Yay! I did some writing! This was a random unexpected thing I just pulled out of nowhere. Its a collage, which is a piece that takes a variety of mediums, scenes, clips, and pulls them together to comment on something. The connections are not immediately obvious…but I think the ones in this case are. If you really follow this blog (as if anyone does) you’ll recognize parts of this.  The last line was taken from the post I did two hours ago–it was the inspiration for the whole thing.  This is just a draft–finished it 10 min ago–so let me know what you think!

The phone was hot as I held it against my sweaty face.  The air was thick, mixing with the moisture on my cheek to create a glue to keep the phone there.  My hand is tired from holding the position.  In one ear I heard crickets and frogs forming the chorus of the river. In the other I heard the sweet voice of a wise old friend comforting me in a time of loneliness.  The picnic table on which I sat was empty. The phone shot heartstrings across space and contracted time.

“Well, Josh,” said her sage-like voice. “I can’t really talk to you over the phone. There’s something about seeing someone face to face—you just can’t read them over the phone, can’t really get to know them.”

“Yeah,” I muttered. “Well I’ll be coming up this weekend. We’ll talk then.”

The phone dropped away from my ear, the miracle gone dead.   Speaking to it would not make a friend appear. Little frogs leapt beneath my feet. I greeted them as friends and pushed the phone away. (continue reading…)

I am already amazed at the responses I got to this! Let’s be clear: If you actually read the piece you will see that I don’t normally do this sort of thing. I have only done it twice in my life so far and don’t plan on doing it much more at all. I only drank three beers and had my head about me fine. Also, I am not saying that there is nothing wrong with alcohol, just that I have come to understand much more about why people drink.

This is just a description of my first night out drinking. I’ll make use of it for two pieces I am working on, one on the reasons people drink and one a personal essay centered on my pride–called The Pedestal.  As you will see, both themes are present in this write-up. Hope you enjoy, and feel free to comment. Please don’t try to toss out some argument to discount the conclusions I’ve made because you feel you must defend your hatred of alcohol. I know, ok…I know. I was there once too…and then came this:

I didn’t need advice from someone to know that this was a bad time to go drinking. My time with Kayley had left me depressed and on edge. I don’t handle alcohol well at all, having only been the smallest bit drunk a few times,all safely in my apartment.

The Interstate is empty as I race down it, away from another strange and bewildering night with her. Advances are not enough. Sunflowers wilt and die after a few days; it is the same if you give the girl one or six. You just have to buy more then. The street lights are less fleeting as I race by them. The air blows cool on my face and I shudder.

Tom, my roommate calls, he wants to go out—he wants a party. Can we find a party? Ought I do this? What things will I find by exploring these unknown lands? No doubt I’d find things beyond my experience. I’d break down inside a little, these thoughts of pride and arrogance. Things I never understood.

I drive up Gervais street. It is Tuesday night in the summer so its not particularly busy. I thankfully find a place to park right behind the place I used to work, Bull Market. This way I won’t have to worry about leaving it there all night if I need to walk home. Its not that far and I am terrified of driving after drinking so I’d rather not do it at all. I’ll probably stick to that rule for a while until I can get a feel for what alcohol does to me.

I call Tom and he said he went inside Rust, a bar that Dane, a guy I used to work with, now works at. Dane said they have half-off liquor tonight and that he’d be going but he’s not answering my phone calls. Later I find out he was blackout drunk. Rust is surprisingly nice and intimidating. I am not willing to go in. It is set back from the street, a nice slanted building with a glass front and a courtyard to the right. I decide to wait outside for Tom.

I feel awkward just standing there. The Vista is pretty empty. A few people are walking but not many. I nod to the ones that pass by but I feel awkward. A guy walks up. He is sweating profusely and shrugging in his jacket like he isn’t sure whether he should keep it on. It odd since it is hot outside. He tells me that his girlfriend just left him and normally his frat brothers would help him out but none of them are around. He needs to get up to Garners Ferry Rd. That’s quite a ways. He needs $15 for the Taxi. I briefly contemplate offering to drive him. But I told Tom I’d meet him here and he’d be out in a moment. I look in my wallet and all I have is a dollar. I mutter apologies as I hand him the bill. He looks disappointed. This frustrates me a little but, being the good-natured sucker I am, I let him have it. He heads off down the street saying he is going to Jillians to see if he can find someone to help him. (continue reading…)

This essay was written for an Advanced Writing class, Spring 2008, taught by Shevaun Watson

Why do people jump off of buildings?

What must it feel like to approach the edge of that concrete railing, your toes feeling the emptiness beneath them? How would the air feel as it brushes your hair from ten stories up? I would imagine it would be serene and numbing to feel the light touch of the sun’s rays as they retreat into the distance, to peer out into the sky and seek to join it. But below the awestruck sky would lie the city, dirty, dark, busy, polluted—full of people walking, driving, living—oblivious to your own life and how it hangs in a delicate balance. What thoughts run through your mind at that moment? What edges you forward, or pushes you away from the edge? What is strong enough to move those few inches? What is bad enough to end your life?

Surely we all must admit life is troublesome, strange, frustrating, confusing, and vaguely unfamiliar (even though it’s all we know). In twenty years of existence here, a day doesn’t go by that I am not flabbergasted by this world we live in, with all its intricacies—all those subtle notes of suffering like the bitter taste of tobacco in the after taste of an overpriced wine. For lack of a better word, this life is simply odd—it is impossible to grasp. And once you think you’ve got it figured out, it changes and everything seems just as strange as before.

