Slide

At the moment I'm re-packing my backpack for a car-camping trip.

And listening to the new Bowerbirds album The Clearing. Want to listen? Give it a purchase here. Don't want to?

TOUGH.

You really are missing out on one of the most adventurous albums I've heard in a while, even by Bowerbirds standards (and certainly by Bon Iver standards, if I had to scratch for some analogy to something you may have heard. Actually, I think some of this album was recorded in his studio with his engineer. Fun fact.)

As I go through my camping gear, I think back fondly on the 30 pounds I had to strap to the back of bike.

***

In lieu of the West Highland Way, Jason and I found National Cycle Route 7 from Glasgow through to the south of Loch Lomond. It hugged a tributary that slowly, calmly trotted parallel the great River Clyde.

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Sort of like this but the much windier route up to the bottom of the lake

I couldn't describe how nice it was to finally bike, really bike...not the abbreviated 1 mile jaunts to get to where what we needed in order to bike, but a proper ride. No traffic. Intermittent friendly faces. But mostly the cool air and shifting sky. Occasionally threatening with rain, and immediately friendly once again. Often all at once but never discouraging in the way a cloudy Southern California day is.

For the initial part of the ride, we wove through villages and the little hills that separated them from the path. In some portions the village and hills became one, where businesses set up shop along the bike path and seemed to build their establishments into the hillsides, like Magic Cycles.

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As during the first few feet of our failed attempt at the West Highland Way, again we biked through shaded paths, leaf strewn and damp, often covered in a thin veneer of mud. Stone archways gated the path at some points along the way. And again, the wholesale uprooting of trees every few hundred feet. It was verdant. It was damp and cool. It was an experience I couldn't tell you about, biking through it all at speed.

Not long after the last two photos were taken and about 30 total minutes of solid biking, we came through a tunnel of foliage created by the collapse of a large tree. There was enough space to bike through a small sliver of pavement where the branches didn't hang so damn low, and a large muddy puddle to the left. Really not a big deal. Totally.

Jason biked through with slight caution, and come my turn I did the same.

Except I didn't and instead my rear tire hit a muddy patch on this sliver-of-path. The rear tire slid into the muddy puddle. Since the back of the bike--with tent, clothes, supplies--was around 30 lbs, it did damn well what it pleased and kept sliding. I tried to steer the bike back but the rear had gone too far and I slammed into the ground, hands first, followed by hip.

It only really hurt because I put my hands down, which (thankfully?) took most of the hit. My left thumb lost a bit of skin, and the wrist and fat of the same palm was in a huge deal of pain. I heaved from the shock and sat on the path just past the tree for a second. Jason helped bandage it up, I took a Tylenol, and off we went.

No time to stop.

Except when Jason fell 10 minutes later.

We started to pick up some speed as I got over the pain in my wrist and we got confident. We biked through more leafy shaded path, over rolling grades and through foliage and fallen tree. I was riding in front for a slight downhill segment. As was par for the course, there was a combination of mud and leaves. My tire slid slightly so I feathered the brake to ease off. I guess Jason wouldn't say I feathered it, as he hit the brakes a little harder than I did, and in a fraction of a second I heard: CRASH. SLIDE. SLIDE. SLIDE.

I stopped and looked back and saw Jason strewn out like the leaves, with bike 20 feet behind him, and a long comical skid mark between the two. The long slide had taken out most of the bite out of the fall, so Jason walked off with little more than some small scratches.

We realized then that maybe we should give nature--or something...bike path?--a bit more respect. We avoided leaves and mud and took almost crawl-like pace on damp downhills.

Which didn't do wonders for our plans to make Fort Williams by nightfall.

Stump

North we went. And in a few short pictures...Milngavie Town Centre. I'll save you the pain of explaining how Jason and I aimlessly walked around asking for directions to the nearest place with Allen wrenches for sale, ending up at the UK version of Walmart (Tesco, as it turns out), how the entrance of the Tesco was parked precariously over a beautiful and robust stream--which in the United States could have counted as being "in the wild"--and taking turns eating Clif bars/watching the bikes (and the stream) whilst the other person went inside to get things.

