This is Pouring Rain

It's been a while since last writing on here, for reasons both good and bad I suppose. The good would be school, and my ultra-decimation of the "Masters" degree from the University of Texas at Arlington. It took a miserably long 2.5 years, more patience and will-power than I ever thought I possessed, and shortened my already short hair, but I think, no, I know that it was all worth it.

The bad is my ongoing struggle with the world of love, or Love, depending on how you look at it. It's not a struggle so much as it is an endless race, a sprint, a marathon, a desperate reach for something that's been so close to my grasp only a few times. I want it more than anything, but I don't particularly know why. That sounds dumb, so let me explain.

Look back on that first person you truly felt something for. That girl with the ocean eyes. The girl whose smile melted everything you've ever felt. Anyway, remember them. And why was it that you liked them? What specifically about them made you ache, made every encounter, every glance or smile or hug or kiss special? Why did you fall for her and not the girl next to her? Why her?

And now the kick; Would you still love her today?

Was it love to start with? Or just an infatuation with a girl that showed you the slightest bit of attention? Do those ocean eyes mean anything if you don't have anything in common? Does that young love survive the transition from fantasy to reality, or does it fall into that sad chasm of "What if"?

Love is compicated. It's not as easy as it used to be, as if it ever really was. I used to be enamored by a girl in high school simply because she wrote "Hello Dan" on her graphing calculator in calculus. Why is it that today nothing moves me like that? My chest used to burn at the thought of a girl; now I have to search for that feeling. It seems like a fleeting memory, a dream that fell away as the eyes opened. I want to be young and feel that for someone again. I miss the simplicity of love.

Instead we're treated with increasing complexity, boundaries, games, competition, and technology. People get married not because they love each other, but because all of their friends are married and they think that they're behind in some family-raising race. I won't do that, but I envy that they at least have a shoulder to lean on now and then.

I'm also a bit concerned about my friends. None of them particularly interest me anymore, which is a terrible thing to say, but it's true. They're one-dimensional, stuck in the same plane that they'll always be stuck in, but they're happy there. And I think that's what gets me more than anything... I know that I'm made for something great, and I know that it'll be in architecture. And that truly does make me happy, as I love my job with a passion. But I want that feeling for everyone and it just isn't there. I don't know if I've just hit upon a hidden vein of society, or if my friends truly are just different than me.

They work to be with the people they love. I love to be with my work. Maybe that's what's wrong with me.

Sorry for the depressing post. I've been in a strange mood as of late. More later.

D

Gone Away

There's nothing beautiful about me. I'm not a film star beauty, or center photograph. My name won't be blazed across the screen, nor will it even be swooned over. I've come to accept that lately, and I'm alright with it. There is something to be said about inner beauty, but it's also abundantly clear that only ugly people say things like that.

The thing is that I see beauty all around me and I feel like I don't belong to it. There are some extraordinarily beautiful things in this life, things that take your breath away and make you appreciate every second you have with them, and all you want to do when you find them is be with them and hold them and claim them as your own.

And I think there's the problem. What gives anyone the right to claim anything else as theirs? I find it a struggle to call my apartment mine because it's not only shared with two other guys, but it's a lease, a temporary roof over my head that may or may not be broken into while I stay here. It's just stuff, it has no value. But beauty... Beauty alone holds something that everybody craves, everybody desires. It's an indescribable quality that makes people do crazy things and turns brother against brother. I couldn't tell you what makes something beautiful, but I could damn well point it out to you.

Ferraris are beautiful, but I don't know why. A song can be beautiful, even though you can't see it. Books can describe it, and poetry and mimic it, but it's easily found in a font flourish. Architecture strives for it and only rarely succeeds. But above all, women hold the very lock on beauty, for which I cannot begin to hope for a key to.

