of self and reality. I love people that are willing to show that inherent uniqueness; people who aren’t afraid to be different. By doing this they highlight their flaws, they show everybody that this is me and this is how I see the world.  The converse of that is the person that actively tries to be like everyone else. Where’s the audacity in that? To me beauty shines forth when a person presents their truth for all to see. In those moments they become as if a prism for reality allowing it to shine through them in a unique translucence.  A person who lives this way lives art and in a way is art. For me that effort is guaranteed to get my respect and admiration.