It's been awhile

It has been awhile since my last post, and this is largely because i'm having a fantastic time at IU. This IFS class has made me so optimistic about college and my ability to get good grades ( i currently have an A) that i really don't have anything to complain about, and my normal philosophical drive is being met by my class. i'll probably be posting infrequently-ish.

My Dead Dog

As of late, my dog Gus has been sick. His fur has become mottled and clumpy, losing its former sheen. His eyes, once so bright they made me reconsider his supposedly low intelligence, have grown cloudy and dull. He is dying, and I feel that in some small way, his growth and death mirror my own transition from youth, to adolescence, and the early stages of that creeping inevitability we teenagers fear in the deepest recesses of our psyche.

I first met Gus in 1997, when I was in second grade. He was a sprightly young puppy with a fondness for hot dogs (no matter how many times he threw up as a result) and I loved him like any boy loves his dog. He grew up with me, through good times (elementary and high school) and bad (middle school). I am leaving for college on Aug. 3rd, and perhaps he knows that the period in which this boy needs his dog is drawing to a close. At the risk of descending into befuddling sentimentality, I believe that he, like so many other loyal dogs throughout history, has stayed as long as his human needed him. Maybe his final gift is his death. Maybe his final message to me is in the vein of the symbolism of our parallel lives: that the death of my youth must usher in a transition to something much more necessary. Like my faithful dog, I go somewhere I know not of. Hopefully, I can stride into the unknown with as much courage as Gus has shown; his snout held high, uncowed by his last great adventure. RIP Gus

Late Night Drives

One of my favorite parts of away games in football was the drive home. I would get off the bus after the game, change into street clothes, and head immediately to Taco Bell. Taco Bell was as close to a postgame tradition as we got in my group of football friends, so we headed there, win or loss. We would laugh and joke, and celebrate or commiserate depending on how the game had gone. Then, when the last burritos were eaten, I would get in my car and start to drive. The sense of freedom sublimely tickled me like the sweat-touched locks of hair on my forehead, and as I drove, I felt that I was leaving the world behind. This is the beauty of late night drives. The exquisite aloneness, that acutely sweet mixture of cold night air and the twinkling firmament above. We (I speak for modern society as a whole here; I hesitate to think whether I am qualified or not) are constantly surrounded by other people in our lives in this particular time. 4.00$/gallon gas nonwithstanding, we are supplied with a veritable multitude of ways to connect with one another. Phone, email, text messaging, even the jackass who blogs about his infinitessimally insignificant opinions at four o' clock in the morning. Yet the converse of this great proliferation is what we lose: the ability or want to be alone. The dichotomy of alone and together has come to define the human experience more than any other, and we are on the path to losing one side of it. I am as guilty as anyone, I am no saint. Yes, it is true that my cellphone is bright and waiting in my pocket for my order to connect with anyone, anywhere. Maybe this mystical sense of detatchment is a fool's illusion. Maybe I am wrong. But like those that stayed behind in Plato's effortlessly esoteric allegory of the cave, that fleeting shadow, that simple relaxing, is real enough for me.

God and everything else

When I think of god, I think of space. Not the space between (i.e. dave matthews and co.), but space as in cosmological space. God to me represents the indescribable loneliness of the void, and the churning nuclear furnace of the brightest blue star. God is the trillionth of a second after the big bang, ejecting matter from whence our reality was wrought, and the trillion years that will elapse before our universe whimpers into dissolution. The ancient greeks thought that a mysterious ether pervaded our universe, causing all atomic interaction (replace "ether" with "dark matter" and you basically have modern astrophysics). God, to me, is this ether. Blanketing everything, enveloping all those little probability clouds and black holes.