The Beginning: Incidents and Artifacts

Here is the first post, written sometime circa August 2009.  It may or may not explain many things on this blog.  Enjoy.  Or don't, it's really up to you.

"Come waste your time with me"

-Phish, "Waste"

I would tell you the ending, but even I don't know how it ends yet. I just make up meaning as I go and pray to the Lord that my insight is true, or if not true, then at least meaningful, and if not meaningful, then at least something that will cause trouble.

The top level of the bookshelf in my room (which is not my room) does not contain any books. This is my artifact shelf. On the far right side there is a car radio. This is the last surviving piece of the one and only Spaceship Earth, my car, my companion, and one of the few places where everything made sense.

Spaceship Earth was a spaceship which disguised itself as a mid-nineties sedan. (To hide from bounty hunters, I assume.) I bought it in a very used condition from a guy on Monument who was moving back to India. I first noticed that it was a spaceship a few weeks later because it had data readouts. (This was the little button you press to get the outside temperature.) I was also tipped off to the fact that it was a spaceship because the climate control was flawless. I was never not happy with the inside temperature. The only logical conclusion here is that this was actually a life support system. Another thing that tipped me off was the fact that the windows were very tinted, obviously to protect the astronauts from UV radiation. They also made it feel like the car was hugging you. I like being hugged. When the windows were rolled down, I was in atmospheric mode, and I could do research by sticking my hand out the window. Research means progress. But the centerpiece of Spaceship Earth was the AI. This was the car's radio, an aftermarket installation, which was also the universe’s most human and understanding shipboard AI.

I won't say that I could talk to my car, because the only time that cars actually utter words is in bad TV shows. But there was communication between us. We could read each other, we knew each other, and at least for me, being in my car helped me work things out. Sometimes I would even sleep or write inside Spaceship Earth. Things just made sense in there. I could work things out. I knew the car. It knew me. And dammit, I should have listened to it when I felt it get angry at me the day before it broke down on the way to Truckee. The radiator cracked and the engine blew two head gaskets in the foothills, and I was aware of none of this because the engine thermometer had also broken. A few weeks later after I determined that I could not afford to repair it, I borrowed my mom's car, and Sabine and I drove up to the mechanic shop where I left it. Most of my CDs that weren’t in my Box were in the car, along with ten CDs checked out from the library, as well as a surprising amount of sweatshirts, water bottles, and other little odds and ends that had accumulated over the years. With some difficulty and a lot of help from Sabine I managed to get the radio out. In fact, if she weren't there, I would probably still be sitting there trying to pry it out, not realizing that there were screws I had to remove.

Now the radio, the AI, is sitting on my artifact shelf. I was hoping that it would somehow work itself into the framework of my room as it did in Spaceship Earth, but that was a bit of a foolish idea. So far it has just sat there in a catatonic state. I try to apologize but it won't respond to anything. So I'm just keeping on the bookshelf, right above Vonnegut, hoping that one day I will get a thought from it, or it will hear one of mine. The truth is that it will probably never be complete again, but I can come close. I am going to hold on to that damn radio for as long as I can though. Just because Spaceship Earth is gone physically does not mean that its essence or what it represents has to go with it. This is the Continuing Story of Spaceship Earth.

This is the second blog that I have created. I felt that my first blog, A Tribute to Dan Quayle, and Other Misadventures, had reached its logical conclusion and that it was time for it to end. For back-story, who I am, where I'm from, etc., go to http://naterrific.blogspot.com/. You can probably get the whole story by reading a couple of posts from the last few months. The rest is crap, but really, what else is the internet for, besides posting crap that you think is quality?

I have a feeling that the main difference between this blog and my last blog will be the use of spell check. Other differences may include that this time I have a sense of purpose and direction for the blog from the beginning, that I spend as little time as possible simply talking about what I have done, and that I actually try to make my opinions and insights of a relatively high quality. Whether or not I am capable of that is another question entirely.

Next to the brain of Spaceship Earth, there is a ball of plastic bags held together with some rubber bands. These are the bags that I would wrap around my foot before I got in the shower when I had a broken foot.

