Thanksgiving Break 2011

Well folks, the rumors are true. I was able to escape to the East Coast for a few days with Sarah and we spent the Thanksgiving holidays in New York. It was incredible and it ended all too quickly. Below are a few pictures from our jaunt, not necessarily in a particular order.

This is the Vanderbilt Mansion, in Hyde Park, New York. It sits atop a bluff overlooking the Hudson River and a 700-acre property that was deeded to the National Park Service by the Vanderbilt family over 70 years ago, and remains almost completely faithful to the original design and decor. This is runt among the family's 40 mansions scattered around, weighing in at a measly 50,000 square feet.

This is the cascading spill-over from the dam nearby Yorktown Heights. The water is New York City's reservoir, clean and green.

Central Park is a grand place on a surprisingly pleasant afternoon in late November. Seen here are the model sailboats on the pond, looking towards Upper East Side.

Shown here is the Interior of St. Thomas' Cathedral, a pleasant and less popular attraction in the hustle of Manhattan, mostly empty, serene, ornate, and punctuated only by the periodic passing subway deep in the ground below.

On the Wednesday night before Thanksgiving, a large assortment of the Macy's Day Parade balloons are brought out for public viewing surrounding the block of the Natural History museum. Seen behind us the Spiderman and Ronald McDonald, currently taking a nosedive.

Not surprisingly, Times Square was packed and over-illuminated. It is somewhat surreal.

We managed to fit some culture into our packed schedule, visiting the MoMA for a bit in the afternoon. Sarah is noticeably a connoisseur of the arts.

Skiing

Fam: it was great to see you all this weekend. Thanks for the memories! A terrific time was had by all.

A majestic flight

Today I said goodbye to Grant for the next 22 months. I surprised him in his room with breakfast burritos from Rancherito's, mango juice and Ritter Sport bars. A proper send-off, I must say (and I agree with Mom... definitely one of the perks of working at the MTC). He's on the plane now, off to a distant land where he will reign love and peace. To a mission well served.

Celebrity Playlist 4.0

Well ladies and gentlemen, it is here! The most comprehensive and stunning playlist I could possibly produce, reflective of the right now in my life (Unfamiliar with a CP? Read my old blog entry about the CP 3.0). Want it? Come and get it... my views on music piracy are generally relaxed when it comes to these mixes. Make yours, and I promise I'll listen intently if you share it.

Nothing Can Stop Us (If We Stick Together)
1. "Hall" - Baths
2. "Baby" - Bullmeister
3. "Lost Dream" - Digits
4. "Sticks & Stone" - Jónsi
5. "Ready For the World" - How to Dress Well
6. "Cover Your Tracks (Teen Daze Remix)" - Young Galaxy
7. "Loner" - Stay Ali
8. "4 Me (Beaumont Remix)" - Cassette Club
9. "Into the Clouds" - The Sound of Arrows
10. "Young Blood" - The Naked and Famous
11. "Heart" - Blood Diamonds
12. "Sunkissed" - Muffin
13. "Crazy Enough (Diamond Cut Remix)" - Cullen
14. "I Can Make the Pain Disappear (Monsieur Adi Remix)" - Fear of Tigers
15. "Shook (Mobb Deep v. Sigur Ros)" - Emancipator
16. "Pascal (The Scottish Enlightenment)" - Dan Lyth
17. "Til Kingdom Come" - Coldplay

Oooh, he must have turned awesome sometime in the night...

He's leaving for Chile in a week. He has the finest East County demeanor, no contest. Stay true, brother G.

Across the Water and Into the Sky

As I saw it, yesterday.

Art and imbalance

In Alain de Botton's “The Architecture of Happiness,” there is a passage as follows:

“We are drawn to call something beautiful whenever we can detect that it contains in a concentrated form those qualities in which we personally, or our societies more generally, are deficient. We respect a style which can move us away from what we fear and towards what we crave; a style which carries the correct dosage of our missing virtues. That we need art in the first place is a sign that we stand in almost permanent danger of imbalance, of failing to regulate our extremes, of losing our grip on the golden mean between life's great opposites: boredom and excitement, reason and imagination, simplicity and complexity, safety and danger, austerity and luxury.

