Disneyland-bred Philosophy

No, not the theme park, but rather the world of Disney cartoon characters. It's amazing what little, seemingly insignificant things you see throughout your day can do to your psyche.

Just this morning I was watching a cartoon on the Disney channel (I believe it's called The Replacements, although this isn't an important fact) in which the main character starts taking karate lessons from an über-cliché "karate master" named Craig. One of the first things he is taught is that, like a butterfly, through hardwork someday he too will change, and then he is shown a cocoon. Or something like that. It was a Disney cartoon, so I doubt it was stated any more poetically than that.

Now I know what you're thinking; "Ooooh, he learned that someday he too can fly free, like a butterfly!" WRONG! I am not this simple of a man. Plus I'm not that optimistic. What went through my head as this scene played before my eyes was "HOLY CRAP! CATERPILLARS CHANGE INTO BUTTERFLIES!".

I am not as dim-witted as this may make me sound. I just had forgotten about all that cocoon business. I even forgot how to spell cocoon. True story. I knew at one point in time, probably around third grade, but somehow that information just wasn't important enough to be retained in my immediate memory.

Why would something like this be forgotten? Caterpillars still change to butterflies. Probably hundreds of thousands of butterflies go through complete metamorphosis every year, but I still had forgotten. It probably seems like a small thing to forget to most people, but to me this poses a very troubling question; Have we, as a society (specifically the adults in our society), lost sight of the world around us?

Sure, we say that we know what's going on in the world, and when asked will probably cite statistics for the number of US soldiers dead in Iraq, or detail out an important court case that we've recently been following, but is that really what's important?

Humans, as a whole, have become far too self-involved. The world is our cultures and our societies, but there are millions of other species of animals out there that are comparable in both population size and social-interaction. I don't know about the rest of the world, but I can only assume that they follow the same path of ignorance of these things that I regularly do. I don't mean knowledge of how they work either, but rather a recognition of their existence.

Take some time and study ants. Yes, that's right, I said ants. Those same pesky little buggers that incite you to call the exterminator in to prevent them from crawling all over your counters, or that you merely brush away at picnics. The complexity of ant colonies is absolutely astounding. I swear to god, spend a good deal of time studying ants and it will turn your world upside down.

It's incredible the social structure that they have developed, and their intense, heartfelt efforts to further the good of their colony. There are ants that go out to scavenge food, there are ants that rebuild tunnels, there are ants that do nothing but stay at the colony and take care of the larvae, there are ants that do nothing but bring food directly to the queen, there are ants that take care of the food to make sure it's molding properly. There are even specialized ants that are only born every once in a while that take flight and try to start new colonies. Every ant has a purpose, a job, and they all do their absolute, and I mean literally absolute, best at their specific task.

And their intelligence is astonishing as well! Many species of ants even have symbiotic relationships with other species of insects, and even plants; offering protection to the other member in exchange for food, or shelter. There is even a special species of ants in South America that have learned that if they move their "cows" (I do not remember what they're actually called, but you'll see why I call them cows in a moment) to different parts of the plant, they produce different levels of sweetness in their excretions, which the ants eat. The ants then use this knowledge to heard their cows around to the parts of the plant with the best food supply, so that they can have sweeter food themselves. They even move their cows under leaves if it starts raining heavily to protect them. This may seem a bit far fetched for mentioning, but all ants have the capability to be this intelligent. They just haven't learned it yet.

What is most amazing about all of this, to me at least, is that we go along in our everyday lives missing even the most general sense of what these incredible insects are accomplishing. Why is this? Children get it. Have you ever seen a child sit outside in the grass, just staring at the ground? They see the ants scurrying about, and in their minds they comprehend. They get what they're doing. They see the similarities to humans. Are children smarter than adults? No, but they take time to look at the world around them.

This world exists whether we want to take the time to notice or not, and I feel that we, meaning man-kind in general, need to take a moment to get re-acquainted with the world that we lost so long ago.

Sad Times in a Happy New Place or Happenstance Abounds!