I recently had a conversation with someone whom I hadn't seen in a few years. She asked me how I had been, what had happened to me. I told her that I had broken my foot. That was all I said, because in some ways, it feels like not much else has happened in the last four years. Of course more things have happened. Of course I didn't just break my foot and then step into a cryo-tube for the next four years. Of course I did other things. I had to shower with a bag on my foot. I had to prove people wrong who said I could never run competitively again. I went to The Usual on Friday nights. I became one of those weird Jesus Kids. I expanded my iTunes library from less than 1,000 songs to 13,000 songs. I caused mischief with water balloons and pumpkins. I went into a dark age and had a renaissance at the last possible moment. I started out human, became something slightly less, and then re-emerged as human once again. That was high school for me. It was not the rosy youth that I can reminisce with fondness, not those glory days that everyone thinks that Bruce Springsteen was singing about with genuine nostalgia when he was actually singing about them ironically, a fact that most people don't seem to be perceptive enough to realize. But here's the thing: my foot got better. I don't have nostalgia but I have experience. I know to be patient, because miracles can come at the strangest times. Oh, and I created my town's most popular blog that doesn’t really focus on any specific topic. Does that count for anything? No, ok then, I'll be happy with the re-humanization.

Two weeks before I graduated, I ran 9:23 for two miles at the North Coast Meet of Champions in Berkeley. I could say that doing so redeemed all my failures and injuries. It did, but it wasn’t even the high point of my day. It barely makes top 5. I got a DVD containing 1,000 songs, I helped devise a zombie survival plan for my town, I chilled in Spaceship Earth, and I went to Amoeba Music after my race and bought Phish’s Billy Breathes. “Waste” came on as I drove past Cook’s Collision and everything made sense, and I realized that everything I have done was time well wasted.

In the last few months I have come home for the first time. Yes, it is true that I lived here, but my room was not my room, my house was not my house, and my family was not really my family. My house is not my house, but all that I have to do to go home is to step outside of my house. I have found a home, and by extension a family, in the community, and that is all the family I need. My actual family is just a group of people who awkwardly live together, sort of like a very boring selection for a house on MTV's The Real World. I have a feeling that if I ever have kids, they will have a lot of people whom I refer to as their (aunt or uncle) __________, even though they are not actually their aunt or uncle. But who knows, I may just end up being sterile anyway after keeping my cell phone too close to my crotch. The point is though, that I have found a home, and it is largely because of the people that I have met and who are not related to me.

On the artifact shelf, underneath a couple of papers that have significance for nostalgia purposes is a nametag for a church. I wore this nametag once and then realized that I shouldn't have to wear it. You don't have to wear nametags when you're at home. This is why I rarely wear nametags even when I am at a function where they are important, such as last week, when I was at my freshman orientation. (I am not off to a good start when it comes to avoiding tangents here...) Anyway, this is not the church that my family goes to. (And here, by family, I mean biological family.) In my biological family, I feel like the religious granny. I am also sort of a tea granny, as I am our principal consumer of tea. I am not someone who has grown up in the church, or even really believed in God for most of his life, but the church is a place where, if nothing else, I can sit down. (Sometimes I get free bread and grape juice, too!)

You are probably aware of the many parenthetical sentences in that last paragraph. I beat around the bush a lot when I talk about important things. I also try to make stupid jokes, like the free bread thing I just said. I really don't take myself seriously 95% of the time, and the time when I did take myself seriously was when I was in the bridge of Spaceship Earth. So now I am kind of a joke floating around the world. But anyway, I feel like this topic in general is not something that I am... qualified to talk about. Maybe it's because it is one of the heavier things in the world, both by its nature and all of the shit that has hit the fan since its inception. Maybe because it's something that I'm still trying to wrap my head around. Maybe it’s because this is my first post and I don't want to lose you, the reader, by saying "I want to talk about Jesus," a statement that, as Jim Gaffigan observed, would make even the Pope feel awkward. The point is that at this point, I am not a good enough writer to explain or describe my faith, so I won't. In fact, it's probably better that way. It's one of those things that probably shouldn't be explained, as it is one of those things that is different for everyone. The point is that there is a place, a group of people, a community, where I feel at home, for once. Of course it goes deeper than that, but it is a definite fringe benefit.

