BoldUlysses.com

I feel so untethered not writing in here. My days are so jam-packed, though… Every evening is occupied with running, working on a website or writing a post for Spannerhead. Or working on something around the house. It’s so hectic, and I feel productive, which I suppose is the draw, but… It takes its toll, especially on my diligence in writing in here. Truth be told, I’m half-hoping Spannerhead tanks so I can pull the plug and devote more time and energy to saying what needs to be said in here.

Signed up for the NCSU alumni directory today. It was almost heart-stopping to browse through the directory and scan the names of people with whom so many emotions and memories are associated:

– Kelley Glynn
– Jony Moe
– Mike Krepp
– Sarah Puffer
– Michael Mauriello
– Ed Sciomacco
– Sally Crump
– Jennifer West
– Carla and David Flowers
– Hayden Stack
– Brandy Britt
– Tim Williams
– Will Trimble
– Beau Trincia
– Justin Cooper
– Sadie Shearon
– Barry Williams
– Demitri Gudgenov
– Mirai Morita

Listening to the Weepies this morning reminded me of early marriage, 2007 in our home on Birchwood, and the dew-y freshness of it all. The naivete of declaring in Sunday School that I didn’t get angry, that I just got “frustrated,” and all the rest. Ages ago.

For all the time I spend posting ridiculous garbage on Bimmerforums, I could be recording my family’s life here. Spannerhead requires so much daily time and creative energy, and I feel like I have nothing left for here, but that’s not true; it’s really just a matter of time management. Like everything else, I suppose.

Very slack in updating. I have to admit, Spannerhead.com has been taking all my time and creative energy. I have to figure out how to apportion it so that my family recollections aren’t lost, a situation made all the more urgent by the fact that it’s been an eventful few months, family-wise. If there is a silver lining, it’s the fact that the act of writing every day, whether here or on my other blog, make it less mentally cumbersome to just sit down and type. I’m getting a lot of practice, in other words.

So, briefly, let’s go over some highlights of the past few months:

• July 4 — Independence day, and the day Luke becomes a Christian.
• July 31 — Luke loses his first tooth.
• August 24 — Luke begins 1st grade at Lewisville Elementary, with Mrs Joyce.
• October 14-16 — Luke, Daddy and Granddad take his first camping trip with Cub Scouts to Raven Knob. It’s freezing cold at night, but Luke has the time of his life.
• October 16 — Penelope names her small wind-up pumpkin-head robot “Robotitaco.”

More to come. Just wanted to get a placeholder down.

For some reason, I have the chorus of Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons’ “Who Loves You” going through my head.

Completely exhausted after quite possibly the least relaxing “vacation weekend” ever. The kids were at “Nana Camp” with Mom and Dad from Thursday evening until Sunday afternoon, and they had a blast. Some activities included the planetarium, the Life & Science Museum, splashing in the backyard pool, visiting the garden and going to church. Mom and Dad had a great time too, and were more tired than they admitted to being (Dad confessed over the phone this morning, haha).

For our part, Diane and I remodeled the kitchen cabinets. We sanded and primed them on Thursday, painted them on Saturday, and hung them on Sunday. And shopped and ran errands besides. You’d think that just painting something wouldn’t be the back-breakingly tiring endeavor that it was, but holy cow. There’s so much prep work involved, and then laying on coat after coat, touching up, etc. Not fun. But the cabinets are now Snowcap white, crowd molding has been installed at the top and our hinges, knobs and pulls are brushed nickel. Between the cabinet color change, the flooring update and the beadboard on the wall, the kitchen is really coming together. I commented to Diane that it really looks like one of her Pottery Barn catalogs now.

• “Banding” Her word for “banging.” As in, when striking a hammer against a wall: “Daddy, look at me, I’m banding!” We’ve no idea where she got it from.
• “Baymbing Suit” Self-explanatory. This one has come to the fore lately, what with the summer months and talk of the beach.

Another apocalyptic dream last night. The moment came and went; the wind was strong in the same way it was a week or so ago when I had to pull the kids inside, but it fizzled. I knew when the Second Coming was about to begin, but I didn’t know what it would look like when it happened. There were moments of intense anticipation; we were living in a bunker-like house structure, and then, after what seemed like a particularly brief and intense thunderstorm, the universe continued much as it had.

