The Journey of Becoming

I had a singular experience a few days ago. I was standing next to a piano in the living room of a ginormous, vintage home in the Avenues, talking to an extraordinarily talented Asian-American about how to make good music. We were singing and playing and pouring ourselves over pages of sheet music, attempting to prepare ourselves for an upcoming concert we'd be participating in at the U of U later this next month. Spit was flying all over the room as my accompanist, voice teacher, and I were singing, discussing, annotating, marking, crossing-out, pointing, clapping, dancing, and dissecting our way through over 100 pages of music all in the attempt of making something that someone would enjoy and remember. Notes and chords were hovering over everyone in the room like a thick fog, and Italian maxims like poco ritardando and adagio were practically falling from the sky. As my accompanist and I talked about where the music was going and where the musical climaxes may be, he said something that struck me.

"See Spencer, this is what you do in the music department." He of course was referring to college. "We're past plunking out parts on a piano. Now we become artists." It was exhilarating, even if it was a far cry from Mozart or Brahms, James Taylor or Sting, or Steeley Dan. A feeling that keeps me coming back to the piano when I don't play, or singing when my musical ear has checked out. Yes, President Uchtdorf, creation is what it's all about. There's something about making music that is so fundamental to life; even the musically disabled among us hum in their spare time. To those who know me, a cheekbone-lifting, eyebrow-raising, larynx-monitoring, chin-checking, soft pallet-policing, diaphragm-expanding, posture-correcting Spencer conjures up no strange picture. And I guess that's because we are all made of the very things that empower us. What is man? Blood, water, Spirit, energy, matter, love, and music. A perfect blending of elements to create the offspring of Deity; a child of God.

Needless to say, I left the house feeling pretty good. It's a feeling similar to leaving the gym after a good workout or even writing a fun blog; improving yourself or your talents is enjoyable, and you're always satisfied the finished product.

On this same vein but a bit removed from the music scene, our family has committed itself to running the Ragnar next year. Talk about a quest for improvement. This race alone has grown to represent a positive change in each person's life individually and in our family's collectively. The scene started innocently enough: a cool, summer's night and a congregation of family members sitting in a circle, each with his own red, plastic cup of Coke. We had been cracking jokes all night. I love that about my family; we all have the same sense of humor and we're all funny as hell. The day had been nice and we were all enjoying each other's company; a luxury that more or less remains elusive due to the fact that we're scattered all around the country. There had been scattered talks about getting together more often and then Eric dropped the bomb on us. In hopes that this would resurrect our annual family reunions and bring us closer together, he proposed that we run the marathon. I was gung ho from the beginning; others, not so much. But we decided to give it a go and the rest is history, and future. I have entered upon a quest of self-improvement to fight and overcome the Ragnar (which honestly sounds like Trogdor's temperamental uncle). It'll take all year and hopefully when all is said and done, I'll have created a new and better me.

What a time we live in. All roads are open, and all resources available. Who knows what the future holds; as a shot in the dark it waits for us. But the journey is in the making of yourself. Walking around the college campus today has taught me one thing about education and desires, the world and self. I think it dawned on me as I saw a couple trying too hard to fit a cliche: if we spend our whole lives trying to find ourselves, we'll miss our chance to be ourselves. We can be constantly improving and creating a better self, but we must know who that "self" is first or all we're doing is flying blind. Michelangelo once said in so many words when asked why he just spent hours staring at a block of marble "I have found the statue inside, now I'm just figuring out how to free it." So too, are we. With all that we make, build, or break (to use Bono's language) so becomes us.

"The opposite of War is not Peace, it's Creation." -- Jonathan Larson

Learning from Lavender

On Saturday I saw a woman; well, two women actually. They were standing calf-deep in a spiral maze of Lavender. Now, I concede that seeing women standing in flower beds is not a rarity, even for a borderline hermit like me. I mean, I'm sure you saw one today; but these women were different. My Dad's birthday was the next day and my mother had been lobbying for quite a while to go to the Lavender Festival in Mona, Utah which falls on or around my Father's big day each year. The festival starts off with a 5k run which ends in a sort of "Floral Jamboree" held on a farm nestled between the mountains where anyone and everyone come to celebrate all things purple. The park, looking like the pleasant, yet somewhat derelict spawn of Wheeler Farm and the set of "A Knight's Tale" was crawling and teeming with excited and chatty women, towing their hyperactive children in one hand and their dazed and seemingly Valium-riddled husbands in the other. The festival boasted a "you make it, you take it" policy on their Lavender wreaths, bouquets, and bath salts -- each station outfitted with all the garden tools and purple foliage your heart could desire. To the north a neglected bluegrass band, and to the west (in my dad's opinion) what looked like the Elders' quorum's solution for those poor Novocaine-induced husbands - a sort of mock western ghost town complete with a High Noon shootout by Lavender-garbed buckaroos.

As I took a look around at the Lavender visage that lay before me, I did what any other self-respecting twenty-one year old man would do: I retreated behind my Aviator sunglasses and decided to tackle this monster on my own without the accompaniment of my parents who at the moment were very intrigued by the chamomile bushes. I snatched my Droid out of my pocket and took some photos of the pond, the stalks, and the blacksmith's shop. There was a fairy walking around nearby and everywhere you looked you could see overweight grandmas clutching their bouquets of Lavender stems. The sun was brutal as I made my way to the edge of the park, past the jousting range and through a mock-up sort of village.