And now that I have come home, I have to leave. This is because I am going to a magical place called college. Since this is teh interw3bz, I will be vague and say that I will be going to a public university west of the Mississippi. I feel like I am leaving something that I have found recently, things that I found too late. I know that the people that I have met, my unofficially adopted family, will still exist. And of course my faith will not be shaken simply because I am not around the people I know.

I would usually fill up at a gas station near my high school, always at the same pump. It was pump #8. Sometimes I would drive around the block if the pump was in use. It usually wasn't. I would always buy gas in $20 amounts, with cash. A few days ago I was driving my mom's car and needed to fill up, and out of habit I pulled up to this pump. I can talk to machines sometimes. As I was filling up, I asked the pump if it remembered Spaceship Earth.

"You mean that one with the really tinted windows? Yeah, of course I remember it."

"It's dead now.”

“That’s unbelievable. What happened?”

“Radiator cracked, head gaskets blown, alternator is broken, timing belt is worn out. I couldn’t afford to repair it.”

“It always seemed to be a happy car. It knew where it was going.”

“Nah, we just made things up as we went along.”

“Well, my condolences.”

“Thanks.”

Then I drove off and didn’t really think it was strange at all that I had just had a conversation with a gas pump.

I have acquired a lot of music over the last four years. Four years ago, when I decided to download iTunes, I had about 150 songs taken from the few CDs that I owned. This embarrassed me a lot. Most people I knew had libraries that went well into the thousands, and Colby had over 10,000. So I decided that I was going to do just that: get to 10,000 songs. Four years later I am at 13,000 and still growing.

The iPod came out when I was in middle school. When I heard that the original model could hold up to 5,000 songs (a low, low number compared to current technology) my initial thought was "that's ridiculous, that's excessive, there probably aren't even 5,000 songs out there." I don't know where I would put the estimate as to the number of different digital recordings that exist, but I would not be surprised if it were greater than one hundred million. I know that there are at least 13,097 as I type this sentence. I borrowed CDs. I got burned CDs. I took CDs, ripped them, and put them back where I found them and the owner was none the wiser. I used means of questionable legality. But most of all, my music has come from two sources: the public library, and various physical forms of The Box.

I owe much to the person who decided to have CDs in the public library. The receipt from my first excursion to the library is on the artifact shelf. It exceeded my wildest expectations, as I was able to get albums by Pearl Jam, Booker T. and the MG's, Santana, the Buena Vista Social Club, Pat Metheney, Red Hot Chili Peppers, the Who, and Wayne Shorter all for the very reasonable price of free. I have since gone back many times and checked out many more CDs. I can even request CDs from other libraries in the county system. You can call me un-American for saying this, but I believe that we need more institutions like this that facilitate sharing among the community. If one were to donate a book, CD, or DVD to the library, then that item is theoretically accessible to all members of the community. If everyone in a community of 500 were to donate one book, then all members of that community would have easy access to 500 different books, taking off maybe 50-75 to compensate for duplicates. But wait, this is America, we don't like to share. We are not thrilled about busses and subways, very much against high-speed rail, and openly hostile towards the metric system. (Fun fact #1: The reason that the US has yet to go metric is actually due to a conspiracy run by the NFL. If we go metric, they want us to believe, American football will become Canadian football, and that will set us on a trajectory towards a hellish dystopia where we become aware that the technical term for something football-shaped is actually a "prolate spheroid." From there, we're basically one step away from being European and having to walk places.) I realize that the metric system has little to nothing to do with sharing, but it's another good idea that Americans are against, for the most part. But sharing can be a beautiful thing, especially when it manifests itself in the form of The Box.