I’ve had these dreams before; I wonder why I have so many. They don’t mean anything in the premonitory sense, to be sure, but I have a suspicion they say something about my own psyche. I’m not carrying the emotion with me throughout the day (the morning routine has a way of obliterating any feelings that might transfer from dreaming to wakefulness); it’s just a curiosity as all. Even now, I feel very detached thinking about it, as if I were considering someone else’s dream.

Today is Luke’s last day of kindergarten. There’s no way to understate this: He’s undergone a huge transformation in the past year. He’s acquired social skills, made friends, learned to read and write so much better than he was able to, done some amazing artwork and just had a fantastic time. I can count on one hand (maybe even a couple of fingers) the number of times he’s not wanted to go to school in the morning; most times he’s chomping at the bit, excited to get in the car and go. We’re so grateful to his teachers, Mrs Conley and Mrs Upton, as well. They’ve really been understanding, patient and communicative and have helped draw Luke out so much, and have helped us understand him better as well (though he remains an enigma in many ways).

I’m going to attend “Young Authors’ Day” at his school in a little bit. He’s going to read (perform) a story he’s written, to polish off the school year. Looking forward to it.

I was bothered by what I saw of the presidential debate last night. I returned from working for my father-in-law around 9:30 and saw the last few minutes of it. Diane had watched the whole thing and filled me in a bit. My primary issues have to do with the moderator and the substance of the questions. He seemed far too intrusive and would seem like he was about to cut in when the candidates were only a few seconds into their answer. Between that and the “fluffy” nature of many of the questions, we really didn’t get an opportunity to really learn about any of the candidates. The whole event seemed like a dog-and-pony show more than anything else, which was disappointing.

I was impressed with Bachmann, though. I’ve always been impressed with her determination to stick to the principles that inform her positions on bills that come to her desk in Congress, and knowing that (it’s not as if it’s a secret), I’m a little surprised at pundits who seem bewildered by her campaign for president. They say she can’t win the nomination, which is probably true, but given her voting record, the idea of winning or losing above all else certainly doesn’t seem like something she’s constrained by. I respect and admire that, too. Possibly more than any other candidate (at least those with records of public service), she stands for principle above politics. I hope she goes far.

All that said, and this is something Diane regularly gives me grief over, I do hope Rick Perry decides to jump in. If you look at the big picture, I really do think he has the best shot, out of any Republican candidate announced or rumored to announce, of winning the general election. He’s got the charisma and the record, and is “battle-hardened” (to borrow another pundit’s phrase) by winning three (!) Texas gubernatorial elections. There’s just no dirt left to dig up on the guy. The skeletons have been out in the open for ages. His Achilles heel is the fact that he’s yet another governor of Texas, so if he announces a run, expect a nonstop “Bush’s third term” chant by the MSM all the way through, never mind the fact that the ties between the two are not nearly as close as might first appear (Bush endorsed Perry’s opponent in the 2010 Texas governor Republican primany, for instance). He’s not Bush. He’s much more articulate, a better communicator (Bush’s greatest failing) and arguably more fiscally conservative than W. He’s not perfect—no candidate is—but I think he would be a great fit.

Riveting 20-minute conversation between Michael Horton (of The White Horse Inn) and Michael Shermer (of Skeptic magazine). It’s fascinating to hear Horton lead Shermer away from the traditional apologetic strongholds of attempting to prove the existence of God and instead, toward the historicity of Jesus and the Resurrection. I don’t think Shermer was expecting it, and it seemed to catch him off guard a bit; he seemed to be out of his comfort zone of arguing “objective science versus subjective religion” and started offering up more easily-defeatable positions like “Well, 6 billion people all believe different things about a higher power; they can’t all be right, can they?” Among other things.

It’s a great listen.

Here’s the follow-up conversation between Horton and Greg Koukl (of Stand to Reason).

for something I knew that I would get to keep

The utter joy of BT’s “The Emergency” is infectious. The song is propulsive, driving, leaping, bounding forward with energy and far-ranging sight. Here at work, while listening to it on my earmuff headphones, I briefly turned up the volume while pushing the headphones more snugly over my ears. The bassline and harmonics completely filled my ears. I need to listen to it at that volume more often, and in a place where there isn’t the danger of not being able to hear a summons from another part of the office. Yep.