So, taking a cue from my love, Izzy, I'm starting anew, with a completely fresh blog. I've still got my old one on here, in case of a need for random perusal at a later time in my life, but this one's all new, starting fresh from here on out. I'm going to make an attempt to actually blog too. I was going to use Vox for this, but Blogger has always been good to me. Plus I like the thought that someday down the line I may learn some decent web-coding skills, at least enough so that I can make my own template of sorts.

That's the happy part, so now for some sadness.

As I mentioned before, I have a girlfriend (named Izzy here). I love her, but alas, she lives far, far away from me and I don't get to see her nearly as often as I would like. Okay, so maybe my dizzyingly intense teenage love is over-judging this distance just a little, but 30 minutes is a long time of driving! Plus the fact that I have no driver's license. And no car. I am working on the driver's license bit though, so hopefully the frequency of our meetings will increase in the near-ish future. BUT THAT'S NOT EVEN THE SAD PART! Well, not at the moment at least. First, let me give you a little background on me and Izzy.

It's the summer of '06, in the faraway land of Idaho, in my second year of a program called Upward Bound Math and Science at the University of Idaho.

But first a brief interlude; Because you probably don't know this I feel I should mention I have a sort of... reputation at UBMS (as we fondly call it). Well, it's a reputation now, but this is a matter of no importance! My first year in the UBMS program I came home with a girlfriend. Not literally, mind you, but in the sense that I had met someone. Me and this girl dated for about 7 months, until 3 days after my birthday, at which point I got a phone call filled with sobbing and starting with these simple, yet effective words: "I can't do this anymore".

The "this" she was referring to was, of course, our relationship, and I later found out that "I can't do this anymore" translates roughly to "I have met another man who can make me far happier than you can at the moment". But of course this has not much to do with the memoirical (yes that's right, I make up words, get used to it) anecdote at hand, except to point out that the year before I had met a woman with which I had a relatively long term relationship with.

So jumping back in where we left off; I was far away from home. I should also tell you that I am one of the most excruciatingly quiet and shy people you probably could ever meet. It was about the second day into the program (pardon me if I miss a few dates by a bit, although I doubt anybody that would be reading this besides my love would care) when our program entered into a sort of tournament of one of most primeval activities known to man with the other on-campus programs. No, not gladiator fights to the death; although I think I most likely would have gained a considerably larger amount of satisfaction out of such an event (even though I would find out soon that an even greater satisfaction was in store for me). I'm talking about sports. Basketball, to be specific, and as you have probably guessed by now I am no athlete. In fact, the mere thought of even lifting a basketball brings me wheezing to my knees. *cough* I mean it's stupid and dreadfully primitive, and I would have no part in it. I am quite manly, in case you might be pondering on that point.

So in my anti-coordination-requiring-physical-activity protesting I happened upon a group of people with which I sat and talked. I actually think I ended up there on accident, but I can't remember that specific of details. I was pretty cool with that group. I don't remember everybody who was there, but I do remember a girl named LayCey, with whom I had already spent a 6 week period with at the previous UBMS, so I was pretty comfortable at the time. I also remember a distinctively artsy and intriguing girl sitting almost directly across the circle from me (she was drawing away at her sketchpad, and keeping quiet for the most part). Then everybody moved. Everybody, that is, except me and Mystery Girl. I think we actually sat there for some period of time. Then the strangest thing happened; I started talking to her.

FREEZE FRAME! This is where I very strongly stress to you again the severity of my shyness/quietness. Almost any other time that I would have gotten sat, alone, next to somebody, especially someone I found attractive, the conversation would consist of approximately this:

"So, you like the program so far?"

"Well, it is only the second day, but my room mate seems pretty cool."

"Yeah, mine too."

"Yeah."

Full Stop.

So us talking then seemed nothing short of a miracle, but we just clicked. I found out her name (it shall be Izzy here), but besides that I don't really remember what we talked about. We talked for a very long time. I do remember that, however, as being one of the greatest conversations I've had with anybody in my entire life. Even then I think I felt unbelievably comfortable with her. But I'm getting ahead of myself, so let me get back to the story.

