Zen and Bison and Other Distractions

It's been a full week. Read on for a week in the life of me.


Yellowstone and Pocatello

Last Wednesday, I drove up to Idaho Falls, where I stayed at the parentals' place, then off to Yellowstone with Maw the next morning. The day started off weak. It took an hour to get from the park entrance past the bald eagles' nest because there's no place to pull over along that road, so people just stopped right on the road to snap photos of the big scruffy birds. Since we were getting nowhere fast anyway, we slowed down enough to grab a shot. As we worked our way into the park, the animal sightings were sparse, but as the day progressed, we found more and more. A grizzly sleeping on the mountainside, bison here and there, some elk, hunting osprey, pelicans in the distance, a black bear in a green meadow, pronghorn leaping across a field, coyote crossing the street, awkwardly adolescent-looking mule deer, baby elk along the river...it turned out to be a good day, safari-wise. The scenery was beautiful, too. I especially liked the waterfalls and the brushed metal trees on Mt Washburn.

By about 10:00 pm, we were passing Rexburg and decided to stop in for a temple photo shoot, then again in Idaho Falls. We got home around...11:15? The next morning, we drove down to Pocatello, where I tried to fix my computer while Maw edited her photos from the trip. My computer has been refusing to turn on lately, and it finally decided not to turn on for good. Fried motherboard, it appears. My laptop is way past warranty, but this happened to me last year when it was still in warranty, so I called to see if maybe just the motherboard they'd put in was somehow under warranty. They said I'm in luck because this machine is part of an "enhancement program" (AKA "we sold you a P.O.S. and want to avoid lawsuits and losing customers"), so I'm sending my laptop in again for a free replacement, hopefully with a better version. We then played some Wii and headed to Senang for lunch.


Overnighter in Layton

Then it was off to a friend's house in Layton for a get-together, complete with a new-to-me card game called "Cover Your Assets" (it was fun; I wanna play it again), watching Rat Race (which I think is always good for some laughs), and hot tubbing until the sun came up. That's right. Until the sun came up. Hey, I may be getting old, but every once in a while, I have to do something totally stupid and pointless. Except it wasn't pointless. There was some good conversation, I got to know some peops, and it's rarely pointless, in my opinion, to watch a sunrise. After that, I slept on the hammock on the lower deck after falling asleep while finishing Alex & Me. I'd love to have a house like this. Spacious, open rooms, two-level deck with hot tub, hammock, and soft deck furniture, beautiful view over the sea of treetops, 3/4 acre with an almost secluded feel like you get in densely vegetated Seattle suburbs...nice.

That afternoon, I drove on down to Sugar House Park to take a nap in the grass, and there I finally finished Alex & Me. Such a good read for someone like me who's been so interested in Alex and in Dr. Pepperburg's research for so long.


Zen and Flooring

Then I worked out at the gym and grabbed some dinner and headed over to Michael's house, where we chatted with another friend of his before driving around the avenues looking for good hiking trails to explore. We found a couple in the little canyon leading down to Memory Grove Park, but it was late, so we opted to save the actual hiking for another time.

The next morning, we went to a Zen Center just down the street from Michael's place and sat in on a lecture of sorts about the unity of human and being as a whole "human being", the oneness of all things, extinguishing dissatisfaction to experience "pure being" (which made me grin as I thought of "the ball thing" [watch I Heart Huckabees if you don't know what I'm talking about, but I don't know what it's like unedited, so borrow my edited copy if you want]). I made some observations. Every belief system, philosophy, or way of life draws people thirsty for meaning or fulfillment in their lives. It draws people who feel a lack and want to fill it. It draws people who yearn for meaning, some of whom yearn to belong to such an extent that they will put on an obviously affected demeanor, like the one who squints while facing the ceiling and showing how enlightened they're becoming, or the LDS person at the pulpit with a whispery, affected church voice that testifies to the spiritual power of what they're imparting. *yawn* Thankfully, such actors are usually the minority, in my experience. Belief systems and philosophies also draw weirdos. But there were many very "normal"-seeming people there as well. And I took some notes from the discussion and enjoyed my first encounter with meditation in this form.