One thing I appreciate about the pastor of our new church is his humility. He preached an excellent sermon yesterday, beginning a new series in which he’ll be drawing parallels between the life of Joseph and that of Jesus, an entirely appropriate and good thing, since

1. The Bible is first and last about Jesus, and He is the foundation of the entire meta-narrative, and
2. Too often the applications from Joseph’s story are reduced to mere narcissistic moralizing (e.g. “How can you be ‘a Joseph’ today?”), when the whole point of his life was to point to Jesus,

two points which the pastor alluded to in his opening remarks about the sermon series. He moved on by highlighting the correlation between Joseph’s brothers’ response to his dreams and the religious leaders’, His society’s, and by extension our own response to Jesus’ person and teaching. The connections were divided into two categories:

1. The ways in which they/we are condemned by our guilt, and
2. the ways in which they/we are condemned by His glory.

Without rehashing the entire sermon, I was struck by (among other things) how the pastor chose to emphasize his experience of being rightly condemned before a holy God, in the midst of the sermon’s application for the congregation. I don’t recall the specific example or examples he used, and they probably wouldn’t bear repeating here even if I did, but I will say that it was refreshing to have the dose of application, not shoehorned into the text, underscored by the pastor’s reflections from his own life. And all of this in a sermon that could be characterized as a teaching sermon, which can often be devoid of application altogether. I appreciated it very much.

I wish I could come up with a way, even just on the side, to make money off my car repair interest. I know it sounds like the answer is in the question (repair cars!), but the logistics are more complicated than they might initially appear:

• My time in the evenings and on the weekends is limited.
• My collection of tools, while appreciable, isn’t perhaps complete enough to tackle every job.
• The liability issue.

Honestly, from a purely ROI potential perspective, web design would be the best possible thing I could do—the hourly rate I could charge would probably be the highest, and all the software I need I either already have, or can acquire free on the Internet. But…the act of it is like pulling teeth. By contrast, I have and will undertake the most menial car repair task freely and willingly. That’s where my motivation is. And I just understand cars better than I do computers. There’s a present limit to my web design knowledge, and it’s limit I could expand through additional instruction, but the principles that govern car operation are so completely ingrained in me that I could undertake almost any task, even on an unfamiliar car, and have some degree of certainty that I would emerge successful on the other side. The difference in my confidence in approaching the two endeavors is significant.

I’ve been thinking about second jobs more lately, mainly because money’s been tight, and it’s nice to be self-reliant to even the small degree a second, self-generated job provides. Also, I’ve gotten back into touch with Ben, a friend of David’s from high school who’s been through a number of classic British sports cars, made money off a few of them, and is currently borrowing my engine hoist. I have crazy ideas of “joining forces” with him and others, like some giant car repair/restoration Voltron, but that’s a pipe dream at best. I can’t even begin to visualize how that would work out.

One thing I do know: Whatever I decide to do on the car repair front will have to wait until the garage is up to par, completely organized. Fortunately, my motivation to do that is sky-high as well.

With Luke, it isn’t so much what he loves as how he loves it. I’m realizing this lately. Actually, I think it’s something we’ve realized for a while, but with him getting older, and his approach to his interests maturing accordingly, it’s brought the realization into sharper focus.

What I mean by my initial statement is this: The common thread that ties Luke’s passions together isn’t necessarily what an outsider would think it would be, on first glance. For example, he’s interested in the planets, and by extension space, so logically, one would assume he’d have at least some interest in, say, astronauts or spacecraft or rockets or things like that, right? And it’s not to say doesn’t—he does, to a degree—but in our observation, he’s far more interested in aspects of his space interest that he can organize and systematize in his mind. That process of organization and systematization is the modus operandi that ties his interests together, as opposed to elements more intrinsic to the interests themselves. Again, it’s more how that what.

I can relate. With me, the appeal of airplanes, at least in my early years, wasn’t first and foremost things you might expect: the speed, or the flying (though those things were present)—it was the aesthetics. It was the way the airplanes looked that drew me, and that aesthetic fascination was part of the reason I connected interests as seemingly disparate as, say, aircraft and whales. They both had the streamlined, teardrop shape that I was after. Another way of putting it is there was as much of me as there was of the interest itself in whatever I was into. The interest and I “met in the middle,” so to speak.

Same goes for Luke. Focusing on his how instead of the what explains the connection between the geography interest, the astronomy interest and the way he systematizes information about each of his friends and family members, among other things. It helps explain his conversational style, and part of why he has such a hard time with discipline—the overarching “grid” of behavior and consequence is really hard for his mind to grasp. Every situation is a little different from the last, and that difference throws him off the track completely.

I want to use that knowledge of him going forward. I want to introduce new interests, or reintroduce older ones that have “glanced off,” into his rubric of how, rather than presenting them conventionally. Hopefully, it’ll help flesh out the number of subjects he can relate to, and create jumping-off points for deeper topics of discussion.