If you're wondering why I didn't take pictures of the Bridge Over River Tesco, consider how many times you'd thought of taking a picture of Walmart.

We eventually ended up with a map-book of Scotland and saddles at appropriate height.

That first Clif bar was reasonably satisfying. I don't remember the flavor now, but I do remember that it gave me a sensation akin to throwing a shovel of dirt into a gaping pit. If the pit had a 6-hour-old microwaved airline donut at the bottom. This Clif bar would be the only meal I had until sundown, if you can guess when and what that meal was.

I'll give you a hint. The sun doesn't really go down this far north at this time of year, and the next meal was...well, I've been playing lots of Hanging With Friends lately, so let's play a little here. I believe this would be worth 11 points:

_ _ I _


Jason and I found the entrance to the West Highland Way and began the journey into the Highlands.

***

Five minutes down the trail, we came to an impasse. One issue being that the trees had shaded most of the trail, so it was slippery and didn't have a chance to dry. Mind you, it had just rained earlier that morning. At at the moment we hit the trail head, it was partly sunny with some low clouds moving with considerable speed. Recall in my first post that the weather would become a major factor.

The other big issue being that a massive tree had fallen directly onto the path. I'm not sure the path was passable by foot, much less bike, and much lesser hybrid bike with more than its weight in cargo. There really was no way around this thing. Off trail was far too rugged, and the tree far too large.

We were flustered.

It had taken us all of 5 hours to finally hit the trail and then realize in less than 5 minutes that God had thrown an ungodly stump in our way. We took to asking strangers for help on other options, and all were more than willing to offer a kindness--but having never encountered a tree blocking the WHW, they could only suggest a few things here and there. We made our way back to the train station and solicited help from the ticket person who had informed us of a wee bit of bad news: no matter what we did--even if we had been able to bike as far as we wanted that day--it was highly unlikely that that we could get our bikes on a train to Fort William. They had to be booked at least a day in advance. As disconcerting this new should have been, we would worry about it later, as we were getting restless and wanted to bike somewhere.

The ticket man was able to suggest that we could pick up a bike trail in Dalmuir. We took a train back south from charming Milngavie to Westerton, and then west to Dalmuir.

At Dalmuir we were still lost, and so it was then that we met Ronnie. Ronnie was the ticket person at Dalmuir station: at first look, a small-framed and possibly-bitter older gentleman. Bespectacled and white haired, but not grandfatherly, not yet at least. I was a bit nervous to approach him at the window of this pitifully small trailer-for-a-train-station:

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Ronnie wasn't nearly as abrasive as he should have been. He was friendly and smiled and put up with my ignorance of lands and people, and with my Americanness for much longer than he should have. I poured through half the little map-guides at the ticket window, asking if this train line was right for that. (Btw, this train line was NOT right for that. And he didn't have any better news about getting our bikes on the train in Tarbet for Fort William.) He never hesitated to respond. He gave good directions. Maybe part of it was that no one else was in line at this forsaken station buried amongst what I imagine were the Scottish suburbs and projects.  Maybe my standards for human congeniality were skewed. This disturbed me slightly. I'd have to think about this a bit more.

Ronnie, again, had spoken some strange English. This time, I think I was catching onto it. It took a second for me to understand everything he was saying, but I was eventually able to gather that we needed to go back up the hill we just came down, turn right and go down the road, make a left at the T, 'round the corner right at the next light, turn right up an inconspicuous driveway, and through a gate onto a cycle route parallel the River Clyde.

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Through no small part of human patience (that is, the people who were patient with us), we had finally found the start of our adventure.

Mind the Gap

This is a rough start.

We realized not long after Martin left that the bikes didn't quite fit us. The saddles on both of our bikes were about 3 inches too low, and we had to bike 10 miles too many before we could find the Allen wrench to fix it. The rain was steady but faint, the sky heavy gray but occasionally yielding to an insistent sun. We were good enough to bike to the train station in Paisley to get into Glasgow, where we could transfer to Milngavie.







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As we biked, through our first (training) roundabout and off into the suburbs, we immediately noticed something remarkable about Scotland. That the houses in this suburb were most likely older than many American cities. That the overgrown and fungal walls had seen at least as much time pass as the cities of the Pioneers.


