Blog: Wander On , Oh Wanderer

A few blogs back I talked about how I’ve come to this realization that “some of us are here to wander.” If I’m being honest, lately it has been a bit of my north star, my affirmation that the straight & narrow path isn’t for all of us & that those of us who drift hither & yon are doing just as much, if not more for society, than those who trek onwards through the conventional.

I know I’ve mentioned this sentiment outside of this blog space a couple of times, especially to those who are close to me, so much so that Evan got me a print made that says “some of us are here to wander” for my birthday. Clearly it’s been a bit of an all consuming idea for me. But what do I mean by that? What is the inner goo that makes up this mantra for me? What has driven me to have such an affinity for its assertion? I’m so glad I asked for you.

I have an undying hunger within me. It’s almost entirely insatiable. I want to know the far corners of the world, the depths of the ocean, the ways in which the people’s of the world live, the most intricate, taste bud stimulating combinations ever put to plate, bowl, or cup. I want to experience & then to share my findings with the world. Simply put, that is what I crave, daily. Novelty, discovery, adventure, experience, life in all of its many forms both human & not. But the thing that I think brings me the most interesting joy & satisfaction is the desire to be proven wrong.

We as human beings are cholkablock with opinions; what sports team is the best, what the best country is, what the best weather is, who makes the best food, what the best bands are, who deserves rights & who doesn’t…apparently…, some more boisterous & in your face than others. Some more deeply ingrained than others. A lot of the times, I have found, that humans also really don't like having their opinion of something changed. They don’t like to have new information put into their noggins that challenges the ideas they have hammered as hard as they can down into their core. Why? Well, to put it simply, change is scary.

From an evolutionary stand point, change is scary because it breaks the routine. We may have an ingrained set of beliefs that has led us to exist, to survive, & when something shifts that challenges the ‘this is the way things are done & have to be done so we can survive’ we get a lot of push back from the mind & the body. That’s why making or breaking habits is so very difficult for us, because it kicks us out of the coast through survival & forces something new upon us. That is why it is so hard to get through to people politically, religiously, personally, because telling someone that what they believe is incorrect with the new information to support that distinction is equivalent to telling someone that the rain comes because of precipitation, not because of whatever folk story or mythology has told them creates the rain.

Now I want to be abundantly clear that I am not here to discredit anyone’s spirituality or belief system, I consider myself a deeply spiritual person & I do believe sometimes the rain comes because there has been power put behind it, be it intention, prayer, whatever. That still doesn’t change the scientific reasoning behind why the clouds formed in the first place or why the water fell.

From an evolutionary stand point there is a part of me that is broken because I want that. I want the new information that blows my mind wide open & creates something new in the place of that which was out dated. I want to be mesmerized by the universe & its complexities. I want to be in awe of something simply because it showed me something different & new. I want to be made to feel as small as a drop of water in the ocean or as important as the human that dropped the strawberry that fed the ant colony for the summer. Because as human beings, that’s what we are; altogether entirely insignificant & a miracle. So I want to be shown that, made to feel that, thrust onto the universal stage & reduced to the atomic level to be an unsee member of something bigger & much more complex.

This, I think, is the key to my wanderers spirit. It’s the desire to see just how wrong the limited scope of existence I was taught is, but also to see the underlying threads of connectivity that bind us energetically, molecularly, socially, universally. It is glimpsing the divine through the lens of discovery. It is the art of noticing, but also the art of taking it all in. Big picture to small.

For some of you, this blog rings true all the way down through the marrow & tissue right to the soul. You see the world, the cosmos, everything through the eyes of a wanderer & you crave it in your bones. To you I say wander on, oh wanderer! For some of you, this idea is very foreign to you. Your lens is very direct & focused on that which is in front of you, on the steps you take, & the minutes of the days as they slip by. I would challenge you to embrace a bit of this. To dip your toes into the unknown & see what the ripples attract. You might be surprised at how much it intrigues you. You might find the next thing you know you are submerged in the great mystery, chomping at the bit to peek behind the curtain & see what lives there pulling the ropes. Life lives on the other side of fear, embrace the chaos of the storm & see where you end up & how much life it leads you through.

As always, much love to you all,

-C

Blog: Finding Peace At The Bottom Of Ocean

I just landed in Burbank an hour or two ago & now sit basking in the mid-80s summer sun, typing out this blog on an iPad, a practice in patience compared to my normal full keyboard laptop. The reason that I am sans laptop is because I have done my best to pack minimal luggage even though a part of my voyage, the current leg, is meant to be for work. My minimalist packing approach this go round is because the second leg of my trip is taking me to Fiji on a scuba diving excursion.

