APOKALIPSIS

Between sitting in front of a computer screen all day at work, and doing writing and research at home on my laptop, I sometimes feel like my entire life is spent at a desk processing and transmitting digital signals. Most of the work I do either takes place in my head or behind a computer screen. I’ve become a bit isolated, and like leaving the theatre to find it rained during the movie, or reading a book all day and finally looking up to see that it’s gotten dark outside, things in the real, physical world often seem surprising, even miraculous.

There’s been construction going on at Chapman University ever since I was a freshman, and the campus seems to have been almost completely transformed in the last six years. Where the campus was once a hodgepodge of eclectic buildings connected by curving pathways through lush California gardens, it’s now much more deliberately laid out as a series of 21st century buildings cloaked in collegiate brick, with a few of the older buildings looking more and more ripe for demolition. Frankly, it’s impressive.

Seeing the construction unfold has always been interesting to me, and I have to admit that I’ve felt certain pangs of heart-swelling pride watching the progress on the new projects as I come into work each day. Even though some of the changes may be purely cosmetic, it’s hard to see what’s going on and not think “This place is going somewhere.” My office in a building with big neo-classic pillars and no handicap access — and since it’s classified as a “historic place” on some official list somewhere, Chapman is obligated to keep it around. Plus it looks good on postcards.

But things are constantly changing and shifting in that office as well: the staff turnover rate has been staggering. People have cycled through the cubicle area next to mine like musical chairs, and it seems that as soon as I make a new friend, they’re on their way out the door. I’ve been at this job for only two years, longer than 70% of the current staff. As I was going through old files in preparation for my own departure I found a staff chart from 2004 — out of about 40 names, I only recognized three who are still here.

The turnover at my office must be affecting productivity in some way, but the machine is bigger than all of us, and it keeps rolling along. December 6 was the dedication of the new central piazza, which was supposed to be completed in time for fall, but ended up leaving the middle of campus fenced off for most of the semester. Under my desk somewhere there are copies of the architectural designs for the piazza that I’ve had since sometime in the spring, and I had always been excited about seeing the finished product, but began to feel more wary as I saw it slowly come together. In the end, I think it turned out as a success.

To dedicate the Attallah Piazza, the school threw a big party, with speeches from all the major donors, an alumni dance performance, roasted chestnuts, carols sung by a choir and plenty of the snow-and-sweater decor that Southern Californians gleefully wallow in at this time of the year to celebrate the truly chilling, nearly-50 degree temperatures. Few other parts of the country would be dedicating an outdoor fountain in mid-December, let alone giving out free gelato as part of the festivities. But as the song goes, California knows how to party.

In his dedication speech, Chapman’s president said (I’m paraphrasing) “Here in Orange County, people say that we don’t have a center. We’re just a collection of overlapping cities with nothing binding us together besides freeways, which can hardly be called a focal point.” I was surprised to hear him speak so candidly about what is less of a complain and more of a source of existential anguish for the natives here. “But now, with the opening of the Attallah Piazza, Orange County does have a center! And it’s right here at Chapman University!” Bold words. The endless barrage of fireworks which capped the ceremony served to underscore this point.

It was enough to make me consider that he might be right. Not now, but perhaps in ten years, Chapman could become the cultural, intellectual pillar of the county. It’s still got a long way to go. In my short time here I’ve seen lots of groups claim to be the heart of Orange County, only to disband soon after. Because down here everyone wants to be in the band, but no one wants to haul the gear, and even fewer people care to be fans. It’s an upward battle for sure.

But looking around those gathered for the dedication, I recognized quite a few of the county’s noted artists, politicians and philanthropists. I had the thought that if I stuck around, perhaps I could get to hob-nob it with them at events like this in the years to come. If I wanted to, I could probably carve out a pretty place for myself in Orange County’s higher-ed society scene.

But that’s not what I want. I’d be very happy if my alma mater did become the center of Orange County. It could use a center, after all. But just like sitting behind a computer all day can make you forget the physical world, staying in one place can make you think that where you are is, in fact, what the world revolves around. And that’s part of the reason why I feel like I’m being called away from here. A journey to the center of the Earth.

