Walking the Path of a Novel

I was listening to a RadioLab/TED Radio Hour episode the other night about how we should look upon life, and it makes me think to those times when I live and see life.

I have often talked about this special feeling I get when I am absolutely comfortable with what and where I am living, and I feel at ease with things.

That feeling almost always happens when I travel back east to Ohio or to Warren Wilson College for homecoming. It has started to happen here, when I am out and about on a walk, hike, or geocacheing mission. I have started geocacheing, and I think that it has helped me see more of the places I'd otherwise not see. It gets me to investigate the micro level of things, and to get down and really dig into the dirt to find an cache. It also leads to points such as the image above, where you can see downtown Portland from up on the rise in Vancouver.

In that RadioLab/TED Radio Hour episode, they talked about the time and age old question of struggling with the fact of where this life leads us, and how we cope with death and the departure of what we think of as life. There was one part of the episode which really stuck out to me, and has helped calm my senses of where exactly I am going.

The speaker said that we should think of life as a book, with a beginning (birth), and an end (death), and that we should not worry ourselves with anything that came before the beginning or after the end of the book. Instead of being the outside reader of the novel, we are the characters in it, unknowing of what lies outside the story, and we should accept that. And it made total sense to me.

When we are reading a novel, watching a film, playing a game, or listening to music, there is only one method of storytelling tool that separates us from the narrative: the fourth wall. The idea that all three walls are there, setting the stage to let us look in, but the characters of the story are still separated from us and the outside world via the frontdrop, one which they cannot see past; the forth wall. Yet it is transparent to the viewer, and allows us to see through to observe the novel.

As you've probably heard before, there is a technique that takes finesse to pull off called "breaking the fourth wall", and it involves the characters of a narrative addressing and acknowledging the reader and the context outside the plot. Sometimes it's done terribly, sometimes it's done beautifully.

What has given me some calm about this though, is that as far as I'm concerned, I don't know if there is anyone reading my narrative, or if I'm living within a four walled and roofed story, but whenever I get overwhelmed, I keep in mind that the end chapter is there. And that I shouldn't worry about what lies outside my narrative, because my job is to experience the best of it that is there, and roll with the story.

But whenever I do get worried, I do at least know that all the walls aren't solid, and that windows do exist, and I can at least look outside and ponder about what may be beyond my narrative. But I try not to get too wrapped up in it all, because there is a whole novel to experience, and I want to keep on through those chapters.

The Winter Gathering

I sit here with at my triple screened desk tonight in wonder and amazement. I'm not quite sure how everything went down, but it was an amazing day.

Let me start out with a preface though:

I have been volunteering over the past half year or so with the Ridgefield Wildlife Refuge System at their educational Chinookan Plankhouse. The main season is during the summer, when the refuge is open, it's sunny, warm, and a great place to visit and walk.

Throughout the summer I am a docent who guides and interprets the Plankhouse and it's many artifacts to folks who visit. It's a very satisfactory job, culturally interpreting a traditional Chinookan structure, with many recreated and authentic artifacts inside.

I started the job to explore more about the native cultures of the area, and to learn what the Native American experience was on this side of the continent. So you probably could envision how excited I was when I was asked to volunteer at this year's Winter Gathering.



That is where my day begins.



I wake up around 8:00 AM, shower, and get cleaned up for the day. It's starting to become habit; waking up early and going to bed early. (I fight sleepiness even at this hour of 10 PM on a Saturday) Once I start driving, in a typical Northwest fashion, the rain picks up.

What a lovely day.

Once I arrive, only a handful of organizers are there, those who I have met and talked with before. I know most of them by name. I have not come prepared, for there is lots of mud. Lots of rain. But I run on the excitement of the day ahead.



Once my duties are done for the morning, I go to "hang out" in the Plankhouse, where there is a fire started in both of the pits, and folks are just beginning to trickle in and start chatting. Immediately I notice the fires, and how they bring the house to life.

I have come to have a passing friendship with the vice chair of the tribe, and as he and I talk, I can really see in him the identity of what it means to be "Chinook". He speaks of how the ceder begins to breathe, and how the light works its way onto the walls. The gathering of descendants of the ancestors helps to build the house again, and to reconstruct it's very meaning to the Chinook peoples. And I feel it too. I can see the warmth of the house coming to, radiating from the hearth.

This is in stark contrast to giving tours of the Plankhouse. When we give tours, we try to describe what it would have looked like back when Lewis & Clark came across the actual village of Cathlapotle, and how it would have functioned in the early 1800's. But there is no denying it. The Plankhouse is usually a dusty empty place usually devoid of the very culture we are interpreting.