I must say, when the speaker would go off about how we feel lacking, we feel something's missing, we want to be what we're not, want more money, more prestige, more beauty...people would nod and throw in comments about how they feel deeply, deeply unsatisfied with their lives and are searching to fill that void, I thought, "I think I know the feeling, but I don't feel that way. I feel like I've come to a point where I accept things as they are even while looking forward to what things may become without feeling deeply amiss that they haven't happened yet or may not happen." Obviously, that only goes so far, and I feel far from perfect, and I have stress in my life, but I just didn't identify very much with what people seemed to be saying, and there could be any of a number of explanations for my lack of identification. And as I said regarding one woman's statement that in a state of enlightenment, she regards her life as perfect, and even her mistakes are "perfect", I either disagree or I lack the framework to understand what she really meant by that. It's hard to tell sometimes, eh?

Anyway, I headed over to Tooele to help Andrew install some flooring in his dance studio, which went slowly. About an hour per foot. Yeesh. But hey, good music, good company, and lots of sugary candy made the time fly by. The next day, my wrist was super cramped from all the mallet-pounding I'd done.

Then it was back to Provo, not skipping a couple of photo ops along the way, to have dinner with the gang and a movie at Patrick's. We watched Ghost World, which was well done in many ways but was ultimately forgettable and a bit wandering for my taste. I don't recommend it, but maybe I just don't identify with it the way I'm supposed to. Apparently I'm missing something because the critics seem to love this movie. Meh.


Logan Excursion

Monday, I took care of some errands and headed up to Logan for a get-together there. Good food, good conversation, lots of fun people, and a hammock. What more could you ask for? Then we went to a friend's house to watch Slumdog Millionaire on the front lawn (it was too hot in the house). I was privileged to see the highly elusive albino-on-a-Segway heading out for his nightly excursion, along with various shady characters out and about after midnight in Logan.

Tuesday morning, still in Logan, I drove around and explored a bit, even going up the canyon a ways to take a summer picture of the waterfall I shot last Autumn, to kill some time before meeting up with Danwick and with Kregg, Isabella, and kids at The Olive Garden for lunch. It had been 5 years or so since I'd last seen my old roomie, so that was a trip.


Games and Concert in Salt Lake

About three hours later, I was on my way back to Salt Lake, where I met up with Michael and others to play another new-to-me game called Acquire, which I also enjoyed and would like to play again. ...I won, FYI.

Yesterday, I spent most of the afternoon loitering and becoming familiar with my new phone then headed, with Brittany, to Salt Lake to see Josh Ritter at the Urban Lounge. The opening act, Langhorne Slim was not good...and by that, I mean really, really bad. Borderline awful terrible. I mean, had they acted less affected and drugged up, it might've been tolerable, and I did enjoy one song (Diamonds and Gold), but after trying to give them the benefit of the doubt, I decided they were too much of a sideshow for my taste, not musical enough, not dynamic, and too obnoxiously screeching. I felt like my ears were being assaulted. During one drum solo, I stood there waiting for something to happen, and they just started playing again, and I stood there thinking, "nothing happened...where was the solo?" Josh Ritter, in contrast, was musical, dynamic, versatile, and really fun to watch and listen to. Their performance exceeded my expectations by a lot. I didn't have many expectations, but whatever they were, they were blown away. Good ol' Moscow, Idaho boy making out quite nicely for himself. His lyrics and easy demeanor were so approachable it felt like he was singing to a group of friends, yet he carried such energy that he had people dancing and moving with ease. He obviously enjoyed performing and had fun with the audience. Great show.


Unproductive Citizen

So now I'm loitering more, blogging, reading National Geographic online and blogs and Wikipedia articles about Cambodia (a girl at Michael's game night served a Cambodian-speaking mission, and I realized how very little I know about Cambodia, so I got curious), and getting ready to head out for a workout and maybe up to Salt Lake for the free Twilight Concert series...then maybe watching Harry Potter tonight or tomorrow? Maybe hit the Salt Lake Pioneer Day parade tomorrow morning. Then off to Vegas this weekend to celebrate Nicole's b-day with her and Anne...

...then maybe I'll find a job. Aw crap. A job. What an ordeal. And what a bummer, needing money to do the things I want to do but needing to use all the time I would spend doing those things to make the money I need. C'est la vie. Distractions, distractions...