Beautiful.


And breathing, I should mention how easy it was to breathe for a city. What a scent...a sort of musky-woody essence seemed to follow us everywhere. (The Scots seem to have distilled this and drenched the lobbies of hotels, distilleries, restaurants, and anywhere else with a plaid carpet.)

***

We would settle the saddles in Milngavie and start on the West Highland Way. 100 miles separated our bikes in Paisley and the destination we still hadn't picked out in Fort William. Fortunately, because of the northward latitude and summer skies, we assumed we had until 9:30pm to get there before sundown.

This was probably the most reasonable assumption we made all trip.

The trains are charming, by the way. The voice that informed you of the upcoming station was pleasatnly Scottish. At every station, the voice also informed you of impending peril at every (dis)mount.

We became keenly aware of this the first time we tried to carry our 50 pound bikes onto crowded trains destined for the heart of one of the biggest cities in Scotland. We also learned that a bike doesn't fit into station elevators very well--much less two bikes--but that backing-in the first bike made things slightly better, and that putting the bikes head to tail was necessary, though none of these precautions guaranteed a bike pedal wouldn't jam itself into your shin.

Not that this will matter in almost exactly 24 hours and 35 miles, where there won't be an elevator.

The trains are punctual, by the way.

***

Slightly scarred and breathless, we arrived in Glasgow Central Station.

Check the shorts

I can't speak for Jason, but I was a little self-conscious about how I said "Milngavie," especially now that I had to purchase a ticket. I had only heard it a handful of times from Roblee on the plane and was working from that. I rehearsed and rehearsed until I was ready.

"Two tickets to Min-guy please"

"What's that?"

"Uh. Mi-lin-gie?"

"Mul-gaie ya mean?"

"Yeah that, two please"

LAX to GLA

I know I haven't written here in quite a while.

I'm sorry. I really am. I'll make it up to you. Right.

Now.

2011 wasn't a great year for most people. Between lost jobs and lost keys, I don't blame most people.

But 2011 was alright for a particular Ed. Sparing most of the details for now, 2011 was an alright year for the fact that I left the country for the first time.

***

Our flight from LAX to Glasgow stopped in Philadelphia. We departed Philadelphia sometime approaching twilight. I couldn't wait to leave the country. I was unreasonably excited to look out as far out into the Atlantic as possible as we took off. I really wanted to have a profound moment, the "So this is my adventure, and beyond that horizon somewhere...IS THE DESTINATION" moment, and maybe I would snap a quick picture or two to post to Facebook with some profound (or funny) caption. I tried to stare through the window from my aisle seat, but after trying for way too long I could tell the guy in the window seat was starting to feel awkward. At some point, I got tired of trying, and at some point, he closed the window.

I think this was also the point at which I stopped caring about trying to take so many pictures. And all for the better. And the worse for you, poor reader, for you'll see that this post will soon be littered with blank spaces where there should have been beautiful pictures of a land familiar and yet exotic. Alas, those images are for my eyes only and I could never do them justice with words.

I couldn't sleep. I wasn't tempted to watch Just Go With It on the in-flight movie either. (That said...not a terrible movie. Adam Sandler however...not a convincing plastic surgeon.) Neither the guy who I had just tried to stare past or I were interested in small talk for the next 7 hours. Not yet at least.

I finally did sleep a bit, and as we flew north, the Sun came too soon. Not long after, so did the start of our descent. It was at this point that the object of my staring-past and I got to talking. He was from Scotland and had spend 11 years in Connecticut as financial broker of some sort. He was Roblee (or Robleigh? or Rob Lee? Let's call him Roblee) from Glasgow, returning for his mate's stag party. As much of a stag party as hiking into the woods and drinking a whole lot of beer with mates was. 

I take that back. That sounds pretty awesome.

He gave me a few tips as to how we should go about our trip, since through all our pre-trip planning, Jason and I still didn't know what the hell we were doing.

Ambition (our pre-trip planning)

Trust the native.