I have a lot of things to do. I am picking up and moving in a few weeks. I am on the verge of leaving my current lifestyle behind and becoming a globe-hopping nomad with nothing to my name besides a few plane tickets and a backpack. I probably need to sit down and think long and hard about going to go inside of this backpack.
Instead of doing anything practical about my impending departure, I have spent a good part of the day organizing my music library so that I can listen to all the hits of 1960-65. This seemed like a good way to broaden my sonic horizons and get a better understanding of the state of pop music 45 years ago.
Strangely, while I was very excited to listen to the Billboard Top 100 songs from the ’60s, you would probably have to pay me to sit through any of the same charts from the past ten, or possibly 20 years. From where I sit, the state of pop music in 2007 is rather dire.
And now that I have just finished a 4 1/2 hour stint of listening to the Billboard Top 100 from the bygone year of 1960, I am ready to tentatively proclaim that the state of pop music 47 years ago was JUST AS DIRE. There were some good tracks by the likes of Elvis, Sam Cooke and Roy Orbison, but for every “Stuck on You” there would be an awful novelty song about fightin’ injuns, itsy-bittys bikinis or turning nursery rhymes into love songs. Add to that dozens of schmaltzy ballads, upbeat but uninspiring pop tunes, and general pandering to the masses, and you truly have a scene ripe for overseas invasion.
These Top 100 lists are interesting for both the story they tell, and what they omit — you could listen to all these charts for each year to the present and only get two Bob Dylan songs, for example. But if you just listen to the Dylan albums (which is what I had previously been doing), you also won’t get an accurate portrait of the era.
This is perhaps a fruitless pursuit, but I am kind of obsessed with trying to understand the trajectory of pop and rock music in America from the ’30s to the present. I guess it springs from the same place as my urge to travel across the country, and across the world.
The sheer amount of music to listen to, and countries to visit is simply staggering.

When I started college in 2001, I had never heard of blogging. I just knew that I wanted to start some sort of web page to document my new life and when I stumbled upon blogger.com, that seemed like the easiest way to do it. I’m trying desperately to hold onto any illusion of youth, so I don’t want to sound like an old-timer, but things were a lot different then. There weren’t any commenting systems back then, let alone tags, rss feeds or trackback. Things are a lot more standardized now, a lot easier to customize, and for the most part, a lot easier.

I haven’t exactly stayed abreast of the technology tide, but since combining all my old blogs at this domain, I’ve been slowly getting back up to speed. Last night I went through the last two years of posts and added tags to them, which categorizes them so that you can view the archives not just by date, but by subject. For example, you can see all the posts that deal with bachelor life, my time working at the sushi bar, POGs or *shudder* romance.

As I was going through the old posts, I found myself using a lot of the same tags. Slightly pointless came up a lot (apparently I didn’t know what to write about for a good portion of 2007), as did angst (apparently 2005-06 were not easy times). The one that I seemed to be using most often, though, was wanderlust. The desire to move seemed to be the most consistent theme of my life over these past three years.

For a long time I guess I’ve felt that sticking around one place for very long was the sign of some sort of failure on my part. Most of my highschool classmates just wanted to stick around our podunk hometown, or maybe move to a neighboring city. The overarching message of life in Dallas, Oregon seemed to be “Things are always the same here. You can’t ever escape.” Whole families were born, lived and died there, and it seemed that they did it without ever crossing the county line.

Now that I’ve moved away, I can see that there’s a certain kind of noble charm that accompanies the desire to live in the same place for generations, but in high school I only saw it as creepy, hopeless and drenched in ennui, and it’s a feeling that I haven’t fully shaken. Back then when people would tell me, “You’ll always end up back in Dallas,” I would remind myself that I wasn’t even born in Oregon. I had lived in three different states before I was five, so I figured I had traveling in my blood. It didn’t hurt that my parents were always taking us on trips around the Northwest and occasionally across the country. I figured it was simply my destiny to be nomadic.

Now I’ve lived in Orange County for six years, with breaks in between to make a zombie movie in Oregon, work food service at Mount Rushmore, court a lady in the Midwest, and study history and graffiti in Spain. I’m starting to plan whatever comes next, and I feel fairly certain that come 2008 I will be on the road again. Just knowing that feels great.

My dad, who shares my inability to sit still and has scaled serious peaks all up and down the Americas, wrote to me the other day. He has taken up sailing and mentioned his upcoming 850 mile trip from Annapolis to Bermuda on a 50-foot catamaran. Then he added:
“I will probably find out that the key to contentment is not climbing another peak or sailing away but learning to be at peace with where I am now.”

“Hmm,” I thought. “I guess the same is true for me. But not now — later. Later, later, later!! Travel comes first, and peace can wait.”

What if instead of rambling entries about unrelated subjects, I wrote this weblog as a series of short regular columns? It would probably look something like this…

Return of “You Know You’re a Bachelor When“:

You know you’re a bachelor when your dinner of leftover Rice-A-Roni is accompanied by a rum and coke — not because you’re particularly in the mood for drinking, but because your roommate is having an open-bar party and you have run out of soy milk and OJ.