Diane and I watched Tron: Legacy last Wednesday. Overall, we enjoyed it. I hadn’t seen the original in 20+ years, and even when I did see it, I wasn’t all that into it (this being the “cartoon era” of my viewing life, which meant I had little use for live-action films). The new movie’s visuals were very impressive, as was the soundtrack, which I’m currently listening to.

I was a little concerned that due to all the advances in special effects and digital filmmaking since the original came out, we would be too “jaded” to appreciate whatever the new film had to offer, but visually, I think they genuinely pushed the envelope and offered something, if not entirely new (there are homages to / ripoffs of other movies everywhere), at least dynamic and fresh. There have been huge cultural shifts in the years between the original and the sequel; computers have become ubiquitous and much less “exotic” than they were in the mid-’80s, so the new film had a lot of work to do to overcome that familiarity. There were a number of approaches they could have taken with the plot, characters, and visuals, and I was a little disappointed they decided to do pretty much a straight update instead of something more creative and ambitious. They tried to shoehorn in a few more current themes, like the ongoing open- versus closed-source software battle, and the more immediate nature of virtual reality vis-à-vis what it means to be human, but unfortunately, they were just window dressing on a fundamentally conventional and convoluted action flick. But at least the movie looked and sounded great. I’ll choose to focus on that. Very eager to see what they do with the upcoming animated series.

Beautiful Friday. When it hasn’t been raining, the weather’s been uncommonly “California-ish” this past month, with sunny skies, dry air and temperatures in the 70s. Love it. And it’s a great weekend to head to my parents’ house in Chapel Hill for a little visit. Looking forward to that.

The kids are growing up. Penelope has nearly full command of complete sentences now, and has naturally adopted many of the social graces that even now, Luke can’t seem to find a use for, like greetings and goodbyes, among other things. For his part, Luke’s interest in astronomy is deepening, and his mastery of the computer is coming along too. I read him an information-packed library book about the planets last night and didn’t have to skip as much as I used to; I could read straight from the text and be fairly confident that he would understand it, as full of astronomy-related terms as it was. He certainly loves his planets.

And I’m grateful for that inasmuch as it’s a point of convergence between his interests and mine. I do have a very wide range of interests, so it was nearly a foregone conclusion that there would be a point of contact, but I’m glad it occurred in such a pleasing spot for both of us. If he had decided to be passionately interested in, say, baseball trivia, I probably wouldn’t have been able to “hang” as well as I am.

He doesn’t seem to have much interest in the things I’m really passionate about, though, which is totally and completely fine. Cars, airplanes, spacecraft… He doesn’t really track with me there—again, something utterly fine and expected. Interestingly, however, Penelope might be the one who’s more into those things than he is. Granted, she’s only 3, and as such is kind of all over the place with her interests, but I have demonstrated a few things about the car, and it’s held her attention, and she does point out with some frequency when an airplane flies over. Who knows. She’s such a crazy quilt of interests at this point: clothes, vehicles, sticks, animals, being “a superhero to save you,” TV, and many other things. Never a dull moment.

My back is hurting again, but at least I don’t know it. It’s been hurting for a good half-week now, and I finally broke down and took some ibuprofen this morning. It was sore over the past few days to the point where it was affecting my posture, which I think was probably exacerbating the situation; I’m hopeful the restoration of my posture helped by the lack of pain at the moment will help eliminate the pain long-term. We’ll see.

Good, albeit tiring weekend. I put the rest of the beadboard up the in the kitchen, took the kids to church Sunday morning (Diane wasn’t feeling well) and had a reasonably productive Sunday afternoon and evening. The job I’m doing for my father-in-law requires the use of a tool which happens to be portable, so I brought it home and clamped it to my (awesome) work table in the garage. I’ll be able to put in a lot more hours this week, and get the job done more quickly, which is a big win-win for both Mr Eppley and myself. I’ll be down there tonight, listening to my homeboy on the radio starting at 9 p.m. whilst I crank away. Should be fun.

