Fall.

Since my last post I had a kid, started school again, picked up some teaching part time jobs in addition to the tech writing on the side, and have delighted in meeting said kid in his first few months of life.

And, I watched my first fall, up close. While everyone else seemed to be thinking that fall's colder weather just sort of sprung upon them from no where, my regular walks in the park and neighborhood with D gave me a front row seat to the turning of the seasons. It started with a scent in the wind-- that smell of sweet decay-- and rolled into the wind shaking the trees in a slightly different way, a half a degree cooler every day, it would seem. Suddenly a few leaves turned yellow, a hint of red in the fields of green.. But then one day, just a week ago, after a particularly rainy and chilly weekend, I walked out the door and saw the whole neighborhood go golden. These streets were paved with thousands of tiny Elm leaves, yellow, and the occasional red maple and ochre oak. It was fantastic.

But as soon as the leaves turn, they fall. Now the trees are almost bare, but a few bushes with those red leaves hold on. Winds are picking up, will carry them away soon.

I can't help but get fussy with thoughts about my future when the weather is like this. Fall. I get impatient. I used to plan trips abroad at this time, but now I plan degrees I could seek after I finish the MFA. At the same time I squeeze the life out of every moment because it is so monumental-- it's so easy to just get lost in playing with D, making him squeal and laugh, smile like the happiest kiddo that ever lived. My frustrations in an outdated Academia setup and limiting roles have become more profound then ever before.

furrowed eyebrows and walt whitman

Today was a rough day for living the in-between. I've been reading "A Moveable Feast" by Hemingway, and felt that my transition over the weekend mimicked the transitions of the first few chapters. What started as purely peaceful and serene started to get a little rough around the edges. Or rather, life (in my own and within the novel) was starting to get rough, and with it comes the challenge to not give in to the tempermental fluctutations.

You know things are getting tough when you're trying to sit outside in the sunny Sunday afternoon, birds chirping, Patsy Cline streaming from a neighbor's backyard, the heat of the sun on your cheeks, favorite book in hand-- yet unable to read. Stopping every few sentences, or between paragraphs, and thinking about how to smooth things over and fix the little life quirks that have sprung up. After a bit of arm wrestling, though, if you play your cards right, you get back to where you want to be. Or close enough, for today.

I thought this poem by Walt, "Lingering Last Drops," summed things up nicely for the end of such a day as this.

And whence and why come you?

We know not whence, (was the answer,)
We only know that we drift here with the rest,
That we linger'd and lagg'd but were wafted at last, and
are now here,
To make the passing shower's concluding drops.

-Walt Whitman

quotation by fellow liminalist

The most beautiful and deepest experience a man can have is the sense of the mysterious. It is the underlying principle of religion as well as all serious endeavour in art and science. He who never had this experience seems to me, if not dead, then at least blind. To sense that behind anything that can be experienced there is a something that our mind cannot grasp and whose beauty and sublimity reaches us only indirectly and as a feeble reflection, this is religiousness. In this sense I am religious. To me it suffices to wonder at these secrets and to attempt humbly to grasp with my mind a mere image of the lofty structure of all that there is.

- Albert Einstein, The World As I See It (1949)

June 1, 2009

Living in the Liminal will act as an exploratory tool to assist in the pursuit of my own understanding of living "in-between." I've long struggled with the conflicts of my equally strong and impassioned attractions towards the science and the arts. It has always been demanded of me that, in order to succeed, I must choose, or at least prioritize.

I thought pursuing an MFA in Creative Writing degree after 5-years spent earning a BS in Geology and 2-years tucked away at the USGS in Florida would create more balance in my life. Instead, I've become more conscious of the pull expected towards one or the other, and more aware of the great gaps within each field, that perhaps can only be filled by the inclusion of the other.

My own intrigue in the arts and sciences is fuelled by a fascination of the unknown, and a wild love for the mysterious. Both fields strive to understand the inner and outer worlds, and it thrills me to believe that a full understanding of either is impossible, due to our own human limitations. I am thrilled by human limitations.