The Importance of the Background and the Everlasting Image

The cherry blossoms came early this year. We had a 70 degree couple of days, and the two trees across from my apartment were in instant bloom. Huge, full of pink and white blossoms. It usually happens like that with me. I'll be so busy and preoccupied with life that all of a sudden I'll take a look outside and see an explosion of color against a bright blue sky.

It's so picturesque.

Cherry blossoms from down on the Mall from a couple years back.

I only drove by the Tidal Basin on Wednesday on my way to work, and most of the trees were still sealed up, cozy in their buds, awaiting a warm day to start to come out. I don't know if they're in bloom yet, I haven't been back down there to check. The colors of the trees on that Wednesday did make me do a double take. It was such a burgundy maroon color. Such a dark red, but not the winter brown of a foliageless tree. The hue of red suggested a pensiveness for the entire collection of branches. Like they were spring-loaded, waiting for the far flung radiation from our purveyor of life to energize the atmosphere above the right threshold. Those springs were still so, so patient, their thermocouples still obeying the cold, still holding their connections. 

All of this was conveyed via that comforting, all embracing deep red-purple of the branches swaying in the gentle breeze as stop-and-go traffic shuttled me to work that day.

 

 

The sunset in question is to the right of the photo, but the light on Mount Saint Helens was so much more interesting to look at.

I like the grandeur, the dazzling, the spectacle. It is fun to look at. Engaging, exciting, entertaining. There have been many times I've climbed to a mountaintop, shuffled up the dunes, or simply relaxed by the sawgrass to enjoy a beautiful sunset. The colors, the vistas, and awe of it all always pleases my senses. But I also always ensure to turn around and to examine the 360 degree observation. Like taking a photo sphere, but in real life.

 I usually find myself lost in gradients that sit in the background. The seamless transitions of photons interacting with the cones of your eyes. There are rarely bands back there, no defined edges, no lines. Yet somehow the color does change. No matter at what point you look there is no boundary, but nonetheless, move your eyes to another patch of sky, and there will be a different color there.

But it's the more subdued nature of the background that I like as well. The less flashy, quieter and more reserved of nature. The stuff that doesn't make the pictures.

The view backwards from the sunset at Oregon Dunes National Recreation Area.

I've always been a fan of appreciating the background. It's unsung, hidden, almost a collection of its own away from the main attraction. There are multitudes of stories back there, just waiting to be heard, to be seen, to be experienced. Back there is a refuge for those who don't like the spotlight, for those who need a safe place to be. An accepting place to be. A place that has no expectations of what you should be, only that you... are. 

The main act is pretty, it is flashy, but it also are the ideals to which others expect beauty. You go to see a sunset, you kindle disappointment when it's cloudy. You drive on the Parkway only for the vistas to be covered in mist and for the drive to be cold and soggy. You try to get the perfect picture of the cherry blossoms on their branches, only to discover they've all been blown off the trees.

A misty day at Clingman's Dome in Tennessee

I like to see the aura of muted colors that give the clouds their unique light as the sun disappears under the horizon. The enchantment of the forest as you can see the water hang in the air, like a curtain protecting the forest and embracing you along with it. The blossoms that coat the ground like snow and provide such a sweet fragrance to accompany the beautiful vibrant leaves you stroll under. There is beauty in the remnants, as much as there is excitement in the actual occasion itself. An image that lasts onward even though the time is done, but somehow carries forward into the future.

Making it Through Alive

I volunteered today at Peirce Mill. It's hard to remember that I've been volunteering down there since 2017 or so. It's hard to believe that in two years I will have been in our nation's capitol for a decade. I don't like the passage of time. It terrifies me.

But at the same time there are everyday moments where I'm sitting and thinking to myself: I think things will turn out alright. Like when petting the cats, or just enjoying a quiet time sitting out in the brisk 55 degree day waiting for visitors to walk up to me. When it seems like all the ills of the world melt away, and I forget that I am a being who, like all things in this world that I hold close and dearly, will eventually perish.

I tend to go through these swings whenever I am having a great time: In those instant moments with others, I detach myself from the constant entropy that is straining to separate my molecules, and instead I am engrossed in the joy of the laughter, the company, and the assembly of whatever collective I find myself in. I am completely oblivious to the four dimensional pressures constantly issued upon my body and my soul. Only afterwards, once the moment has passed and I am back by myself, do I collapse in my own brain and try to not shutter at the fact that all of this will end. It's a yo-yo effect that I don't like to experience, but one that is necessary if I want to try and make it through this thing alive.

I've also found times of peace when I am with myself. A while back I found myself stuck with a bunch of very fine medically sterilized needles inserted not even a couple millimeters into my skin. (Yes, this is something I willingly subject myself to on a biweekly basis, and it seems to actually help, although I can by no means explain nearly the beginning of how it works.) Anyways, sitting in the chair, I started thinking masks we wear to perform for the infinite types of situations and people we find ourselves around through our lives. Then a heady kind of thought came to me: What if, at the end of the day (or year, or season of life, or hell, life in general) we come home to ourselves and store the masks we've been wearing, only to find:  

There is no true mask that lies underneath. 

What if we have no true, authentic self? 

I get this feeling sometimes when I get a chance to stop having fun, or stop fretting about the ultimate frivolity of all experience. I'll be sitting in the recliner, or laying in bed, and just not put another mask on when I'm with myself. I become this nebulous white noise of a mind, mostly empty, but still conjuring little flitters of feelings every now and then: 

• A concern about something I need to do here
• A twinge of nostalgia about times lost to me there
• My lower back being grumpy and not shutting up about it
• Concern about me not wanting to do stuff I like to do, and being worried it's a new season of depression with the debut episode
  

It's not a complete emptiness of my experience, but a quieting down of the constant stimulus that fills my reality. And once I can shush the sparks of neurons firing away up there in that grey matter, I try to remind myself that: Yes, it is okay to be white noise for a bit. It's okay to just hangout, and, I don't know, just be a rock.

It's comforting. It's not a state I want to be in forever, but it reassures me that changing back from the white-noise-state to another obligation of life is guaranteed, and will happen, and that while it seems daunting to shift back over, I'll want to eventually.

The familiarity of the life that I've settled into is scary. It's not scary because it's something new, but because it's something I'm enjoying more and more by the day. I never thought I would root this much, and my teenage self is still inside my brain screaming for me to stop. I promised myself I would never come to this, let alone actually... Like it. But every day it seems to worm its way farther into my consciousness: 

"You are doing great." 

"You live in a place you like." 

"You have friends you love and adore."

"You are secure."

And the kicker (for me) being that most of these things are made wholesomely true through the collective that has gathered around me and that I've chipped in to help build. I have forged relationships with others that are unlike most out there in the world. Our collective is constantly working to secure our foundations against atomic separation, and to keep those molecules linked together because: We have built something that works for us. And by god, while none of us make it out of here alive, we can make it through alive.