That is why attending today was so important for me. As a steward and a volunteer docent of the Chinook culture and peoples, I want to experience the tribe today. I want to see the modern Chinook tribe. Their richness, reality, and retrospective on the past. And that is what I got today at the Winter Gathering.

I will not go into too much detail, as many parts of the Chinook culture are sacred and are not openly promoted or explained. I am extremely privileged and thankful though for the experience I saw and heard today. I acted primarily as an observer, taking it in. The only time where I even remotely participated was when I was invited to receive gifts for my volunteer service. I was allowed a chance on the floor; the sacred and blessed floor reserved for those of the tribe only. And with that invitation I received some tea and a beautiful necklace from the Chinook tribe. What amazing gifts that left me speechless.

All I can say to that is mahsie; thank you.

I've Got the Idea to Become a Professor

The more I think about it, the more I want to become a professor.

I was talking with one of my former professors from Warren Wilson today, and he has slowly started to convince me to look more and more into grad school and the profession of teaching.

When I talk about teaching, I guess I should add this little caveat: I do not, under any circumstance, want to teach primary, secondary, or public school. There are way too many politics and regulations around that field that I have seen too many good souls get crushed by.

I want to influence the next generation of thinkers through post-secondary education. I want to teach young students (such as myself) not what to think, but rather how to think.

There is such value in knowledge. Knowing your context, geography, culture, is hugely important. But that information is mostly out there through the wonderful medium of the internet. What you cannot get through the internet (or at least yet) is the face to face instruction to personally influence people to start to think on how to process the huge amount of information out there.

As in computer science, the way our mind parses information is quintessential to where it goes, and what the output is:

If you learn that the only way to learn things is through simple facts and "big figure" concepts (I would argue the "traditional" way to learn), you lose the intricacies that make up the whole picture. You see the macro-forest.

But if you learn to learn things through the small lens, you end up with a micro-forest, losing the bigger picture of greater meaning, and how things tie across places.

Going to a more primal way to view things, there could even be the idea of providing that "intrinsic motivation" as my professor called it. The actual curiosity to learn and not sit idly by.

I've noticed that in my travels and my rough transition into the "real world" I've found that a lot of people are not very deep or inquisitive thinkers. I don't mean this as a "deep thinker" way of philosophy, but rather just as a general curiosity about life and how and why things work. It just seems like a lot of people don't have that "intrinsic motivation" inside them.

I like to teach that to people the best way I can. There is a finesse to it. I try not to seem like a jerk about it, but I like to throw questions back on people, and see if they can solve it first. When I worked on the GIS Crew at Warren Wilson, this was my ethic, and usually it worked. When it comes to tech, I love to point people to the direction of Google and the wonderful search box/omnibox.

But why do people not look to these places as their first option? Is it simply that I am available in physical "meetspace" for immediate help? Do people get lost in Wikipedia articles? How about libraries? Is that something that I just assumed people do?

I ponder these questions, and I come back to the metaphor of the computer processor:

The brain acts like a computer. It takes information and data in through the senses, processes it among the billions of neurons and synapses of the brain, and yields an output, in the form of a cognitive thought or a realization.

How do other people's processors work? Why do they work like that? Are there overarching systems we can see among these thought processes? Or is teaching something you just "do"?

And why does it seem like some people's processors are wired to simply accept what is in front of them, and not investigate, ask questions, or search for more? Where is their "intrinsic motivation"? Isn't that a key human trait? If it isn't, then what else do people live for?

The Urban Forever

I miss being running around and being genuinely tired at the end of the day.

I've been galavanting around Portland for the second half of the day. I am beginning to re-realize the beauty of the public spaces in large cities.

I originally came in to meet a professor and hangout for a couple of hours. I arrived via transit (MAX Line), departed at the convention center, found him, and off we went, catching up on the past year and a half.

I had attended homecoming the year before, but since then the radar has fallen silent with professors and academia at Wilson. To be fair, I've been off doing my own thing, but catching up, talking about the college, and finally coming to terms that I have left, was very, very helpful.

I found a sort of closure talking to a professor about how the college is changing, and what that means for students, and the way forward. All the big stuff happened right after I left, so this year round', I was fully prepared to hear about all of the new toys and tech the college got. But I simply heard stories of improvements upon the previous awesome things I had seen the homecoming before. It was nice not having the "cool" things continue on like they had the first round.