The Box was conceived one lazy Sunday afternoon while myself and some others at a friend's house. I noticed a CD in her collection that I wanted to borrow, and asked if I could. She responded by suggesting a bunch of other CDs that I also might like to borrow. Twenty minutes later we had a shoebox full of CDs. I agreed that I would take them home, rip them, and then let anyone else who was present at the time also have possession of The Box. We eventually all ended up contributing Boxes of our own, and the system expanded to anyone who was willing to contribute a Box. By creating these boxes, we do two things. The first is, obviously, that we get music without paying for it and rip off the artists and blah blah blah. Not that I am comparing this to freeing slaves or anything, but they did say the same thing about the Underground Railroad. The second thing is that we share bits and pieces of ourselves. Everyone has so many emotions and memories tied up in the music that they listen to that by sharing this music. We are imparting bits of our souls onto others and bypassing all the bullshit that usually clouds our actions.

Before I leave, I will be donating most of the contents of my box to the public library to give back, to leave a bit of my soul here, and to further the revolution.

One of the best parts of having a car that was actually a spaceship was watching peoples’ reactions as you explained this concept. I would show them that the air conditioning was actually the life support, the moon roof that was actually a battle turret, the trunk that was actually the cargo hold, the windshield wipers which were actually moisture shields, the outside temperature display that was actually the data readouts, and the radio which was actually the shipboard AI. I would explain how when the windows were down, I was in atmospheric mode, but when the windows were up, I was in interplanetary mode. I would explain how when the windows were down, you could do research by sticking your hand out the window and playing with the air currents. I would explain the various protocols, such as the de-moisturizing protocol and the stack protocol. I would explain how the shipboard AI could be rebooted by inserting Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band into the disc drive.The reactions would all be different and delicious in their own way. I loved giving people rides because I would get to explain these things. Now I have to get rides from other people. They listen to Daft Punk and drive cars that are just cars. It accomplishes what it needs to, but I prefer my reality that was not reality.

The other day I saw a cop talking on his cell phone as he was driving. That is illegal in this state. The police are not the law. They are merely enforcers of the law. I recognized this man as officer Douthit, the man who gave me my one and only moving violation. I ever so slightly rolled through a stop sign. As a result, I had to go to traffic school. I have the traffic school receipt on my artifact shelf. I went to a place called "Cheap School." It cost $30, you were guaranteed to pass, and you got two free tickets to giggles comedy club, valid only Sunday and Monday nights. The problem was that you had to be eighteen, and by the time I turned eighteen there were not that many Sunday or Monday nights left before they expired. All I had to do was sit there for eight ours and pretend to be awake while an old man who looked like he hadn't even read the newspaper since the 1970's talked about how we can and will die if we try to get to work on time. During the lunch break, I saw two homeless women arguing over who could shit in what bush. The receipt from that mind numbing non-adventure also sits on my artifact shelf, next to the photocopy of my parking garage rebate slip.

This is my most recent addition to the shelf. About a week ago, I had to pay eight dollars at a parking garage machine. All I had were three ones and a twenty, so I paid with the twenty, expecting change. Instead, I got a slip of paper that I had to mail to the company's corporate headquarters so that they would send me twelve dollars in the mail. I know that the company banks on having most people be too lazy to send in these slips. That's corporate America for you. That's the America that tricks you into thinking that what you have and what you are is insufficient and obsolete. That's the America that charges $1.29 for a large Coke that cost about $.20 to make, including overhead, and won't let you get free refills. That's the Americathat sees music as nothing more than a commodity, like lumber or canned food. That's theAmerica that sees me, and the people I love, as being pawns of our own oh-so easily manipulated emotions, and sees Spaceship Earth as just another unconscious commodity. But unfortunately, that's the America that works, and probably the best version of Americaout there. In a strange way, this photocopy of a refund slip is there to remind me that I am, along with everyone I know and everyone in the world, more than a robot that can be tricked into buying things that it doesn't need.

All I need are my artifacts and my hands. The rest will fall into place. I don't need the things my story box tells me I need.

I sometimes get advice from the ghost of FDR. This happens when I am dreaming. The first time it happened I found him in the middle of a field. He was bent over with his hands on his temple, muttering. I walked up to him.

“I don’t know what to do,” he said. “I just don’t know what to do. They say that there are only two options, but… there are so many colors out there. There’s green and brown and orange, and… I don’t know what to do, I just don’t know what to do.”

Sometimes even the leader of the Free World is crippled by indecision.