Which wouldn't have been such a bad idea, except that as we were landing, we started to get an idea for the weather hadn't bothered to check (save for the angry Icelandic volcano that threatened our flights). It was raining, and only after we were scraping the tops of motorway signs and apartment buildings did we break the cloud cover. This will become a significant plot point. We disembarked. I didn't see Roblee again.

We landed in Glasgow May 26, 2011 at 6:55am. Immigration deflowered my passport and off we went towards customs.

I was actually pretty worried about customs. As I was strictly limited to $800 for the entire 10-day trip through the Scottish Highlands and Dublin (on the pound [$1.80:1] and Euro [$1.40:1] respectively), I came prepared with 2 pounds in granola and energy bars. All packed into a stuff sack in my Kelty Coyote 65ST (the ST stands for Short Torso why thank you):

If this gets confiscated, Ed starves.

Wouldn't want any of the other stuff getting yoinked either. If all the stuff on my checklist actually made it in the bag to begin with.

As it turns out, Glasgow Airport customs was a man and woman chatting at a desk. I'm not sure they saw us walk by.

Jason and I made it to the waiting area of the airport where the first order of business was to meet Martin. Martin was our bike man.

I suppose this is a good time to mention that our plan was to make most of this trip on bike. We rented (or "hired" to those speaking the wrong English) the bikes from RT Cycles just outside of Glasgow. Miraculously, through email correspondence alone we were able to get the bikes to show up at the airport just minutes after we landed. Pannier bags, locks, helmets and all.

Martin spoke some strange English. I knew it was English. I just had no clue what he was saying, unless the word was "bike." I'm sure it didn't help that the police officer at the pick-up/drop-off area of the airport was giving him grief for loitering for more than a few minutes--something Martin explained had to do with the bombings that took place at the airport a few years prior. I think that's what he said. Martin was very nice though, and was a good sport about us dumping the contents of our bags onto the sidewalk and asking him to wait just a few minutes more before he took the hollow shells for holding.

[I'm probably sounding wonderfully ignorant right now, but I'm being a little facetious. And really, some Scottish people do just speak far too fast for the slow American brain.]

We had the bikes. After scrambling to stuff the racks and pannier bags, the journey began. We had an ambitious schedule. We knew we wanted to get to Fort William by dark, with the assistance of the train. Based on Roblee's advice, the best way to do this--as a matter of simplicity and adventure--was to take the West Highland Way.

The West Highland Way was one of a handful of hike and bike trails that meandered through Scotland.

Perfect.

Absolutely perfect. All we needed to do was to get to the starting point in Milngavie, bike to Tarbet (on the above map, a bit south from Inverarnan), mount the train, and find a campsite.

By the way, try saying "Milngavie."

Wrong. Like I said, the wrong English. (Yeah yeah, the whole Gaelic thing. Still wrong.)

Do

Well well, time to write.

(Happy New Year?!


I'm late on that aren't I.


Happy Martin Luther King Day!)

Let this be part self-analysis, and part philosophy developed from it. If anything at all seems obvious to you, well...it wasn't for me, and it took me at least this past year to figure out what it was I needed to do.

Call it a resolution.

Right now I'm in Oxnard, CA. And while being in Oxnard for more than 24 hours at a time has innumerable issues of its own that I'll address at another time, it also means I have lots to think about and lots of little to do. Oh the things to think about.

***
This last year, I've lost sight of the things I used to be passionate about. Music: writing, playing, and listening to. Writing. Being active about making new friends and maintaining old friendships (You probably know who you are. If you are one of these people, then I'm sorry...I'm trying my best, or at least I will be from here on out.) Exploring where I live. Photography. Drawing fanciful diagrams of things that will never be (but are awesome nonetheless). And even the things that I have become interested in, things in electrical engineering, I can't pursue easily on my own.

That's not to say that I haven't been happy...I have been. These past few years have been the happiest of an already very fulfilling life. I've accomplished a fair deal since I've come to college, from feeling like I've learned so much and yet feel so ignorant, and not the least of which is finding someone that I love very much. For that I am thankful: to everyone I know--both friends and otherwise...you've all helped me figure out who I am and what matters--and to the things I have yet to figure out. But I still feel like I'm missing something. I think it's half uncertainty that the future will remain the same (with regards to happiness), and half the uncertainty that I won't accomplish enough to leave an impression on the Earth, no matter how small.