I’ve had a real hankering lately to play the old games in the Gran Turismo series. I was a huge GT1 and 2 junkie and played most of GT3 before GT4 came out. But when I saw the size and depth of GT4, I decided I didn’t want to spend a month holed up in my house completing the game, which I certainly could have done, so I kind of fell off the horse. This was during flight training in ’05-’06, so I certainly had enough to worry about at that point without getting engrossed in a video game. And I’m still not sure I’m ready for something that immersive, but…I would like to revisit the earlier games. GT1 and 2 at the very least. I remember blasting up Trial Mountain in GT1 with an Impreza WRX…good times.

let your headlights
drill a hole in the darkness
let the closing
shoot you forward
let the convergence
squeeze you through the night

the dash lights are out
but we'll find our way home
the radio is mute
but our thoughts will avail us

tumbling forward
pressing onward
falling inward
pushing upward

cut a hole through the blackness
reach out through the moment
fight
fight
fight

but at least we can move

I wish it didn’t take me so agonizingly long to finish books. I’ve been working on my library copy of The Silmarillion for ages now… I’ll read a few pages once every couple of days, and I’m only just now about halfway though. I used to read much faster. Maybe I had more time in high school, or maybe, because the activity was encouraged or required then, time was made for me. In an event, I remember the first book it took me longer to read through: Dickens’ Great Expectations. I loved the book; it just took me forever to read for some reason, and it’s been like that ever since.

Both cars continue to hum along without a hitch. They both need cleaning, inside and out, though; they’re filthy. Between the mist that’s been hanging in the air the past few days, not washing away anything, but just causing grime to be stuck to the cars, and the bird population explosion in our yard over the past month or so (they seem to consider the cars worthy targets), the cars have just been in a bad way. I feel for the Minkevan particularly; it doesn’t live in the garage at the moment, so it just seems to stare longingly at the E34 in the garage every night, wishing it could be inside too. Needs some love. Thankfully, both cars engines are in good shape—they both recently had oil changes, the Minkevan with some good ol’ dino 5W-30, and the E34 got a new formula: I’m trying Castrol Syntec 5W-50 instead of the usual Mobil 1. The lifter tick at idle drives me up a wall, and it’s still present (albeit softer) after the oil change. I’m going to have to try some MMO, I do believe.

When learning a new answer in her catechism, if she doesn’t quite remember what she’s supposed to say but needs a hint, she’ll tilt her head ever so slightly, squint her eyes and say, in a cute, shy voice, “Wha’s that say?”

Kills me.

Longing for the beach today. Or the mountains. Actually, I’d settle for just rain. Something different. We’re visiting my parents next weekend, so that’ll be a nice change of scenery, among other things. We’ve been so house-focused over the course of the past 6 months or so; I think we need some distance to help establish perspective, and to help us keep from getting burned out. I’m looking forward to the feeling of “coming back” to our house, driving up the cul-de-sac and having it come into view. That’ll be nice.

Speaking of nice things about the house, here are a few:

1. It is, apparently, under the GSO approach flight path, like the old house. Regional jets routinely scurry overhead, and on Saturday afternoon, I saw the unmistakable silhouette of a Citation X. It’s near the practice areas of several local airports, too, so there’s always something up there.
2. No power lines. I realized yesterday whilst mowing the yard that they’re all buried. Very nice.
3. Ridiculously easy yard to take care of. Big, healthy rectangle of grass in the backyard, no maintenance trees and bushes. Only the side yard needs occasional tending, and that’s very manageable.
4. The crest of the lot. Love, love, love this. Drainage is ideal and the house is very well situated—but not “exposed” or too prominent. The two trees in the front yard help with that
5. Normalcy. After the adventure that was the old house (as grateful as we continue to be for it), it’s refreshing to be in a house with normal studs and drywall, normal doors and windows, and normal squared-up dimensions between things. That isn’t to say some things aren’t off, but they’re the exception rather than the rule.

Question of the day: Should we name our house? Would that be pretentious? Thinking of house-related words for the name of the post immediately brought to mind the names of some of the houses in P&P: Longbourn, Netherfield, Pemberley, and so on. It would be nice to be able to tell the kids, in returning from an errand, “Okay, now we’re going back to Such-and-Such,” instead of simply, “Okay, now we’re going back to the house.” But maybe it’s too much.

So, ever since I saw Back to the Future Part II I’ve wracked my brain trying to figure this out so I could build my own flying DeLorean. True story.

The first thought in my then-11-year-old mind was to design the wheels (inside the tires) of the car as fans and articulate them so they could pivot down on command, at which point they would spin up, blowing air downward, which would levitate the car, similar to a helicopter or hovercraft. The problems with that scenario: I had no concept of AWD at that point, the power-to-weight ratio would be totally out of whack (i.e. there’s no way for four little fans to blow enough air to levitate a car), the issue of transitioning between one state and another, and it’s not a true anti-gravity device.