More than anything else that happened in the last three years, his advice has set things in to motion that made me come alive again. Does this make me crazy? I prefer to think that it makes me an honorary member of the Brain Trust. And as Billy Joel said: “You may be right / I may be crazy / But it jus may be a lunatic you’re looking for.” That was my senior quote. It kicks any Ralph Waldo Emerson quote’s ass, any day.

I keep my first “I Voted” sticker on my artifact shelf. I actually got two, one in English and one in Spanish. I turned eighteen just days before the 2008 presidential election, making me one of the youngest voters on that day. I plan to vote in every election until the day I die.Exceptions may be made for comas and times when I am stranded on a desert island (they happen to me more frequently than you would think) but otherwise, I plan to never miss an election. Right now I’m batting a thousand. Let’s see if I can hold it.

Spaceship Earth and I once made modern art. I had a stack of fliers in my back seat for an event that had already happened, making the fliers useless. They were printed on many different colors of paper. I rolled down the front windows and the moon roof (putting it in "atmospheric mode") and drove around. In the back seat there was a flurry of colors. It may not be anything profound, but at least I did something more creative than turning a urinal on its side.

As far as I am concerned, there are only three flavors of Gatorade. There is red flavor, orange flavor, and yellow flavor. Every so often I will consider blue to be a legitimate flavor, but this is rare. These new varieties: Rain, Fierce, Tiger, All Stars, these are not real flavors of Gatorade. There are and always have been only three flavors of Gatorade. Of these three, my favorite flavor is orange flavor. Mind you, this does not taste like oranges. Orange Gatorade actually tastes like the color orange.

Dave Barry once observed that Gatorade could probably withstand a nuclear blast without any significant changes to its flavor or nutritional content. I hope that this is also true of the packaging. That way, one of my artifacts may survive long enough to become an actual artifact.

I keep an empty bottle of orange Gatorade on my artifact shelf because in its context, giving me that Gatorade was one of the nicest gestures that have ever been made to me. This may make my life sound pathetic. It is not intended to do so. I just feel that given the circumstances and the flavor of Gatorade, receiving this bottle of sugar, dye, and electrolytes made me the happiest kid in the world.

I once went on a mission trip to Tijuana. We were building a house. Everyone else mixed little pieces of paper with bible verses on them into the foundation. I poured in some orange Gatorade. Even though this event happened before I received the bottle of Gatorade, I suppose I can retroactively make the event symbolic: build your house upon the Lord and orange Gatorade? Why not?

Not only did Spaceship Earth make things make sense, but it helped me make things make sense. The shelf underneath the radio always had to be organized a certain way. This was the only thing I ever organized, ever. The case of the CD that was currently playing had to be on top of the stack of CDs on the shelf below the radio. If the CD had no case, then the sleeve in which it was kept had to be placed on top of the stack. If I was listening to the radio, the stack had to be cleared and all CDs were placed in the central auxiliary cargo hold (the center console). That ensured that order was kept. With order kept I could figure things out as I drove. I would yell at the dashboard and answers would bounce back. I could make a phone call parked somewhere and it would last for hours. If this happened in a residential neighborhood, it would unnerve people. (However, I was once invited in for dinner.)Sometimes I would sleep there. Not often at night, but naps were usually good ideas.

My life will be changing venues very soon. I would say that I am going to pack up my life, but there is really very little to pack up. I have memories, music, people that I will always remember and hopefully stay in touch with, a car radio, a ball of plastic bags, a church nametag, a receipt, a refund voucher, an “I Voted” sticker, and an empty bottle of orange Gatorade. I can find anything else I need, because I don’t need or want a whole lot.

Behind the Gatorade bottle is a plush frog. I found this on the side of the road while I was running. This is to remind me to keep my eyes open for things: the absurd, the silly, the whimsical, the serendipitous, the profound, the beautiful, and of course, the potential to cause trouble.

I am here to say things that, at least in my estimation, need to be said, even if no one else will. And if they cause trouble, all the better. Insight and profundity would be nice, but I don’t know how much of those I can make. This is the Continuing Story of Spaceship Earth. So strap yourself in and bring some tang, pudding tubes, and irradiated meat for the ride, because we are blasting off.