If the behavior of babies and small children is any guide, we emerge into the world with our tendencies to imbalance already well entrenched. In our playpens and high chairs, we are rarely far from displaying either hysterical happiness or savage disappointment, love or rage, mania or exhaustion – and, despite the growth of a more temperate exterior in adulthood, we seldom succeed in laying claim to lasting equilibrium, traversing our lives like stubbornly listing ships on choppy seas.

Our innate imbalances are further aggravated by practical demands. Our jobs make relentless calls on a narrow band of our faculties, reducing our chances of achieving rounded personalities and leaving us to suspect (often in the gathering darkness of a Sunday evening) that much of who we are, or could be, has gone unexplored. Society ends up containing a range of imbalanced groups, each hungering to sate its particular psychological deficiency, forming the backdrop against which our fervently heated conflicts about what is beautiful play themselves out.”

The book is more narrowly concerned with the influence of art and architecture on us, as psychological and emotional beings, but I think there is a vaster reach to this idea than just the aesthetic environment we find ourselves in. The people we seek, the things we do, the dreams we have, the books we read, the places we go, the clothes we wear, the schedules we create, the relationships we make, the plans we share, the prayers we offer ... these are all indicative of the internal yearnings we have to correct our perceived imbalances. What do we find beautiful, grand, intriguing, noble, pleasant, virtuous, good, or even praiseworthy? Think about it.

The boys.

Well, we're back for the time being. New Mexico is beautiful, and even better with family around. Some things just get better with time...

This fall.

This chalk wall is my one stab at creativity.

This is my car. This photo reminds me of one of my past photo projects.

This is fall here in Provo.

The Celebrity Playlist.

It does not refer to anything I intend to be, or a line of cruise ships that in part funded my summer here, or really anything in particular anymore. It is one of those titles that has evolved and taken on a new meaning, almost completely apart from the actual words. The Celebrity Playlist is an invention that I attribute to some of my best friends of the last 4 years, and we have taken the CP and made it ours. For those of you who haven't heard of it yet, don't feel left out. According to my memories, it came about during our freshman year in the dorms either in late 2006 or early 2007. Barret challenged some of us to create our ultimate playlists to share with each other, inspired by celebrities who had done the same and made theirs available on some Apple-run media service. The only limit is that it had to be under 80 minutes and be able to burned onto one CD-R. My first Celebrity Playlist was interesting because it represented a collection of years of music tastes leading up to and incorporating some of my freshman year at BYU. It required hours of painful trimming and selecting to reduce the massive group of songs that I loved and and wanted to put on my List to the correct amount, and then even more time constructing a proper sequence. By the time I had finished, I had grown considerably proud of it. I felt that it was mine, and it was. I put it onto a flash drive and shared it (legal debates will be put off for now) with all my friends who wanted it, and they followed roughly the same process. About two and a half years later, during my sophomore year, we resurrected the Celebrity Playlist, same rules, just that none of the songs used on the first List could be reused. Once again it was hours and days spent thinking, reordering, listening, and selecting to find a final product, but soon enough I had CP 2.0 ready to share. It was enlightening for me to see the progression of my music taste, the remnants of my past years, but between it all, another fine product that I found myself proud of and ready to share with those willing. This one was released in the early days of 2010, on a snowy night ride in the blue van, going to a stake party at some large livestock barn somewhere south of Springville. Once again, the songs each had a memory or a meaning or a feeling that warranted their inclusion in my 80-minute Dream Team of audio stimuli. So that is my history of the Celebrity Playlist. My mind is currently concocting CP 3.0, slated for release in September. I think it will be a considerable shift from past issues, but the reason for that is because I feel it has less songs chosen for their sentimental reasons, but more music that is highly pertinent for me know. There is less logical selection, but rather I am being guided by my ears and what they like. Fewer are the stories, and more relevant are the emotions tied up to each song in their current place. If this is highly pertinent to you, I invite you to make yourself present for my release. If this is new to you, I invite you as well and suggest you consider building your own Celebrity Playlist. I would love to hear it. To sit down with you and listen to it and hear what it means to you.

