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Tuesday, July 24, 2007

Reasons to Live

I'm happy to report, dear reader, that Santa Cruz did not entice me to stay longer than it took me to buy a t-shirt, take a picture, and eat a burger. However, I was surprised to realize that Santa Cruz is only ten minutes away from me doing this:

That's my foot in a real river. Again, I had to ask myself, "When was the last time I did this?" This time, I couldn't remember. Not since Asheville, and Asheville doesn't even have these:

I'm speaking of the redwoods, not Jim, but speaking of Jim, we ended up in the Henry Cowell Redwoods State Park because Jim claimed he'd never seen a redwood before. Upon seeing one, however, he noted that, in fact, he had seen them before in New Zealand. Did you know they took California Redwoods over to New Zealand? Fascinating.

When I have moments of wondering where all the time went and what the hell I'm doing on this planet, I tend to look backwards for some meaningful thread that connects what seem to be incongruous stages of my life. The other day, a friend of mine sent me a link to a poll aimed at determining the most annoying liberal arts school. Bard (and every other school I applied to) was, of course, on the list. It inspired me to dig up a link to the speech that Salman Rushdie gave at my graduation. Here's an excerpt from the end:

It is men and women who have made the world, and they have made it in spite of their gods. The message of the myths is not the one the gods would have us learn - that we should behave ourselves and know our place - but its exact opposite. It is that we must be guided by our natures. Our worst natures can, it’s true, be arrogant, venal, corrupt, or selfish; but in our best selves, we - that is, you - can and will be joyous, adventurous, cheeky, creative, inquisitive, demanding, competitive, loving, and defiant.

The whole speech can be found here. I was impressed to see that this posting of the speech was very recent. I was also impressed to see that the speech didn't make me feel nostalgic or regretful. It continues to inspire me. I'll admit that the fact that this speech was written for me and less then 200 other people gives it some additional weight. I place a lot of importance on personal connections to things.

Speaking of which, the Yeah Yeah Yeahs' Is Is EP was released today. You'll recognize the songs from shows. So they're not all brand spanking new songs. When's the last time you released a record, huh?

Labels: bard, burgers, music, Santa Cruz