She was at the time drawing (or sketching, or working at some other point in the artistic process involved in rendering a rendition of something) the cover to Guns and Rose's greatest hits album. You know, the one with the two guns facing away and the intertwining rose branches. I remember being amazed at her artistic ability as she shaded the gun barrels. I found out later that she was making it as a present to her boyfriend at the time. We talked for a while alone, and then some of the emo-kids from the Upward Bound (no math and science) program came over and chilled with us for a while, obviously flirting with Izzy at points. These boys later became known by me and Izzy fondly as heterosexual life-partner guy and heterosexual life-partner (because they were constantly wrestling around and always together). Man those were good times. I remember specifically one time when they went walking through the lunch hall in dresses. But I digress; I remember even then I felt a little jealous of their lustings after Izzy, although she seemed to be taking care of herself quite well. I remember her mercilessly mocking them, to my great amusement and their ignorance. I also remember that I made some snappy remarks at them as well, which was just as out of character as me talking to Izzy in the first place. She's always inspired me to be outgoing and feel comfortable around myself.

There was quite a bit of time spent on that lawn talking and joking around, and there are plenty of mini-anecdotes from then but here are the highlights: A Pringles can full of water being exploded at someone, pop bottles being thrown, pop bottles exploding open on impact and spraying down Izzy's roommate, playing "Survivor" on LayCey's cellphone, attempting to buy new games without permission on LayCey's cellphone, quizzing from trivia questions printed on Pringles, and many more adventures.

But then disaster struck in the form of a call from her mother. I don't think I was actually there when she called; I believe I was just heading back into the dorms to get a coat for Izzy because she was cold. When I came back outside she was still on the phone, and seemed to be arguing, so I left the coat by her and went to find another group. This spawned another mini-adventure involving pictionary and yelling "penis", but I still was just thinking about Izzy. I kept looking over to see if she was doing okay, and to see if she was still on the phone, but she did not finish in time for us to have too much more conversation. We did go over to support our team in the "finals", at which point in time Izzy was struck by a revenge bottle of Pepsi (from her afore-scorned roommate), and we were scolded by the program dictator (Chris, she really was cool though), and had other such good times.

The big jump towards us that was taken, however, came one (or a few) day(s) later while we were preparing for a library scavenger hunt/tour thing-y. We were all waiting outside, sorting into our natural social-groups that had already begun forming at that time (although there really were no cliques or groupings of that sort either year I attended UBMS) when I noticed that my social group was a little ways away from Izzy's. Normally I would just stand there and hope that I would accidentally bump into her later on and get to exchange a small amount of words, but that was not enough this time. I stood for a few moments, struggling with my decision, and then gave a silent “fuck you lack-of-self-confidence" and left my group (in one of the short lulls between my involvements in the conversation) and went and stood next to her. It was an important step for me in breaking down my inhibitions, as well as a large step towards having something with Izzy.

The rest of the story I will, for the sake of keeping this post short (although I passed that point about 1,000 words ago), save for another day, but long story short, we fell in love and won the award at UBMS for "Most PDAs" (public displays of affection). *cue the "awww"s* which leads me into my current unhappiness (I know, finally right?):

My Izzy is extra far away right now, and will be for the rest of the weekend. She went on a trip to Portland with 9 other members of our UBMS group, and so cannot even talk to me tonight (last night as the time stands now). The only reason I did not get to go was because there were only 10 spots open and I was the 11th person to get my paperwork in, thus preventing me from Izzy-filled bliss this weekend. This infuriates me an extra amount because the program consisted of 52 students, so 10 spots on a trip to reward good work seems ridiculous, but I do not want to think about it right now so I will not.

So I am sad because I am Izzy-less. But now I must bid you all a good-night, (or good-morning, or good-day, or good-evening, depending on when you read this) and depart. I also feel I should apologize for how strung-out and uninteresting this probably seems to you, although if you were that bored by it you would not be reading this now. So I suppose I'm apologizing to the people who liked it. Weird... Ah well, happy times to you all!