I probably made the excuse that I'm too busy between class, work, and relationships. Yeah, that's probably true. But I think some of it has also been simple loss of passion. And lack of passion, I believe, is roughly synonymous with lack of action and desire to accomplish truly difficult things.

***

Lest you be in the dark about the details of my life, I'm an Electrical Engineering major and minor in Philosophy. My last year in Philosophy has been Metaphysics (USC Phil 360) and Theories of Knowledge (USC Phil 470). Metaphysics argues the important things like: is time linear or an (inexplicable) extension of space?; what is color?; are there natural laws or just constant conjunctions? etc etc. Not important.

You may ask, "Why's that? Those are good questions, right? I never really thought that much about those things till now, but now that you mention it..." Well, sure they're questions that we all can think about and with seemingly pertinent implications--the operative word: "seemingly". Time does affect us and we all perceive its passage (or if you've also played the metaphysics game before, maybe time is an infinite tapestry OR the "spotlight" has fallen on the tapestry OR reality is growing....). Unless you're color blind, we do see colors. Laws and rules seem to govern how our world works (e.g. Five Second Rule).

Say it were possible to answer any of the above questions (and let me tell you, it's not easy or even possible), then we'd ultimately have to ask: "What do I gain by answering that question?" Silence would overcome most philosophers. It could be argued that humans are inherently curious and answering these questions (which again, is impossible) might satiate the passing curiosities they generate--but even then, these intense endeavors of the mind only solve the issues purely of the mind. In this respect, our best efforts are circular. It's true that it is the intellectual pursuits of man that makes him superior to other animals, but it is not the pure intellectual pursuits so much as what he does about them: whether social, aesthetic, technological, or whatever that may be.

[[[If I used footnotes, I guess I that's where I would explain the difference between simple curiosity and aesthetic pleasure--both seemingly "pure intellectual pursuits"...but man, that'd be a dick move. Actually, you probably only needed to read the first sentence of this, but in case you ignore this warning....Curiosity insofar as Metaphysics is concerned is to inquire into the most basic notions we know of: existence, entities, etc. The responses to these curiosities are (1) highly subjective and similarly (2) only capable of being responded to with language, so we have no empirical way to test them--almost by definition, metaphysics asks about things highly nonphysical. Satisfying aesthetic desires is something different from this since aesthetics originates from things in the world. There's probably a much better way to differentiate these things and its a whole discussion by itself, but for now lets just say they're definitely different. ...you see where I'm going...right?

That said, maybe one could argue that metaphysics, and philosophy as a whole, is an "aesthetic pleasure" that satisfies the "art of thought." That would be fine, except that philosophy tacitly (but very surely) purports to be more than just art.]]]

I spent 1.5 hours 2 times a week for 15 weeks in Metaphysics. I spent precisely 90% of that time frustrated. As an engineer, I have a compulsion to not only theorize, but also to desire what that theory means in the real world. In fact, that's the best part of engineering. I'll admit though, that if you think of engineers that way, then I'm low on the totem pole; while some people are building robots or writing awesome programs, and I...well, don't. I digress.

Then this past semester I took Theories of Knowledge i.e. epistemology. Here, we tried to answer the question, "What is it to know?" We ran in circles, skirting the essence of knowledge, and at once losing sight of it. However, there was some promise in this class in the writings of Bertrand Russell and Hans Reichenbach (both engineers/mathematicians turned philosophers), who both viewed knowledge as not some lofty subject that philosophizing was supposed to quantify into rules (e.g. to have Justified True Belief is to have Knowledge), but rather as something that is and will always be elusive and indefinite...what we "know" could just be what is most likely, and based on that high probability, it calls us to act. That makes knowledge, and ultimately what we think about, meaningful.

Hey! I've actually found something (conditionally) useful about philosophy.

(At this point, you're probably asking why I even bothered to minor in it...but I'll have to save that conversation for another day.)