~ ~ ~

Return of “Why Oh Why Am I Still Living in Orange County?” (it never actually left!):
Do you know what is happening in Portland, Oregon these days? According to these two articles from The Oregonian, this is what is happening…

* Young men and women are getting together to drink whiskey and make pies for free to give away to whoever wants them. —> “In Pie We Crust”

* Everyone is making comic books. —> A nerdy DIY crowd in town? It’s comics

These are amazing goings-on! My mom sent both of these links to me — do you think she is trying to convince me to move to PDX? My bags are half-packed already!

~ ~ ~

Debut of “Aaron Knows The Hottest Fashions In Town!“:

Headbands! Why aren’t more people wearing these?? A girl in a headband looks sharp and put-together! A dude in a headband looks like he’s got things going on that you do not want to mess with!

~ ~ ~

Further adventures of “Useless, One Sentence Music Reviews“:

The Smiths — A lot of people really love this band, which I guess is warranted because their music is pretty good, but it is hard for me to believe that you can simultaneously really love The Smiths AND also enjoy being happy.

The Wallflowers — If you took every radiorock band from the ’90s and made a composite of them which negated all their individual characteristics, it would probably sound like The Wallflowers.

Belle and Sebastian — Have recorded some terrificly bouncy pop songs, but seem to be more interested in knitting sweaters and staying indoors.

~ ~ ~

Behold the conundrum of “The Etymology Corner“:

Today’s word is: Weblog!
While it has no problem with “blog,” Firefox’s spellchecker doesn’t think “weblog” is a word. And apparently it doesn’t think “spellchecker” is a word, either. I personally think that “weblog” (or “web log” is you must) is a more useful term, as it’s a clearer term. “Blog” has been used as a big buzzword in the last five years, but I think it’s important to remember where the term came from — a blog is just log of something that is kept on the web. People have been keeping chronological records, news posts and diaries on the Internet for over a decade now, but the idea of a “blog” still has this mystique around it. Perhaps that’s because the word sounds funny and strange. “Web log” sounds pretty specific and boring, but “blogging” sounds like it could be anything — from a military maneuver (“We blogged those suckers into oblivion!”) to a medical condition (“Bad news, honey — the doctor says my kidneys are blogging again.”) to an ethusiastic endorsement (“This quiche is blogging incredible!”) or the name of a cyclops (“Fear the wrath of Blog!”).

~ ~ ~

Thrill to another installment of “The 1940s Were A Terrific Time For Comic Books!“

From Captain Marvel Storybook #4 (1949)

New Exciting Different!

…

From Miss America vol. 2 #6 (1945)

Buckets of Woe!

…

From Walt Disney’s Comics and Stories #41 (1944)

I am DOOM itself!

~ ~ ~

And finally, The Mystery Question Of The Day
Q: Aaron, shouldn’t you probably be doing something else?
A: Yes!

I got a regular 8 a.m. – 5 p.m. job before most of my friends did (actually, many of them still don’t have a comparable “daily grind”), and t’s taken them a while to learn that for a good chunk of the day I am not really free to chat on my cell phone. I can get pretty terse and focused when I’m at work, and I tend to assume that if someone is calling me, it must be really really important.
This makes it really awkward whenever I get a call about anything less than a life and death situation. Here is a sample conversation:

“Hey man!! How’s going?”
“Fine. I’m at work.”
“Workin’ for the man! Dude, we have to get you a job working as like a suberban ninja guerrilla or something, you know? Hey, is it snowing where you are?!”
“No. I’m in California.”
“Oh, yeah, that’s right. Cali! Well you should be in Oregon because it’s snowing RIGHT THIS SECOND and we are having a snow day and it’s soooo awesome!”
“You know, that is fantastic. I am glad we are friends, but I am hanging up right this second.”

It’s not that I don’t want to talk to my friends about hypothetical fantasy careers and the amazing qualities of weather, it’s just that I tend to feel like everyone in the entire office is listening to my conversation, and the less they know about me, the less they will be able to destroy my life if I format a spreadsheet incorrectly or something.

Every time I take a personal call, I feel like I am putting my career in grave danger. Since I’ve made this clear to my family and friends, I don’t get as many calls like this one:

“Hi Aro! I didn’t think you were going to answer the phone!”
“Why did you call me?”
“I wanted to leave you a long, happy message! You weren’t supposed to answer the phone, stupid!”
“It was ringing!”