For one such as me, this keeps me going—for kicks, you could say. I’ve got nothing better to do. But others are not like me. They can’t take it. They choose to take the quick way out and end it now, climbing to the top of large buildings and shooting up concrete like heroin, letting it devour all their miseries. And they do it in increasing numbers.

Annually, 30,000 Americans commit suicide with an additional 500,000 attempting suicide. That amounts to someone attempting to end his life every second of the day. It’s like they’re all lined up on that infinitesimal building, jumping second after second, trying to get rid of the misery that is their lives. Every second, trying to shut out those images, the people who don’t care, the demands they don’t want to meet, the pointless day-to-day, the endless tiring march. Every second, another one falls.

Yet for most people suicide seems inconceivable. Why would you do that, we ask? Why would anybody want to kill themselves? So we give them medicine, we diagnose it as “depression” (which supposedly some 15 million Americans have), and we save them from themselves. (continue reading…)

This is a piece that was written for my Creative Nonfiction class, Spring 2009 semester. It is considered a Lyric piece. There is a good chance I’ll use this in my applications to grad school so any comments are appreciated.

I saw a bird today; it separated from a flock poised on a parking garage above the crowded city street where I sat, my toes tapping the brake, longing to see green. The bird broke from a random pattern and floated softly to fall upon the lamppost to my right. It caught my eye and seemed to shutter for a moment, either finding something strange in my gaze or merely brushing the morning dew from its feathers.

Another living thing, I thought.  Not human.  How odd.

A horn shattered the moment; the bird was gone, replaced by a new kind of bird delivered by the man in my rearview mirror. I grimaced and eased onto the accelerator.

Driving is a simple thing when you do it every day: automatic and instinctual. It makes me think that perhaps nature was a bit forward thinking in providing us such capacities to numb our senses, multi-tasking so that we could think of other things while our bodies took us to our destinations.

It’s not the same when walking through the woods. Once, a long time ago, I spent a whole week in the mountains hiking through a segment of the Appalachian trial.  Sixty miles, seven days, everything you need on your back. Every day the most reckless (or maybe just more fit) of our crowd would trudge on ahead while my friend and I maintained a leisurely pace, soaking in the dense forest as we walked. On one day we hiked over an entire mountain. At the top I saw why people went to mountains to gain wisdom. The world stretched before me; I felt like I could reach out and gather it into my arms.  At night we slept in hammocks. The stars were so bright that the leafy branches above me seemed to contain a million fireflies hovering in the cool night breeze.

Now it’s nearly seven years later and the only route I travel, day after day, involves nothing but concrete, plastic, and metal.  I wake up in my cozy little apartment and travel down sidewalks, avoiding the dew-filled grass, to sit in my car as it takes me far away. I step out in a cathedral of concrete where I leave the car to sleep while I’m gone. I walk down paved paths to monstrous buildings of brick, glass, and metal. People are the animals, buildings are the trees. Trees and birds have become like weeds and insects, pests to be casually noticed but mostly ignored.

I had another instance, once, camping with a friend up in North Carolina. There was a lake that, in the dead of night, we walked through the dark to examine. As we drew near the distant sound of crickets melted away and all sense of feeling withdrew.  It was not a lake we approached but the manifestation of infinity. The perfectly still lake, in that perfectly quiet night, in that perfectly distant world—one could not see where the earth and sky began. All was black expanse of stars. I had a feeling and a thought: life could be about this.

I don’t have time for that anymore. But I have not forgotten. When I walk in from my car at night sometimes I pause and look around, longing for a coherent world. At first I only find patches of grass and isolated trees. But then, for a moment, this noisy world will fall quiet and the feeling will return. I look upward and see the stalwart and undying figure of Orion, always looking down over this world we have both possessed and created. Perhaps, I thought, we have missed something in the course of our busy lives, our crowded history. This is God, and we no longer see her. All we have is concrete and birds and humans; that’s it.

Reflecting back on my post on why nuclear power failed to catch on in the US, I have begun to get an odd sense of the relationship between technology and society that is somewhat different than the common conception. The most common idea tossed around popular society is how much technology drives society.  To many, they feel like the world is hurtling onward propelled by the force of our rapid innovations.  In fact, there is an enormous debate around this with futurists, computer scientists, and other thinkers.  Particularly, Ray Kurzweil and Bill Joy have participated in a lively discussion (with many others on both sides) about how technology is going to drive us into an out-of-control spin, rapidly changing our society in ways that are both unimagable and uncontrollable. For Kurzweil, this will lead to a Heaven in which technology allows us to surpass ourselves and become semi-gods, for Joy this will lead to a Hell where our technology leads to unimaginable horror and destruction.  But both sides assume one thing: that technology drives society.

There is a third side to the issue, what journalist Joel Garreau calls the Prevail scenario. The main proponent behind this is a Virtual Reality pioneer Jaron Lanier (for more on this debate see Radical Evolution). The premise here is that technology can be controlled by society, that humans are resilient and powerful in directing their lives.  All of the things I said about nuclear power only serve to confirm this sentiment.  Just because a technology coud be developed doesn’t mean it will.

Nuclear is on the first example of this (to get a sense of how nuclear was deterred by society, see the original article). There are an enormous number of examples of society detering a technology for one reason or another, whether because it is too dangerous or because the philosophical and cultural climate was not ready to embrace it or because people were simply not ready for it. Here are a few other examples: (continue reading…)