***

You may have noticed that at the beginning of this writing, I had set out to think--and you might want to say, "AHA! Hey asshole, you're blabbering on but here you are, thinking without any useful product!" I beg to differ. This writing, this thinking is en route to things I want to change about myself, and heck, things I wish would be different about the world. That those who speak would just as much do, and compel people to do worthy things-- those things that advance the Arts of Living. Those aesthetic pursuits like music and literature. The art of technology and advancing civilization. The art of persuasion to the ends of socially meaningful things: that is don't be a pundit for the sake of punditry, but for the sake of calling to arms.

Our best thoughts are nothing without manifest. Our thoughts are not in and of themselves products. They are mere means, albeit very, very powerful means.

So from here on out, I want to do as much as I think. I want to produce something meaningful. I want to Do.

Let's call it a resolution.



Aaaaand for my own sake, let me just make a quick list of pressing issues:
*make a band, or at least jam more
*do academic research in Electrical Engineering
*build an audio-modulating circuit
*listen to more jazz
*play jazz
*take more late night walks, and take more pictures on them
*bike more
*learn how to read

Some food for thought:
http://www.wikihow.com/Stop-Thinking-Too-Much

And a link to a time when I actually did something:
http://advancederror.dmusic.com
(My older recordings...some things about it are embarassing, including the URL I gave it, but come on, I was maybe 15 or 16 when I made it. I think it's easiest if you click the "Comments" links to listen because they have embedded players)

I Was a Punk

Way back when, I was a punk.

Or...I always wished I could be. Around 8th grade and high school, I was digging everything punk. No other music existed execpt Tiger Army, Bad Religion, Dropkick Murphys (i.e. Epitaph + a few others) and a handful of other bands...I envied the people who could wear tight plaid pants and crusty leather vests. Believe me, I don't want any part of that now, but as an angry whiny 14 year old, there was nothing better.

Man, I was a punk. I was "antigovernment" (to a degree)--heck, I even had a phase where I was like "communism this and that!" spouting quotes from the Manifesto: on one hand genuinely knowing it was ridiculous after reading it, and on the other secretly liking telling other people about it. Nothing makes a snotty little high school kid feel smarter than slingin' the bourgeois to the ground--and having the words to back it up.

As I grew up, I started to like hardcore. Partly because the music was angry, and as high school progressed, I was getting angrier (in the way that awkward asian kids in AP classes get angry). Partly because it was easier to "be hardcore" without wearing tight pants and boots. I went to hardcore shows, got right up next to the pit and fended off flying fists (without getting in the pit mind you...I can't get my glasses broken). Gorilla Biscuits...man, hardcore couldn't get any better. (And that was also probably the problem with it.)

My parents, I know, hated me as high school reached it's waning years. I was terrible. And secretly, it was fun.

The last stand was the day before my first day of school at USC. My sister took me to the Gorilla Biscuits reunion show at Chain Reaction in Anaheim. My God, that was fun...I nearly got my head banged off that night by a totally ridiculous, furry looking chap in front of me. Good times.

And it was then that I parted, quite amiably and on good terms, with my punk self and came to terms with being a snobby indie college kid. I wouldn't completely brush punk off...I did once, during freshman year, go to see The Damned at the House of Blues Hollywood. But come on...The Damned were all pushing 40, and it's the House of Blues for mikesake. Still an amazing and fun show as I, for one last time, got right next to the pit and danced my feet off.

I still listen to Richard Hell, Dead Boys, Cock Sparrer, and Stiff Little Fingers quite often (you could say my taste in punk grew up...if anything, grew up in a more "indie" sensibility)...but just to listen. Always exciting, always fun, reminds me of good ol' times. I no longer believe or condone many of the aspects of punk today, or the ideas that form the core of punk. I'm more mature now, a little more responsible in contrast to those radical ideas.

At the same time I could say, quite proudly, I am who I am now because of those raucous roots. Punk is about the challenge to the things we know (and about the complaining, often.) It's one thing to simply think something is wrong, but another thing entirely to challenge it. Often, punk challenges notions in order to represent what they think is best for everyone, and in the way they think is most morally objective. However naive that may be (usually very naive), it's a beautiful sense of justice and fighting for what's "right." Yes, some punks are violent--a few for the sake of hedonism, but others only for the sake of reaching the ends (i.e. justice) in the quickest way possible.