My second idea involved electron resonance. I did some research and discovered that if you can get any atom’s electrons to spin, you can affect them with magnetism. The idea would be to have some kind of “electron resonance gun” at the center of a magnetized, doughnut-shaped plate of metal which would then push away the magnetized atoms, creating an action-reaction effect, pushing the gun-and-plate assembly upward. Unfortunately, this idea has a number of problems as well: I’ve never been sure of the energy required to create resonance (but I’ve been told it’s unmanageably large), I’m unsure of the whole principle of the thing in the first place, more power-to-weight ratio uncertainties, the question of would the magnetism just push away the electrons and not the whole atom (ionize the atoms, in other words), and again, it’s not a true anti-gravity device.

Lately, I’ve started to ponder true anti-gravity. I have a pet theory that quantum field theory is barking up the wrong tree vis-à-vis a TOE and that high-dimensional physics is where it’s at, regardless of whether or not we can observe said dimensions. That said, I believe the hypothetical “graviton” particle doesn’t exist, and that gravity, light, higher dimensions and mass are inextricably linked. So there’s no hope of creating an “anti-graviton” to counteract the effects of gravity. The universe, in my estimation, just isn’t put together that way.

That said, if we visualize space as a two-dimensional grid, and that masses create depressions, or wells, in the grid, what we need is for something to create an “upward dimple” in the grid, an “anti-well,” so to speak. That would seem to imply something with the theoretical property of negative mass. In theory, if you’re, say, standing on the Earth, holding an object with a negative mass equal to your positive mass, you would “appear” to the Earth’s mass to have zero mass, and thus there would be no attraction. Spacetime would be flat at that location, and you would levitate.

The problem is creating, containing and using negative mass. As I mentioned above, I believe gravity, mass and light/energy are all linked in higher dimensions, light in particular simply being a “ripple” of spacetime in a higher-dimensional plane. I think if we understood light better, and its relationship to matter and spacetime, it would better illuminate (pun intended) the problem of negative mass and by extension, anti-gravity.

Been talking with Aaron more lately. I’m ashamed to say I’ve let our friendship languish over the years, shades of what happened when I was in college during his final year of high school and we didn’t see each other much, except that this time the distance is much greater and our respective activity levels are much higher. But while it may be more difficult for us to casually get together and play tennis and shoot the breeze like we used to, there are definitely many means of communication I can avail myself of, ones that I haven’t used, sadly.

But lately our friendship has been picking up a bit. He’s decided to get back into tinkering with cars, which naturally opens up a huge common ground for us to talk about. A couple of months ago, he bought a 2nd-generation RX-7 (a blue example of the type was his first car), fixed it up and flipped it, and subsequently purchased his dream car: a 3rd-generation RX-7.

While it’s not necessarily my dream car, it’s certainly in the top five, and it’s a car he and I have lusted after for years. He got a good deal on the car he bought, but it was in particularly poor condition, so he’s got his work cut out for him in terms of restoring it. It definitely gives us something to talk about, though. And of course, it’s not that we couldn’t (or shouldn’t) talk about other, more “weighty” things, but having a conversational point-of-entry definitely greases the wheels, so to speak.

I’ve been trying to write a bit more lately, too. Any time I find myself in the position of not having written consistently for a while and trying to pick back up, I inevitably ponder the “scope” of my journal, how long it’s lasted, the memories it contains, and so on. And between thinking about that and musings on the “resumption” of my friendship with Aaron, there’s been a convergence of sorts between the areas. That is to say, my journal does contain a wealth of memory; however, it only goes back so far, to December 2000, and there are many gaps and fits and starts. Friends like Aaron, who have known me for ages, “contain” memories of their own, and provide a link to my past just as strong as, and that reaches farther back than my journal does. It’s almost like the act of having friends fleshes us out an individuals, connects us with our past and illuminates our present through all those “remember whens” we share when we converse. There are so many details he recalls that I’ve forgotten, or never noticed about events we both witnessed, and the same is true of me for him.

Of course, friendship accomplishes many things besides just allowing us to reminisce. But for me, the recent ruminations do provide a sort of “grounding” for the idea of having “history” with someone. It’s not such an ethereal concept any more, and I realize its importance in light of my need to be tethered in time. There are few things more unsettling to me than the thought of being “weightless in time,” of losing my bearings with respect to my past (good and bad events alike), of falling off the slope I’ve climbed so far, through my 32 years of life. So among a myriad of other ways, I’m tremendously grateful for friendship in that.