There are some girls I've met, walked past, seen from a distance, that just floor me and I couldn't begin to describe why. Is it the cut of their hair or the flow of their cheek? The rise of their breast or the way cloth itself is transformed into liquid on their shoulders? I don't know. But I've been noticing it more and more lately, for whatever reason. I've been down in the dumps for a couple days, feeling sorry for myself and generally just plodding along without much hope of change. But in those couple of days I've been stopped in my tracks more than once by a random girl, a stunning vision that literally makes the world seem to stop and take note.

Maybe I just haven't noticed it before, being so set in my ways or whatever you want to call it, but the world is full of beauty and love. It's just a matter of holding on to it when it's placed in your hand. I've dropped it twice now, and I promise I won't do it again.

Last Year

I'm going tonight because I'm annoyed. I'm annoyed and frustrated and frankly pissed off about some things and this happens to be my only outlet, even if it's only read by myself on nights when I've got nothing else to do. I need some escape from this stuff, and given the fact that 90% of the people I talk to on a daily basis are either arrogant or ignorant, I can't help but feel like the cold precision of text is the best way to go.

Last summer I met a girl. Or rather, this girl met me. Through a religious schedule of Thursday lunch meetings between me and architecture friends of mine, I was eventually introduced to her. We'll call her Susan because that's not her name and I don't know anyone called Susan. Anyway, through a series of escalatingly awesome meetings and get togethers, I developed strong feelings for this girl and really enjoyed spending just about every moment I could with her. It culminated on a night that will forever be etched in my brain as an exercise in the virtues of right and wrong, good and bad decisions. Let me explain.

Susan and I and my roommate went out for ice cream one night, then margaritas, then back to our place to watch a movie. Susan sat next to me, I poked Susan in the foot, and then 10 minutes later she was cuddled up next to me, her head on a pillow on my lap, holding my hand and letting me play with her hair as we watched 500 Days of Summer (sadly appropriate now that I think about it). Anyway, she fell asleep there, I woke her up later, and then drove her home (something like 6 am), but not after she made some glaringly obvious comments about a bed and about me in it.

Try as I might, I'm not a bad guy. I'm not going to take advantage of anyone, especially a dead-tired girl who may have had a few too many margaritas. I'm just not programmed like that, and I never will be. I drove her home, hugged her like she was going away, and then went home to sleep. Which I couldn't. I was thinking about too much. This girl, that I just about adored at that point, basically just confirmed everything that I was wondering; That she liked me just as much as I did her. The next day I was a complete mess, contradicting myself, second guessing everything that had happened, and generally not believing that last night actually happened. Until she texted me from the mall with some pictures of a t-shirt she thought I would find funny. And then found an article on Nicolas Cage online that she thought I'd like. And just to say that she enjoyed last night as much as I did.

I was in heaven. I literally could not be happier. I freaking owned everything I touched at work, not even batting an eye when more work was piled on because there wasn't a thing in the world that could keep me down. I knew that something was clicking into place, that the wheel of God was slowly turning that next cog and life was moving on from the hum-drum existence that I was before driving myself into. I was unstoppable. I had Susan.

And then I didn't. She had a boyfriend that she somehow forgot to mention. She was moving to the other side of the country in 3 weeks. She had me wrapped around her little finger, and she knew it. I was screwed before I even got started.

Anyway, she left. I was sad. She never got in touch with me again, though she swore she would when she left. I text her every national holiday, using it as an excuse to somehow stay in contact with this magical girl I held for a night. She replies, but it's always short and sweet, never saying anything more than familiarities.

This was last July.

I was sad for a long time about it, all the way until Valentine's Day when I understood that nothing was there, that she was just looking for attention and I was an easy supplier of that. So I didn't contact her after that, and haven't since. She slowly began to fade from memory, becoming just an image, an idea that I once had, not a solid thing that I once held in my arms. I remember the thought of her, not the soul.