I've taken away a great sense of justice, awareness of others, and a sense of rebellion and skepticism toward mob and media mentalities--a cynicism towards the ideas that only a few-and-powerful-type believe or at least want others to believe. To challenge what others are making us believe by way of their money; instead to seek a greater, higher understanding of what's right. Even Law itself can be flawed--not just flawed sometimes, but fatally flawed.

All those are great things to learn.

Sure, punk isn't the only way to understand those things. It probably isn't even the best way to gain any of that.

But damn, was it a fun way to do it.

Blank Generation - Richard Hell & The Voidoids

Greatest Fear

I don't want to die.

Clearly.

But my greatest fear is not mortal end. I fear worse.

I fear that with my mortal end comes an end of me as an Idea. I fear leaving no meaningful legacy.

I don't want to be forgotten. I don't want to be known for my riches, which shall pass as quickly as body. Riches mean nothing. The achievements of man would just have well have been without riches. The ideas and the ores that bring them to life, the ingenuity of man and the means by which he achieves them--all free of charge, no money liberates them from mind. It's all too easy to think of things in terms of the money they require to use, to buy, to "make real." But the goodness of man and his brilliance--all exist in the absence money: in the absence of what we feel represents the work we've done. Riches mean nothing.

I fear a stagnant mind, nearly as great as that of the end of my Idea. I fear the rotting of my mind. I don't want to be bored. I don't want to be predictable. I don't want to stay in one place. I don't want to be happy with being in one place my whole life. The world is too vast and too varied to think that some passing glance, some vacationer's view, is enough to satisfy my curiosity. I fear only one home.

And no home of the world.

I don't want to die, for fear of hurting those I love. I love them so. I want to live everyday, if only for them. But I don't only live for them.

My friend--who I always thought was cynical, irreverent to the point of embarrassment, ironic for the sake of irony; and sometimes just wrong...just so wrong--once said that when he had children, they would become his life. That he would live for them and find his meaning through them.

Maybe what I'm looking for is not so different. I seek legacy. But not for the advancement of my name through time--not for my name to be held in reverence.

(Though an equation named after me would be cool.)

I seek a meaningful legacy. I seek not only to not be forgotten, but to be remembered for the things that matter.

And maybe I want to be remembered as one who achieved. Not really for the greatness of myself--what human can deny that they want to be acknowledged for their achievements? But also for the greatness of others, and for continued greatness in the future--for the beauty that exists locked in the minds of future man, only restrained by the boring boundaries of our "education."

Maybe that's why I like engineering so much. As the snotty 17 year old graduating high school, full of arrogance, devoid of meaning though thinking I must be full of it--I didn't choose engineering for it's effect on the world. I wanted to make music! And that's still what I want to do, and will always want to do. But I also realized that that ultimately would only serve myself. Sure, argue for the life changing aspects of great music. But what countries and masses have been saved solely by the good grace of music. (Possibly the lives of a few middle class college students with illusions of artistry, and illusions of profundity. Possibly. But) There must be something more.

There must be something more true. And I came to find the truth in numbers--"truth" that must be at least marginally true despite the disturbances of human thought. "True" if only because we can design things that can be used predictably and in the ways we designed them to be used. Sometimes for harm, yes. But many times, for good.

And so maybe my legacy will be there one day. Maybe I'll aid in making the good. Hopefully I'll be remembered for that.

Maybe I seek to be remembered as one who loved. Maybe as the one who made people laugh. Maybe as the one who sought peace amongst those in his sphere of influence (however small). Or as the one who helped.

Maybe I'll be remembered as any number of bad things as well...maybe people think I'm annoying (if you made it this far into the post, hopefully you don't). Maybe someone will think I'm arrogant and stubborn. I won't lie, I know I can be both...I want to say that came from years of being told I should strive to be the best, and being led to believe as a child that I was the best at certain things. I'm not particularly proud of that aspect of myself, but those are things that reveal themselves without my thinking. And maybe I should think in those times.

In either case. To be remembered well in death, and known in life to those that matter. I hope it's no selfish desire. Only one of many primal human desires.