On the far end of the festival I saw a sign: "The Lavender Labyrinth." The sign went on to describe how the labyrinth was used in many eastern cultures to symbolize one's path through life; completely unique from any other's and possessive of relaxing and soothing properties. I stared for a while at the maze, which was giving off a vibe reminiscent of the Salt Lake's "Spiral Jetty." Two women not too far off were gazing at the labyrinth intently; they looked like "true believers." Feeling somewhat tired and in need of some aroma therapy I started off into the maze.

I enjoyed the feeling of the Lavender on my calves and liked seeing the bees flying around pollinating the flowers. The two women were following me at their own speeds, stopping to pick a sprig and smell it, or putting their arms out to feel their fingers glide across the tops of the Lavender. Without really recognizing it I started to do it as well. Once I reached the center of the labyrinth I felt pretty relaxed and took a moment to enjoy my surroundings: rolling hills and blue skies, with buffalo romping around in a pen just a little bit further down the fence; a real Larry McMurtry dream. My two companions were making a steady orbit around my position as they made their way through the labyrinth and having reached me, stopped to chat a little.

"I've never made this walk when all the Lavender is in bloom," one said.

--"What, really?" I thought. "Why would you walk this at any other time? You'd just be walking circles in a bunch of weeds..."

"Me neither," the second replied. "The flowers are beautiful this year." For no apparent reason I decided to say something to them.

"It's nice out today, isn't it?" I said lamely. The first woman rounded in my direction.

"Oh you don't work here?" she answered. I looked around me. I was used to being mistaken as store employees on my mission because of my name tag but today I was just wearing some cargo shorts and a tweed hat.

"No..." I replied slowly.

"Oh well, did you find anything in the Labyrinth? You know what it means right?"

"Well, I read the sign..."

"Oh yeah, well great then. Because this is supposed to be like, your journey through life and you're supposed to like, find yourself and learn about your existence and..." She trailed off. Perhaps she realized how silly she sounded.

We chatted a minute about being in the center of the Labyrinth and I offered to let them take my place and enjoy the culmination of their path which they did after trying to convince me that I could stay longer if I required it. As I started walking backwards now through the maze I looked at the second, more quiet woman standing in the center. She had her hands crossed over her chest like she was lying in a casket and her eyes were closed. She was obviously finding Nirvana or something in the Lavender. As I stared at her I had a thought which all at once made me envy her. She's found herself. She knows where she's at and where she's going. Lavender or not, this woman knows who she is.

I took off my sunglasses and shed the Joe Cool attitude. As I stood in the maze I realized that like a schooner on the ocean I was lost, and had been since returning from my mission. Life had lost it's familiar color when I had come home and like a ship docked in the Panama Canal, I was in a way station of my life; always waiting for the next gate to open that would take me from mission to life, from life to college, and so on. True a path had been laid before my feet, but where it would lead me or how it would be, I couldn't say; life had become a real shot in the dark. And yet looking at this woman in the middle of the maze I could see that for at least one moment in time everything in her world had found it's center.

The day crept on and we had time to pull some flowers, raid the gift shop, and get sunburned and yet my mind always returned to the woman. What would it take? It had to be simple. For her, all it took was a lame maze of knee-high Lavender. I figured that while I was on the search I would start this blog to give my thoughts a sounding board and perhaps help me reach my center along the way.

As we pulled out of the festival I felt a tinge of gratitude for what the Lavender taught me that day. The journey for self starts simply and ends simply, until the winds blow or the stars twinkle and our lives change once more and demand that we enter the Labyrinth again, always in search for what matters most; ourselves.

Dear Reader, good luck.

Intro...

Well, it happened.

I can't say I ever really thought it would, but true to form what first I shunned and procrastinated, I have now conceded to, and I'm sure in turn, will come to embrace. Yes, like the many before me I have staked out my spot on this Virtual Everest of Internet blogging and set up camp.

My reasoning is simple. For once, I feel like I have something to say. It's quite a novel revelation -- one that's managed to stay aloof for most of my life. I'm sure this is the reason I don't keep a journal, and yet I've found (especially after writing home every week from the mission field for two years) that once you have someone to write for, you find you have something to write. Every thought becomes a story and every experience, an epic; and before you know it you've said something of substance. So often I have felt like the commentary running through my mind was nothing more but mental excretion, just the runoff from some cerebral spring that should be kept close to the chest and out of other people's heads. In a way I still believe this. I'm sure that most blogs on our mountain are just that -- Mind Fodder; a pile of mental manure from people who take themselves too seriously and who really believe that what they write will become the stuff of legends, or at least the fulfillment of some child's Make a Wish Foundation request. But who can blame them? With People Magazine subscriptions being filled out every day we are left with the old adage ringing in our ears, that one man's trash really can be another man's treasure.

But if we can step away from the cynical for just a moment and leave aside the never-ending stream of bathroom puns, I think blogging introduces something that is altogether therapeutic, if not liberating. The chance to be heard. The desire to make one's thoughts known have been the catalyst for most people's actions since Adam. Cain said "I desire power more than family" in the slaying of his brother just as Jesus said the opposite in the completion of the Atonement; The Protester tells us how he thinks of our country when he assassinates our President, just as the Secret Service agent who jumps to take the bullet. We all need to make our presence known somehow, and I think the only desire that outweighs that more is wanting to know that our presence means something to someone else. You've asked the questions, just as I have: If I say what I feel will someone hear it? If I write what I think will someone read it? And will they care?

Maybe not, and that's why I've decided to entitle my work "A Shot in the Dark." I feel like I've got the gun in my hand with arm outstretched and one hand over my eyes with head turned away. I don't know what this is going to turn into but I might as well pull the trigger sooner rather than later. Just know dear Reader that I write for you.