And then today happened. I didn't go to church today (Easter), and I haven't really since Susan left. I believe in God, and understand that my life would not be anything if it wasn't for Him to guide me in the right direction, but I couldn't figure out why on earth He would show me Susan. What purpose did it serve? Why was I shown something that I wanted so much, only to have it snatched away and corrupted? There didn't seem any logical reason for it, so I got angry about it, frustrated at God and His confusing ways of doing things. Susan was perfect and good and I was so happy, but then it was taken from me, and I revolted against the thing that I've done my whole life; Trust in God. Why should I do things to praise you when I get hurt like that? I know it was for a reason, I just want to know what that reason is. I'm not denying that you're Lord, I'm just objecting to suffering when I've done nothing wrong.

I have these conversations, these angry outbursts at God about life, and I'm not happy about them. I'm embarrassed. My Dad is a pastor and I'm supposed to be a devout follower, never straying from the path because I've not only got one Father guiding me, I've got two. But I can't sometimes. I can't be dealt blow after blow, opportunity and hope dangled in front of me like a horse with carrot. I've got growing to do, I know that, but it hurts.

Anyway, today happened. I didn't go to church and I'd been thinking about it all the week prior. I should go. I should go. I should go. And then I didn't. I don't know why I didn't, I'm just out of the habit I suppose. I felt bad about it, as I should have, but, as with everything that isn't an immediate sensation, I gradually forgot about it as the day wore on. I sketched some stuff for school. I listened to music. I watched the storm outside. I checked Facebook.

And that's where it came from. I was joking around with a friend on Facebook and I happened to glance to the right of the screen. Up in the top right was a little box with a picture, a picture of a girl that looked awfully familiar. A girl that I admit I searched for more than a few times on Facebook, hoping to keep in contact with her once she left. I couldn't find her however because she keeps the profile super secret and only you can only be friends with her if she invites you. And that girl was Susan. There she was, smiling back at me from a tiny box on a screen. I clicked her name, anxious and nervous and mad all at once, and was taken to her profile, where I clicked through some of her photos and felt my heart crash through my stomach.

I closed the computer and paced around for a while, arguing and asking God why. Because I didn't go to church? Because I haven't been in a long time? Why would you bring her up again after 9 months of silence? I searched for her for days when she left, trying to find any scrap of information about the girl, to come up with absolutely nothing. Not a character, not a note about her anywhere. I was beginning to think that I'd just made her up and then this happens. On Easter.

Why?

The proverbial question I'll be asking right up until the day I die.

Now I'll be thinking about her constantly again, and that doesn't solve anything, nor does it really make me feel all that much better about life. There's no point dwelling on something lost, but this one was hard to forget. There are certain people that stick with you, that make such an impression that they become a part of you. There are only two or three people I can say that about in my life, two or three individuals that have made me a part of who I am today. I don't know if Susan was one. I'm not allowed to know the answer apparently.

Thanks for listening, internet. You never fail to provide an outlet for bad ideas.

Grandma Hazel

For about the past week or so, my Mum has been back home in England, initially just for a bit of a vacation from the hectic Texas schedule, but it seems that she's become more of a caretaker for my only remaining grandparent, my Grandma Hazel. She's really not doing well, and it seems like she might not be around too much longer, as horrible as that is to say out loud. My Dad is going over there on Wednesday, and the last time he dropped everything like this, I lost my Granddad. I'm worried and sad.

One of the worse parts about moving over here when I was so little was my immediate separation from my extended family. My Mum's dad died when I was only a little boy, so I never really knew him, although from the stories I've heard he was a lot like me. My Mum's mum, my Nanna, died while I was living in Pittsburgh. From what I remember, she was a tough lady, but one of the main things I remember about her was her laugh. She used to do things that would annoy my Mum to no end, and when things boiled over and my Mum ended up in tears, Nanna would give the softest little chuckle, not because anything was funny but it was almost as if she'd promised herself to never get to that point again, but she always ended up there. I didn't know her very well.