I'm coming up on my second year. Second year in AmeriCorps; second year out of college; second year in the "real world". I guess the first year was the anti-honeymoon phase for me. I struggled. I really did. Thrown into a life of constant difference and discovery, my mind and body was very overwhelmed. It did a toll too, leaving regrets and thoughts that still need fill to this day.

But now I am going on. I am working into my second year. The area is familiar, the situations have been practiced, and I believe I'm a better person because of it.

Yet, I have discovered and solidified more of an idea of what exactly I want from life. Where I am going to live. What I am going to do. And it is becoming clearer to me that Vancouver is not what I want. I don't know if Portland is either.

But it sure comes closer.

The way I know? Because when I come into Portland for work, play, or study, I always never want to leave. The city is too big. Too beautiful. Too full of things to discover and enjoy. I want to bask in that wonder of the urban forever (or for a longer time than I can), and live in it. To experience it.

But it always turns out to be another Barcelona. Where I go in, I see, I like, I participate, but I never fully get there. There is always a cap. And I am always stuck on that hill at 6 in the morning, longing for more of that city I only barely scraped the surface on.

Lazing Around on the Grass

One of my favorite things about meeting new people is the things you do with them. The conversations you have. The sun you take.

But my god. It takes. For. Ever.



To be fair. I wasn't giving it much initiative, and because of that it was giving me little in returns.


Breaking out of that mold cast around yourself is tough. Well, it is for me.

Its strange, but when looking around, I guess college was much of the same for me. By the end of the first year and into the second year I was starting to take off. Maybe that will happen here? Why did it seem like I was so much more depressed when I was here?

I think it's because I came from something so beautiful. But I won't let that overtake my happiness I have right now.

It has been nice, being invited out to hangout with people. For some reason this time it was different.

There wasn't an air of "Go! Go! Go!", nor "We will have fun!". There was no guarantee of that on this trip. Nor really a promise of relaxation or enjoyment. Basically it was phrased as "You're pretty cool people. Wanna go out for lunch & ice cream? I have no idea what it will be like, but we've seen each other a couple times at "group" functions, so lets go do something cool together now?"

And it was wonderful because we did... Absolutely nothing.

Well that was somewhat true. We did have lunch and ice cream.

But then we just went to the lake, spread out a blanket, and sat and talked for three hours. And it was effortless. Sometimes when things were not meant to be said, we just sat in silence, and listened to our surroundings. The beautiful day. The park, with its birds, families, and waves.

It was so. Slow. It was wonderful. I haven't been able to slow down like that with people in over a year.

Sure, I've been able to do it by myself, but you know, I can only do so much slow by myself. Once the discoveries are gone, you start asking yourself ridiculous questions to pass the time. Whether that be hours in a car over a well worn path, or days throughout the same old neighborhood.

So being able to slow down with people provides an entire multitude of options. Instead of one set of eyes, now you have three, and they compare their perception with yours, and that takes up hours by itself. Let alone that some people haven't been to where you go before? That can entertain days.

Slowing down has been on my mind as of late. There's been a lot of talk of it at church*, in the air around work, and on the Facebook feed. But as much as people tout trying to slow down, I have yet to see evidence of someone slowing down.

Sure, there is an escape for a bit. But to get to that escape: Go!

After that escape: Go!

An escape in a car: Go! Can't be late! Gotta make (x)** deadline!

Taking off shoes after a long day and sitting on the couch: Go! Your butt needs moving!



I'm not saying people don't know how to get away. Not at all. Everyone gets vacations.

It's the fact that for many, the journey does not mark the beginning of an escape. The open road cannot call them back down to 5 mph over the speed limit instead of 15.

Can people not drop their rush when they say they do? Its just a Go! culture, I know, but I feel so alone (less so now) because I don't know many people who say "Wait. Just. Sit down for a minute."

I'll conclude with another experience I had with these wonderful new friends:

After eating some ice cream, we went out to the street, and just stood there talking for 20 minutes. Really. We just kind of ambled in the sun, then ambled into the shade, and then decided to go stop ambling and just sit around for a bit.

I've been missing that wonderful sense that at some times, time doesn't have to be the end all for whatever you are doing. The end all can just be when you get hungry for dinner, or a lull pulls you into sleep.




*This "church" is a Unitarian Universalist church. It's not like your average churches. I'd recommend it if you are questioning your faith, or can't find a place to be spiritual without being religious. Folks are REALLY accepting, and will welcome you no matter what.

**This deadline is usually completely made up. There is no meeting, or court mandated time. Its the person's own psyche telling them to complete the task at hand as quickly and efficiently as possible.

The Ramparts

It's a great life; it really is. But its complicated. Horribly complicated.