While still fairly green to the leisurely sport of scuba, it has become an instant fascination of mine, & something I seem to have a knack for. I’ve been certified for just over a year & some change & have logged around ten total dive, this coming week I’ll be adding around fifteen more to that total!

So why the blog about Scuba diving? Well, aside from it being on my brain (I spent last night checking all of my gear & packing it meticulously before spending the morning lugging it around airports & North Hollywood), I often get the same set of questions when conversation shifts to diving. So I figured I’d dive, pun intended, into the topic on here!

I’ve always claimed a saltwater soul, I say if I spend too long away from an ocean I start to dry out & in a lot of ways that rings true. When I’m away from the ocean I feel my muscles slowly tense, my bones ache, & my skin yearns for sun. I find my peace below the surface, drifting in the currents.

I’ve swam almost the entirety of my life & I’m rather good at it! I would also definitely say that I’m built like a swimmer, triangular body & all. I, much like many millennials, had a fascination with the ocean & thought I’d grow up into a Marine Biologist some day. I even looked at going to school in San Diego, Hawaii, or Corpus Cristi to study Marine Biology & Veterinary Science. Essentially I wanted Adam Sandler’s job from the film 50 First Dates. Naturally my life took a different course, as here I sit creative writing preparing for writing sessions & such.

I don’t know why it took me so long to get dive certified, it was always something I found myself envious of anytime anyone I knew would talk about dives they’d done. My certification came as a gift actually, a suggestion from my parents as a birthday gift for my 28th year. I immediately took to it.

I got the course work & pool dives done at the same time as my father in Kansas before getting my open water certification in Maui. After that I added a few more dives in Maui as well as a few in Puerto Rico.

The most common question that I seem to get from non-divers is “aren’t you scared?” In short, no.

I do have to admit, my first non-shore dive, my first boat dive, I was nervous, even apprehensive about plunging ‘blindly’ into the ocean below. I knew that there would be a great distance between my entry & any obstacles such as reef or the bottom but it was the slight fear of being completely ‘exposed,’ of not having the beach as a safety line or a convenient escape back to land.

Once I was in the water, 40 feet down, & fluttering along that fear quickly dissipated. Now anytime I step into the depths unknown waiting below I feel nothing but excitement! Why? Because in diving I have gone past the previous limits I had in satiating my saltwater soul & have found a peace that seeps deep into my soul.

The cool thing about scuba, the obvious things aside, is that it allows you a state of neutral buoyancy. It allows you to float suspended in the water & grants you a state of true weightlessness. In addition to the beautiful, untapped surroundings, you now essentially get to experience the most basic feeling of aquatic life. Your plain of orientation is no longer limited to where your feet & gravity allow, you are free to truly navigate three dimensional space unrestrained.

The next great fear of folks seems to be that of the wildlife, mostly where sharks are concerned. There’s a term I’ve picked up on in my limited time diving that I hear circling around from time to time. Sea Puppies. That’s what some people who spend a lot of time diving or doing ocean related research have nicknamed sharks. You see you are more likely to die by being attacked by a cow or are more likely to be struck by lightning then you are to be bitten by a shark. Not killed, bitten.

Are sharks apex predators? Yes. Should they be respected as such? Absolutely. But just because you respect something doesn’t mean you need to fear it, just know the signs & be respectful of the animals & you’ll be more than fine!

The only fear that has crept into my mind where diving is concerned is that of the unknown. I have yet to do a dive where I cannot see the bottom, I have yet to do a dive at night & if I’m being honest, both of these scenarios frighten me, but much like my first step off the boat into deeper water, I know once I’ve checked the box it will no longer be a fear of mine.

This is something I’ve tried to adapt to my life of late. I’ve written on the topic a few times now but my friend Stephen Lovegrove always says “if it terrifies you, it’s probably the right step.” So take the step. Step off the boat into the open ocean, because often times unexplainable peace & serenity await you on the other side!

So something this week that scares you but that you know is the right step, I believe in you!

Let’s me know what that step ends up being for you & as always, much love to you all!

-C

Blog: Curiosity & Experience

There’s a quote that recently surfaced from an interview that Jim Carrey did with TIFF about four years ago. The topic involved brought into light Carrey’s own struggles with mental health & finding identity, even at his current age of sixty years old. Jim talks about the characters he’s played over the years & states that this menagerie of characters also includes his best known one “Jim Carrey.” He then goes on to say something that really struck me. He asked the interviewer if they knew the different between sadness & depression. The interviewers shrugged. Carrey the said the following:

“People talk about depression all the time. The difference between depression & sadness is sadness is just from happenstance-whatever happened or didn’t happen for you, or grief, or whatever it is. Depression is your body saying “f*ck you, I don’t want to be this character anymore, I don’t want to hold up this avatar that you’ve created in the world. It’s too much for me.”