My Dad's side of the family I know a lot better, as they were around more when I was young. My Granddad was a short man with white hair and the funniest laugh I can remember. He'd stick his tongue out and cross his eyes and I thought that that was the greatest thing ever. He'd put on horrifically bad magic productions for me and my brother, which 90% of the time would end up with all three of us rolling on the floor together, crying from laughter. He was an avid fire-builder, which explains my undying fascination with the flame, and my fondest memories of his house are of throwing foreign objects into the burning fireplace in the living room. Granddad would usually supply this contraband sneakily under the table. I loved him a lot, although I'm sure I didn't tell him that enough.

My Grandma is more of an enigma to me. She's the quintessential English Grandma. If I told you to think of what a little old English Grandma looked like, you'd think of what my Grandma looks like. She's a bit round from being the best cook ever. She's overtly nice and doesn't get up in arms about anything, even when a couple of young lads accidentally kicked a football clean through the kitchen window. I cried after I did that and she gave me a chocolate bar and laughed. I love her a lot, but I'm unsure how to tell her because it's not a word that we throw around lightly at the Trafford household.

Both of my Granddads fought in World War Two, in the Royal Air Force. My Dad's Dad was shot while rescuing soldiers and earned one of the highest honors given in Britain. They were both pilots and saw things I'm sure that I could not begin to fathom. It was a richer generation back then, and the world was not as small.

I don't know a lot about all my grandparents, except that they helped mold me into who I am today. I'd like to know everything, but I think that everything would be too much for me to handle. I hope one day I can tell stories to my Grandchildren about things that I've accomplished, and maybe put on a lousy magic show or two.

Cloud Strife

There's something to be said about the days of old, our youthful existence revolving around dragon slayings, ancient curses, and what could be lurking through the threshold of that impossibly large door down the hall. There's almost a romantic quality to the mind of a child, the way that reality has yet to be fully established and imagination can take care of the things we're yet to understand. How do cars work? Little mice on wheels. What are clouds made of? Cotton candy. Why? Why not.

I occasionally have wondered about this before, and why the world we live in doesn't seem to be as magical as it once was. Every day comes and goes as the last did, with the occasional blip in the rhythm of monotony. Where did the wonder go? Why does everything need to have a logical explanation? I used to think that there really was a Land of Giants somewhere when I was little. And that Pennsylvania was where vampires came from. And I wasn't necessarily wrong about that, but that's besides the point. I just feel like something beautiful gets lost in the translation from child to adult. I try and hold on to it, and I can see glimpses of it sometimes, but it seems to be a fleeting luxury.

There's a blog I read online that mostly deals with music called Paste. It's pretty standard stuff about indie bands and whatnot, but lately they've been doing this repeating segment on a grown man's journey through one of the greatest videogames of our generation; Final Fantasy 7 on the original Playstation. Throughout the journey, he keeps writing to a fellow journalist (who has already played the game and loves it) about his experience with the game and how he thinks it stacks up with the mighty praise that the game has gathered over the years. And he seems, through the magic of polygons and badly translated text, to have stumbled upon this mystery of youth that I've been pondering for a while. Here's a little snippet from the article:

"So when you suggest that that Final Fantasy VII could not, then or now, be made in the west, I'd say that if anything, it's less likely now. I'm afraid that fact suggests that the reason this game so captures peoples' hearts and spirits is that its developers didn't have the technology required to cut our imaginations out of the equation entirely, else they would have. I only draw that conclusion because over the last ten years, Square's (and many other developers') designers have finally gained the technology required to make their wildest concept art into a million-polygon reality, and sure enough, they have allowed their own imaginations to take center stage while pushing ours aside without a second thought. Perhaps that means that no one has "forgotten" about imagination at all; they simply no longer need to rely on it."


After reading a few of these articles, I got the itch to play the game myself, so being the ardent gamer and techno-dude that I am, I found an emulator online and threw in my copy of FFVII that I still have lying around. Yes, I still have some awesome PS1 games lying around. Hush. Anyway, I was expecting an enjoyable time, given that I've played the game to varying points throughout the years and loved every minute of it, but I wasn't really expecting a full-blown switch in the way I thought about games, and in turn, my youth.

