The Breaking Point

It's hard to stay mad, when there's so much beauty in the world. Sometimes I feel like I'm seeing it all at once, and it's too much, my heart fills up like a balloon that's about to burst. And then I remember to relax, and stop trying to hold on to it, and then it flows through me like rain and I can't feel anything but gratitude for every single moment of my stupid little life. You have no idea what I'm talking about, I'm sure; but don't worry. You will someday.
- Kevin Spacey, American Beauty

I'll say this about the heat: it has a way of making me feel alive. The kid at the petrol station said a few minutes ago that it broke one hundred degrees today. I'm from the Pacific Northwest, and my body essentially recognizes three temperatures: cold comfortable, warm comfortable, and too hot. When the weather surpasses seventy degrees I'm uncomfortable. Today, I was uncomfortable by 09:00.

I went to class, and once it was over, the temperature had gotten barely tolerable outside. I walked back to my car with one of my classmates and chatted for a few minutes, then I went to pick up that ring I'd dropped off at the jewelry store. It fits now, and I'll alternate that ring, a simple silver band, with the ring I've been wearing for about a year and a half now, a silver Celtic ring that my grandparents found at a laundromat in Hawaii several years ago.

I came home, and I wrote the earlier blog post about CCG; then I went to work. My immediate mission was to sweep the front porch... Outside. Shaded, but outside. Within five minutes of arriving, I was already starting to overheat. From there, I went to my workshop and washed the secondary van, part of my reasoning being that it allowed me to wet myself with the hose. The heat was stifling, but I basked in my artificial rain, and when I finished things up fifteen minutes earlier than usual, I left. I go in early, or at abnormal hours pretty often, so I don't mind saving the company money by not sitting on my ass for fifteen minutes just for the sake of drawing pay.

By this time I had agreed with a good buddy of mine to meet for dinner, as noted in the previous post. I had yet to go to the gym, and I needed to go to the gym; this entire workout plan is based entirely on me going, continuously, every weekday, and making things up on Saturday if I miss something. Part of the confusion from earlier is that I'm on an odd week, and got ahead of the workout, so I'm trying to adjust. As I've been running a lot, and you're technically supposed to take the third week off from running, I decided to run only twice this week. That meant twenty-five minutes in the pool, with (for a reason still unknown to me) a bunch of Asian people. Whatever; in spite of my gag reflex thinking that the air/water pressure difference constituted a hair in my mouth and threatening dry heaves half the time, I finished out strong, and got going.

I got changed, and I met my mate at the pizza place for about two hours of excellent conversation. I vented about CCG and about my grandmother (who has been especially difficult at work lately). Sometimes it's really therapeutic to solve the world's problems over calzone and almost a full pint (since they were out of glasses) of micro-brewed beer.

I hit the highway as the sun had dropped below the mountains, leaving an orange glow and, finally, some comfort and relief from the blistering heat of the day. As I turned off of the highway, onto the country road that makes up half of my drive to campus, I eventually had a view across a field. The farmers are out in full force, harvesting and restoring the fields in order to plant next year's crops. The result? Dust kicked up off the fields, giving me the feel of wind on my face from my open window, the smell of farm dust, and the view of a twilight on my way home.

Sometimes I have my doubts, and I get frustrated at God, and wonder whether He exists, and what he's thinking. It's all stifled and broken down by moments like that, where I see something that can only be an image, a memory, a moment, handed to me by God. After so many months of enduring the City of Profane Darkness, I felt as if I was finally in the City of Blinding Lights.

I feel as if I finally have some degree of control over my life, over my destiny, over my future. I feel like I'm finally accomplishing things like reading, and writing, and exercising, and working hard. I feel like I'm turning my life into what I want, and I'm getting what I want back out of it. I feel as if my stupid, dirty, tiresome, unfulfilling existence has become whatever I want to make of it, and that, friends, is something I rejoice in.

And, as I prepare to turn down my bed and claim the sleep I need to get up and face the heat, and the fatigue, and the sore muscles, and the dry eyes, and the sore toenails, and the hard work that awaits me tomorrow, I can't help but be overwhelmed at how amazing and beautiful the world is, and how truly astonishing life is.

Whether it's good, bad, ugly, beautiful, stifling, or envigorating, life is breathtaking, folks. Don't forget that. Refuse to forget that. Cherish your life, even when you think you can't go on anymore, and never give up.

Thus saith the Fly.