It's almost impossible to think of a macro-version of life. Too many decisions, too many fates, too many sliding scales for varying aspects of the human condition.

But I say almost because of our ability to draw maps, conceptualize consciousness, and make exceptions.

There was always a map/diagram down in the bottom of the science building at my alma mater, Warren Wilson College. I mean, to finish that thought, it always perplexed me. To this day I still don't know exactly what it was describing, but it was as tall as your standard wall and about 7 feet long. I think it had something to do about mapping the way proteins fold to replicate and build DNA, but I'm not quire sure.

Anyways, that map/diagram always caught my eye when I was down there. (Usually the few opportunities I had to have basic General Education classes for my science requirement.) I wondered if such a map could be drawn to explain the intricacies of the human condition. Or if it would just end up looking like a spectrum of different sliders, somewhat linked in a tentative dashed lines in certain places.

With the human mind, it's really impossible to classify something because of our ability to recognize opinions, and to choose them on our free will. I find it exceptionally annoying, but mandatory at the same time to retain the wonderfulness that fills us.

I see a lot of friends struggling with self-identity/life issues, either with themselves, or while comparing themselves with others. It's something I struggle with as well, like that ever present background app of "explorer.exe". Necessary to keep open (it is essentially your user interface for your computer, if running windows), but you can't exactly see it working because you are too busy using it to get to other applications.

Then you stop and examine each and individual bit running that background program. Its huge, unfathomable, and takes some time to "get" the picture of a system. Then it clicks. Suddenly you can see pretty much all of the classes.java which exist, and how they reference, link, and work with each other. Sometime a map helps (it sure does for me), but some folks can work it out on their own.

The mind is the computer, and it finally compiles the code, and returns it with no errors. You have the blueprint set up, now its on to debug the damn thing.

Debugging will lead you through how the blueprint is constructed , and that is where I am right now. Working through the problems. And I think that is where many of my friends are at as well. We've setup the framework, and gotten it all arranged correctly, but actually executing that code is giving us the hardest time in the world, and we are learning that working out the kinks is a littler harder than we thought.

But for now, we have the blueprints for the ramparts of our castles. Now its time to build a sight to behold. And the best part is: We all have our own unique designs.

So far our foundations are looking great.

Family Visitation

I am really unnervingly excited for my family to visit, and I'm not sure why. Maybe its because none of them have been to the Northwest before, and I am the pioneer tour guide to lead the way.

Maybe its because this place is so different than the East Coast, and I am excited to show my family all of the differences and natural beauties of the West.

Maybe it's because my family is undergoing the same westward process that brought me out here, and are participating in their own westward expansion and some strange amazing feeling of manifest destiny.

I really think many Easterners (as in the United States) have a feeling of manifest destiny for themselves. I encountered it on my entire journey here, and sealed it with my visiting of the Pacific Ocean. When I took my shoes off, and waded into the frigid waters of the North Pacific.

It was some sort of weird connection with the "pioneers" of Lewis & Clark. To stand at the point where they saw the ocean for the first time, and sealed the American conquering of the continent. The point of no return, when Americans then knew that their territory was destined to stretch from "Sea to Shining Sea".

I had made that journey. The long drive and move across the continent. I traveled much of the same path of Lewis & Clark, and during the other stretches I paralleled the trails of others who moved out here for their fortune or new opportunities.

And at the end, I had done it. I had reached the Pacific in all of its rough and cold glory.



But before we get sucked up into this Pioneer Square filled historic fantasy, we have to step back, and realize that all of this is a farce.

I am white. I am from European decent. Me partaking in this journey is a disgraceful expression of the inherent privilege I was born with. As much as I romanticize it, I am unconsciously embracing a history of conquest, expansion, and cultural, biological, and societal genocide. As much of beauty of this country that I have seen and experienced, I must always remind myself that it is not mine.

One could say that it is "mine" because of my ancestry going back to the first humans, but I do not think that justifies anything. That does not justify the erasure of culture, the spread of microbes, and forced relocation carried out by and genocidal acts committed through my European ancestors.

I cannot speak for the Native American cultures across this continent. I can only help fulfill justice through acknowledgement of the European wrongs which my ancestors fulfilled, and realize that I am in no way entitled to this land in which I live. I am here on loan, as with any part of the world I live in.

I cannot truly claim a home on this earth without the explicit consent of those before me who live and have an ancestry that came before me. I cannot claim a home unless I continually work to make right what is so very wrong through the actions of those who came before me, as well as those who live with me in the very same location and time. I can never belong somewhere until I work my hardest to help make that place... Better.