The game, for those unlucky enough to have missed out, is an RPG (role-playing game) out of Japan about a spiky-haired kid saving the world. Standard stuff really, and the story's not that important for my argument. The graphics are supremely lacking compared to today's standards, but I think that's what makes it so intriguing. I can't really see this guy's face, so I have to make it up and give him an identity that might differ from what the developer thought I would. I don't understand what's happening here, so I invent an activity. And it somehow all works. It's like playing a book. That's the simplest way I know how to describe it.

Today's games are so photo-realistic that you're not able to flex anything in your mind, you're just pressing buttons in a pre-defined world, already planned, mapped, and fleshed out for you. But in the older games, the ones so many people hold dear to their hearts, we were forced to use our imagination to fill in the blanks made by developers due to lack of technology. Mario looks like a blue and red blob, but I knew him through and through. Link, the wordless hero from Zelda, battles countless ridiculous monsters in a desert with a sword that shoots more swords, and that wouldn't mean anything unless I made up a reason for him to be doing that. Games used to be dots on a map, milestones that the player drew the lines between. Now they're fully mapped out movies and we're just along for the ride.

And this all leads back to imagination. We loose that childlike wonder because the world explains itself after a while. We understand the rhythms and reasons for things, and we're not forced to connect and create "between the dots" like we did as children. I like to think of myself as a big kid, and I'm pretty sure I'll never fully grow up because I don't see the point of being so serious all the time. There's a certain enjoyment and undying happiness that comes from thinking that zombies might attack tomorrow. Or that, despite years of failure, somehow every time I get a new pair of shoes I can run faster and jump higher. I swear I can.... Anyway, I'm just saying that despite the perks of being on top of the real world (money, knowledge, general sanity), it's also a good thing to encourage imagination and suspended reality. Because I enjoy playing blocky games about spiky-haired kids trying to save the world rather than games about doing my taxes.

Paper Space

I've been under the impression lately that the past 8 months or so have been a test of my endurance / patience / ambition / and general manliness. There's been highs and lows yes, but above all there's been a uncanny nonchalance about the way that I feel to everything. And I'm not sure if that's a great thing or not... I still laugh and try daily to make everyone around me feel better than they did before I arrived, but there's something almost routine about it now. I'm finding myself getting tired of the jokes I'm telling, like even they have lost their way during this troubling time, gone to some proverbial funnier place than I.

It's not to say that my emotions and feelings aren't firing, it's just that I don't feel things as passionately as I once did. Architecture remains, and will always, the one constant in my life (mortally speaking) and I do still get excited about that, but I'm finding that my relationships with people are becoming more and more stale, dull, and vanilla. There was a time in my life where I could count my friends on one hand, and I knew everything about them, from their favorite color to their greatest fears. And I truly considered them friends, and would trust them to the ends of the earth. But now, in this age of quantity and digital contest, I find that I know a lot of people, but not a lot about anyone. Work colleagues are not the same as friends. School buddies, once held in regard higher than all in my mind, have now become 3-times-a-week acquaintances. I suppose this is growing up, but it feels like more than that.

I'm not worried about a de-concentration of my friends, I'm worried that I don't care about them. A sad point in this past 8 months has been the leaving of a few of my close friends that I enjoyed hanging out with and going to movies and such with. We had a final lunch together at a nice restaurant and talked about the future and such. And at that table I thought to myself, as if I hadn't really realized it before, "I'm never going to see these people ever again." And in my mind I knew that that was sad, and that I should feel that about the situation. But I didn't feel anything. And that's the part that's worrying me. I sat there and ate and laughed and then when it came time to say goodbye, I said it. And that was that.

I don't know if I've watched too many movies to believe that every goodbye should be accompanied by stirring music and tears, but neither struck me that day, nor any of the following days. I'm becoming a rock, I suppose.

Because a rock feels no pain.