So when my mom called me the other day from beautiful Port Angeles, Washington apparently they were actually in Fairhaven, which is nowhere near Port Angeles. But anyway, I was sure that something important was going on. In fact, she was just calling to say that she and my aunt were in a moped shop and they thought that I should get an electric scooter, and that it would be so so cool. I was too taken aback to be stoic or annoyed. This seemed like the funniest thing she could be calling about.

I had considered getting a Vespa before, but I was deterred by two major points:
1). They don’t make diesel scooters, which means I wouldn’t be able to brew my own bio-fuel, which would make me dependent on dirty, foreign oil.
2). Even if you aren’t running on bio-fuel, riding a motor scooter around is pretty much the dorkiest thing. Unless you live in Europe or are a girl, then it is awesome. Actually, if you live in Europe or are a girl, you are probably awesome to begin with.

The fact that my mother was telling me that it would be cool to get a Vespa pretty much erased all doubts I had about point 2. As far as point 1 is concerned, an electric scooter would hypothetically pollute less than a gasoline scooter, but electricity is only clean power if it comes from a clean source, and in California (and in most of the world) it doesn’t.

But when I related this story to my friends, no one thought that having an electric moped would be a terrible idea. Some people even explicitly said that it would be cool! Then I realized that people think a lot of awful things are cool. And then, finally, I realized: Who cares what other people think?

So when I saw a little electric moped attached to a weathered, hand-written “For Sale” sign on my way home from work, I decided to inquire about it. Here is what I learned: the scooter needs a battery and has a top speed of 24 mph if you are lucky. It is a dull shade of pink and looks about 15 years old. It is also really really cheap. I’m going back to meet with the owner tomorrow.

I contemplated trying to cross the United States on a tiny, beatdown pink moped, cruising the continent at 18 miles an hour. There is a lot of desert in between towns in the American Southwest, and the desert is not known for having a lot of electrical outlets, which would be a problem. Also, I’m not sure that the moped’s six-inch wheels and battery-run motor would make it very far up the rocky mountains.

So the idea is probably a bad one.

But I still want to cross the United States. It’s an idea that’s been formenting (sic) in my head for a while now. In a few months I think it would be financially possible. I’m not sure if it would be particularly practical. But I’m starting to believe that there’s power in being outrageously impractical.

Developing….

…

BONUS FEATURE!
Christina dug up this old survey she made back in 2002 to determine which of her friends you are. Guess who I turned out to be!

 

Some of you may have heard that I was maybe going to go to Nicaragua for a while to work with Habitat for Humanity. It turns out that this will not be happening. I’m not entirely sure why, as I’ve had some trouble communicating with their office, but it turns out that they’ve picked a different person for the job.

I’m mostly OK with this. I’m back in school again, settling into my new place, have a lot of writing going on, and am basically pretty busy. When it was taking weeks rather than days for the Habitat people to get back to me, I suspected that there probably were some issues holding my application back anyway. And regardless of the outcome, the whole process lead me to reconsider my priorities, and forced me to find a new place to live, which has been a good thing.

The thing is, this keeps happening. Last year I was on the verge of leaving to teach English in Istanbul. Two years ago I nearly skipped town to work on tourist trains in Alaska. All my “great adventures” have fallen through for one reason or another, and constantly looking toward leaving has left me reluctant to make many new connections here or put any Orange County roots down. I’ve passed up some good volunteer opportunities because they required a long-term commitment that I didn’t think I could make. I’ve resisted forming any serious romantic relationships down here. I still haven’t bought a car.

It’s a strange holding pattern, and I can’t decide whether the answer is packing my bags and leaving immediately or resigning myself to the fact that I will just live here forever. OK, I know neither of those things is the answer. It’s somewhere in the middle. I’ve spent a quarter of my life in Orange County now. That’s unexpected, but I don’t regret it. I actually feel good about that, believe it or not. I’m here for sure through the end of the semester, because I like my classes. After that, I’m not sure.

But by 2008, barring phenomenal circumstances, I plan to be on a plane, or a train, headed … elsewhere.