You should think of the word ‘depressed’ as ‘deep rest.’ Your body needs to be depressed. It needs deep rest from the character that you’ve been trying to play.”

— Jim Carrey on TIFF, Sept 22nd, 2017

I know that quote is a little blunt & I’m sure stirs up interesting thoughts or emotions for yourself. Whether you agree or disagree with Jim’s point of view is beside the point here. I’d like to invite you to follow me down the rabbit hole of my own thoughts regarding the quote at hand.

I remember the first time depression hit me, I think I was around seventeen at the time. I felt crazy, truly I felt like I was going mad, my mood would swing randomly, I would dive into emotional lulls fairly often, & could never seem to climb back out into the light. My parents, God bless them, didn’t know what to do with me so they sent me to their company therapist at the time. A wildly artistic woman, my first therapist introduced me to the works of Kahlil Gibran, an American-Lebanese artist, writer, poet, & philosopher, an author I love & frequent even to this day. She specifically wanted me to read the segment of Gibran’s book The Prophet called “On Children.” In the book a prophet arrives in a village & basically hosts a Q&A session for the town to come & grill him on his philosophies, this is what she had me read.

And a woman who held a babe against her bosom said, Speak to us of Children.
     And he said:
     Your children are not your children.
     They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself.
     They come through you but not from you,
     And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.

     You may give them your love but not your thoughts,
     For they have their own thoughts.
     You may house their bodies but not their souls,
     For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.
     You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you.
     For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.
     You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth.
     The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite, and He bends you with His might that His arrows may go swift and far.
     Let your bending in the archer’s hand be for gladness;
     For even as He loves the arrow that flies, so He loves also the bow that is stable.

Her point in prescribing this passage was that I had not embraced my own thoughts, beliefs, & feelings. I was going off of my heritage, which we all do naturally. I wanted so badly to fit in as the ideal midwestern good ole boy that I’d completely neglected the actually person residing in my body. Furthermore, I hadn’t just ignored him, I’d straight up avoided him.

I’m a lover of media, as an art form, I feel it to be truly limitless. I love film, invigorating stories & novels, video games with compelling narratives, & music the makes me feel something in a profound manner. I still do to this day. I’m not saying these things are bad or that these things hindered my personal growth, I actually think I’m hinting at the opposite. You see media, in addition to my escapism into characters played on a stage or the role I assumed of the “country star,” allowed me to try on different hats. It allowed me to make connections with my true self in ways that it took me far too long to realize. Media was giving me the vicarious experiences I needed to chisel away the marble covering the man underneath.

Through these new & differing stories I began to embrace the thrill of curiosity. I wanted to know & feel more, I wanted to experience more & see the world through more eyes than had preciously been offered to me. I became obsessed with experiencing food first. Those that know me will tell you I proudly wear the obnoxious moniker of “foodie,” but I am. I’m always astounded by the ways in which culture shapes food, the way science shapes food, the way art shapes food, the way history shapes food. If you’ve ever been on a trip with me you can also attest to the fact that I tend to build my travel around food. There’s so much that a plate of food can say in just a single bite.

From food naturally followed drink, in addition to the aforementioned, travel. With each new experience I gained insight, with gained insight I gained empathy & compassion. The marble continued to get chiseled away.

I dove head first into my curiosity, it allowed me to find the facets of myself that I love & taught me how to manage & confront the parts I find less desirable. So too did curiosity & experience allow me to pilfer through the box of passions & pull the things that spoke to me, leaving the rest behind. That’s a journey that’s an ongoing process for sure!

You see in the past I’d become so ingrained in the miasma of what was in vogue that I abandoned some of the brightest parts of my being. I gave into what society wanted me to be, what my community wanted me to be, what my family wanted me to be, what the media wanted me to be that I became so convinced I couldn’t find success as an artist unless I forced myself into the preconceived boxes I’d been presented with. I’d looked at the world around me & found, white CIS male aspects aside, that my voice, my authentic voice, was one neither worth celebrating nor promoting. I thank God that I’ve since cast those feelings aside.

We are creatures of habit, us humans. We get so stuck in our ways that we forget just how massive the world is & how varied & diverse life can be when it’s allowed to flourish without the constraints of expectation. This is why I urge people to travel, this is why I urge people to make friends with people different than them, this is why I urge people to experience cuisine & media that may seem foreign or taboo to you because at the end of the day we’re all human & the veins of humanity run deep. Hell, you may even be surprised what you uncover about yourself along the way!

I hope you have an incredible week, I challenge you to go out & try something new this weekend; read a new type of book, watch a movie that follows someone whose life is drastically different from your own, be bold & unafraid to change your opinions or perspectives when presented with new information or lifestyles that aren’t reflective of your own experiences. After all, how boring a stagnant life would be?

Much love to you all,

-C