There were times when saying goodbye to someone was the end of days to me. I worried about it for weeks ahead of time and when it came time to say goodbye (to her), I'd be so nervous and scared that I'd make a fool out of myself. And I miss that. I miss being innocent and unbiased and pure. Emotion, be it bad or good, lets you know that you're doing something right in the world, you're moving ahead and living life, feeling everything as you go. I haven't felt anything for a while now, and I'm starting to wonder if I ever will again.

I miss you a lot.

A little read, and a lot of music

Hello again, readers of great literature and lovers of musical wonders. Or, hello to the people that have somehow wandered here by accident and really don't know what's going on. All are welcome. 

To start off with, those that know me well know that I'm infatuated with music of every sort. Be it indie, folk, rock, rap, not so much country, and even classical, I can't seem to get enough. If you sat me in a room with nothing but a record player, some headphones, and a decent selection of music, you'd more than likely never hear from me again. There's something about the connection that music makes with my brain that captivates me and draws me ever closer, like I've found some intimate and personal story within this song that I've always known, but I've never been able to release. It's something I've learned to appreciate and really almost rely upon; An emotional connection to an invisible thing. 

As little as 6 months ago, something happened to me that I'll inevitably discuss on here one day, but for now I'll just say that it made me question a lot of things that I've been taking for granted, or better yet, things that I've been blindly following for my entire life. I questioned my God and why He would show me this only to take it away. I came to doubt my very belief in love, the very essence of what I've wanted from the day of my birth, and if it had just become something that I'd made up in my mind, a cheap novelty to cover the fact that humans, no matter how hard we try otherwise, are only out to keep themselves warm. I was miserable and got well drunk a few nights, taking solace for a night at a time in the plastering brain-bash of a few shots. But there would always be the morning, and there'd always be the questions. Just because you forget them for a night doesn't make them go away. I tried that once before, in Italy, and the beautiful girl asked the same thing to me the next day. 

And it was in about the 2nd month of this self-induced questioning, a quarter-life-crisis if you will, that I pulled myself out to see a Sufjan Stevens concert with one of my friends. I wasn't really in the mood, nor was I that impressed with his last album, an over-the-top electro-explosion that was by and far the complete opposite of his earlier, quieter, more personal albums. But I'd bought the tickets ages ago, and my friend tagged along, making me happier with her giddiness, aglow with the thought of live music, a trait I happen to share. By the time we'd parked and walked over to the venue, we were both vibrating with excitement and I'd all but forgotten about my eternal questions. 

The next 3 hours were a blur, a fantastic blur, of music and dance and emotions so raw that they seemed to materialize in the air and take hold of everyone in that room. I was floored, mesmerized, confused as all, and loving every beat of it. And when it was finished, I felt better than I had in months, somehow cleansed by the electronic blips, healed by autotune, if a thing was even possible. 

Sufjan Stevens, once quiet poet and songwriter, transformed in front of my eyes into a living ball of energy. He danced, jumped, propped himself up on instruments, and played every note as if the very heavens above were demanding it. He had such passion for every song that, despite his complete reversal from his quiet roots, every person in the room was cheering along with him. It was magical to see someone obviously loving every second of what he was doing. And it was in that realization that I understood some of the questions I'd been having. 

Just because I don't have something does not mean that it doesn't exist. I can't see the wind, and it's not always around, but when it is I can feel it against me and understand what it can do. I can't see love, and it's not always around, but when it is I feel it with every fiber of my being and want to hold it as long as possible. She got away last summer, and it made me question why I'd been shown her in the first place. Why show me something that I want more than anything, only to have her ripped away? Maybe I'm supposed to focus on school and career before love comes into it? I'm still figuring that one out, but I'm not as bitter as I once was. Sufjan Stevens and 3 hours of beauty helped me through that. 

Here's a clip of the concert (sadly not the one I was at) of Sufjan Stevens performing Vesuvius. It's magnificent.

- Dan