Looming.

I know I'm not the only one thinking this,
but I am very excited to return to school again.
I am so glad that I came to Alaska and got to be what I am,
to make the friends I have,
to learn what I have learned
and to see what I have seen.
I have had the chance to step out for a breath of fresh air,
regain my composure
and now I feel rested and relaxed.
I feel like I've become a better man,
and now I am ready to dive back in
and get back to my real life in Provo
[with a quick jaunt in San Diego first, of course].
I miss being academically challenged,
surrounded but experiences and opportunities and people.
I am excited to get back and be me.
I am pleased with how I feel.
I love the way I think and understand people and the world.
I am actually going to miss this place,
for it has been a place of growth.
Thank you to those of you who contributed to any of this,
whether you were here or there,
for it all takes part.
See you soon.
Or see you again someday.

Weekend Play.

Nate and Chad each thoroughly enjoy zip-lining, in their own distinct ways.

Abandoned mining tools and parts from a century ago, found along the beach.

Sarah, ready for camping, on deck of the S.S. Blondina.

Brian piloting an adventure cart on the lawns of Echo Ranch.

Abandoned pier on the Gastineau Channel.

Honking the Horn.

When I was a child and on occasion found myself of the side of a busy street, it was always entertaining and wildly daring to encourage truckers and bus drivers to sound their air horns. It never got old, and I'm sure you probably know exactly what arm signal I am talking about: the fist clenched, forearm vertical, and making up and down motions... as if tugging down on the imaginary cord that honks the horn. Sometimes the drivers would ignore us, but the ones who didn't and heeded our juvenile suggestion instantly became awesome in our eyes. A rather simple act that made us kids feel on top of the world, as if we were a part of their professional lives, if just for a moment. The loud sound became our voice to the world. We were strong! We owned the sky!

Just the other day I was driving my bus on Glacier Highway, with a bus full of passengers, and we passed a group of kids at a lemonade stand. They stood at the edge of the curb, all excitedly yelling and making that familiar vertical fist pump. It took me a second to realize that they were making that signal to me. It was vaguely familiar, but I found myself in the position of power. I was their hero! I delivered the sound that roared through the valley, caused my passengers to chuckle, and made their dreams come true, if just for that moment. I am a bus driver... and I make kids happy.

Camera Phone Pictures.

Troubadour.

I just bought this album. Thanks to Dallin, for the introduction, for the taste, for the exposure. Inside the album booklet, it contains the following:

K'NAAN THANKS:

WAR, Warlords, Immigration, Border Guards (I see you), Metro housing projects, Drive by shooters, Police, Correctional facilities, Financial institutions, Public schools, Case workers at Social Services, Depression, Anxiety, The month of October, Solitude, Girls who's hearts I broke, Girl who broke my heart, Bad songs on the radio, That same music video that's bee playing for 8 years, power-trippin' bouncers, Promoters and Stage Managers, Radio Programmers afraid to play my songs, Headliners afraid to follow my band, just fear in general. Aggression, Inequality, Division, Brutality, Ignorance, Greed, Corporate Journalism, Lies.

I would like to say thank you to all of the above, for forcing me to create. For making me fight harder. For giving me convictions. For enabling me to see uniquely. For showing me the value of humility, the bravery of patience. I am grateful for the pain which I've derived from you, the solitude I've extracted from the brutish sensibilities of life. Of course I can't forget Mr. And Mrs. Positive. It goes without saying that you are a big part of my being. But sometimes I wonder if you in your purest form aren't really just born out of the negative yourself.

The lives and experiences of others are some of the best teachers we have. We don't all suffer through the same magnitudes and types of afflictions as described above, but we can relate. We grow through opposition. We discover what we are really made of. Things weren't intended to be easy, and thankfully they're not. Trials build conviction. Faith carries us on.

Brings this to mind: 2 Ne. 4:28-29
28 Awake, my soul! No longer droop in sin. Rejoice, O my heart, and give place no more for the enemy of my soul.
29 Do not anger again because of mine enemies. Do not slacken my strength because of mine afflictions.