I’m looking for a new place to stay. I’ve been in this little room in this little house for just over a year now. Never signed a lease because I wasn’t sure how long I was going to stick around. At the time I was considering leaving for Turkey to teach English for a year, but I decided to spent my time sticking around here and learning to be somewhat respectable.
After about a year of leaselessness, my landlord finally asked me to sign a six month lease or vacate in 30 days. Six months is not that long, really. But I took the 30 days instead, refusing once again to make any long-term plans in Orange County again. This time it’s because I may or may not take a volunteer position in Nicaragua which may or may not be offered to me.
So once again I’m looking for a room in someone else’s house that I can move into for an undetermined amount of time. It’s almost enough to make me just pack up and leave for good. Honestly the only thing keeping me at my job is free graduate tuition, but I can’t imagine sticking around long enough to finish the entire program and actually get my degree. So I don’t know exactly why I’m here. And I have even less of an idea of where I’m going.
It’s just getting a little bit old. For some reason I seem determined to be a vagabond.
Although I should mention that I got a sappy inspirational card from my mom in the mail today, which actually managed to give me some hope.
… which means you know it’s bad, because, well … it’s a sappy inspirational card!
Oh well. I’ll do my best to take it to heart.

xxoo

briefly:
-I have been hired full time at Chapman University as their Public Relations Coordinator, which will be my first 40hr/week gig since working concessions at Mount Rushmore in the summer of 2003. It also effectively ends an eighteen-month period of job-vagabonding, which has included stints of various lengths as a pipe de-denter, bad freelance writer, Christmas light hanger, sushi bar host, high school tutor and public relations writer, and also rather palpitable plans to move to both Alaska and Istanbul, which were eventually discarded.
-I’ve been listening to a lot of Bob Dylan circa ’64-’65 this week.
-I have been rather deathly afraid or writing, and have willfully avoided it pretty constantly. I think we can all agree that this is pretty stupid.
-I have been free of romantic entanglements for over a good year now. This is certinally a personal record, and I speculate that it might also place me atop a list of my friends and close aquintances. I also wonder if I even remember how to “date.” The very act of kissing seems even more incomprehensible than it did when I was 15, and I am sure that if I ever again find myself in a place where !!kissing a girl on the lips!! is a possibility, I will botch it quite miserably. Perhaps I should just take a vow of, what do they call it? celebacy?
Except that it is not that I would not like to be involved with a girl, it is just that I don’t want to waste my time and energy only to have something fail. Again.
-Actually, I feel about the same way about girls as I do about writing. I think. Goodness, what does THAT mean? I’ll leave it for you, dear blog readers, to psychoanalyze. I need to go to sleep.
-I start working full-time on Monday.

This story is a) about me, and b) quite funny! It is written by my friend Jennie from Koisan.
I am quitting Koisan, the sushi bar where I work, in just over a week. It’s kind of strange because this is the first time that I have quit a job for any reason besides “I am moving away and it will be geographical impossible for me to continue my duties here.”
I will miss it, because it’s an easy job that I know how to do well. I will also miss the people I work with there, mostly Jennie, who stopped working lunch shifts with me a few months ago, and Bang, who has been my Koisan cohort longer than anyone else. I will also miss making jokes in Spanish with the cooks in the back, folding ten thousand red napkins into roses at the beginning of each shift, greeting regular customers by name, and sometimes getting curry for lunch.
I’m really comfortable at Koisan, probably more so than I have been at any other job I’ve had. Which I think is one of the reasons that I need to move on.

xxoo

I’m thinking of moving.
It seems that everyone I’ve seen lately keeps asking me when I’m going to move. Or if I’m still at my same job, if I’m still in my same place, or what is new.
I suppose these are all normal small-talk questions that people ask all the time, but I take each one as a direct accusation about the direction of my life:
Why aren’t you moving? Haven’t you moved yet?
I’ve lived in this house for almost two months now. I got back from Oregon less than a month ago. I’ve only been working my office job since January, and my restaurant job since sometime in October. I freaked out a bit when I realized that in less than two months it will be my one-year anniversary as a sushi bar host, but that’s not an inexcusable amount of time to have a part-time job to pay the bills.
But people like to ask, “So, how’s the job going?”
And so I have to answer: “The job is fine! It’s normal! It’s the same as always!” And perhaps I should add that I am getting better and better at doing menial labor that means nothing to me! I am learning nothing except for new ways to not care about nothing! The highlight of my day is folding napkins so that they vaguely resemble roses for place settings at the restaurant! I kid not; it’s true! I have discovered that anything I attempt at my office will be eventually rendered insignificant, but that shocks and depresses me less than the continual discovery that a day can become so very, very small.
The only thing that gets me out of bed most mornings are the dreams and plans that bubble constantly from either my soul or my imagination. Are they the path to my future, or just fantasies to distract me from this stagnation?
Either way, can I stay here much longer before dreams start to feel like false hope? And how much longer after that before it becomes resignation?
I’m not sure that I want to know, but I think the transformation is starting.
And the only thing I’m more scared of than that is following my dreams and seeing them fail. No one really tells you how hard it actually is to follow your dreams. It’s hard! But you’ve got to make a move.
And I’m thinking about moving.