A Friend's a Friend Forever

It's been some time since I last frequented the blog world. I have been working on things, blogs and things in real life worth blogging about, make no mistake. However, this evening I can't help myself. I have to throw everything else by the wayside and post this video that has already been posted by several of my friendly followers. I have to do this because I love my friends. Love. Love. Love them. Love them. So much. Why?
They are so...well...

we formed a band from Nicholas Livanos on Vimeo.

I just can't help it. Can't. I love you guys!

Spirit of the Ninja

Introduction: The following was written November 2009 and posted February 2010. Better late than never. Read on and beware.
_____________________________________

My world is gray. Lots of crisscrossing gray threads that make the canvas stretched across the gray plastic frame of my cubicle.

My cube. That box with no cover that I sit in for 6-9 hours a day 5 days a week. (Only 6 hours on Friday.)

40+ hours a week
80+ hours a pay period (Might as well just leave it at 80 since that's all I get paid for. The bittersweet reality of the salaried employee.)
1 phone
1 computer that some dude from IS named BANKRUPT (I kid you not, it's labeled and everything.)
1 printer

and me...all together in one gray box.

Sounds a little lonely, huh?

Well, I already wrote a blog about loneliness, and I think I'll let that stand for the the time being.

This is about gray. Smoke. Rubber. Well-used blackboards. Old movies.

Sometimes conversation can even be gray. Like that single cloud that followed Eeyore wherever he went on an otherwise sunny day.

He talks. You talk. She talks. They talk. We talk. The sun is shining outside, I've seen it through the glass door with the heavy tint that makes the outside world look a lot like Kansas in Wizard of Oz before Dorothy lands after the cyclone and opens the front door.

It's good that there are doors out of those gray places. Sometimes they're hard to find. Then you learn to use them regularly, like at lunchtime.

The office where I work is divided into two main areas separated by real walls and a dark, fireproof door. Employee Relations and Benefits (my domain) are on one side of the door, while Recruitment and Placement are on the other side. I'm preparing to cross over. (By the time I post this, it will probably already have happened.) Now, I hesitate to call one side of the door more "gray" than the other, because that gives you the impression that one side is worse than the other. It's easy for gray to feel pretty negative.
But no matter how much I want to avoid it, I have to admit that I have felt so gray on one side of that door, that I'm really hoping the other side will be a little sunnier. I hope I'm sunnier.

That's just it. A sunnier me.

I remember a family friend, the pastor of the church where I grew up, who used to say, "Where you are doesn't really matter much, because wherever you go, there you are."

Wherever we go, along tags the baggage.

And it's all in the gray matter. In the cranium, el cerebro, where the freaking marbles get lost and found.

I was recently talking with my mom about my job, some decisions I've already made and others I'm looking forward to. At a pause in the conversation, a question popped into my head, "Mom, what are you amazed by?"

"You," she said to me. "I'm amazed that I've known you for so long and never realized just how analytical, just how thoughtful you are. I don't know how, but I never realized how relentless your reasoning can be."

Sarah the Thinker. That's me. The blessed curse.

"I think, therefore I am."

Thank you, Descartes. For what? Not really sure.
Some of those philosophers had some interesting things to say, I suppose. And interesting can be a drug, and like any other drug, it can replace substance with emptiness and a lot of gray.

To sum things up thus far, I've spent a fair portion of the last four months of my life in a state of significant discomfort and dissatisfaction with my job, my work, and my effort (not to mention other various factors). I try to blame it on the gray cubicle or my BANKRUPT computer, but it all comes back to me. It really is just a matter of attitude, right? Suck it up. Figure it out. No, don't figure it out. Just do it.

I try to tell myself that it's all a choice. True?
Why is it that certain shades of gray are so much easier to choose?

[If you're still hanging on to the disintegrating thread holding the ideas in this blog together, congratulations! I don't know about you, but I'm pretty much over it.]

_____________________________________

I'm crossing over through that door, that fireproof one I mentioned about 150 words ago, from Benefits to Recruitment. And I'm excited about it.
More than being excited about Recruitment, I'm excited for change. A different shade of gray.

This brings me to an almost entirely unrelated question: What does the spirit of the ninja mean to you?

Dominic and Ben, two of the recruiters I work with, think Andrew, another guy in our office, is "like a ninja." He's quiet and Asian and moves through the office in ways often imperceptible to the human eye until it's too late...and he's standing right next to you with paperwork in his hand and a question on the tip of his tongue.

This behavior has led to ninja references, ninja jokes, ninja impressions, and ultimately ninja forwards.

Allow me to share:

Ninja Forward #1:



Ninja Forward #2:



Final Destination: Ninja News.

On November 18th, Ben e-mailed us the following link.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,575463,00.html?test=latestnews

The headline reads: Man Who Said He Was a Ninja Impaled on Fence in Failed Jump.

All Ben had to say was: "I don't make this crap up!"

So, on to Recruitment. New colleagues. And ninjas.
_____________________________________

Oh, the moral of the blog, you ask?

1) When things look gray, check your own baggage.

2) Watch out for ninjas. They're everywhere...if you want them to be?
_____________________________________

Oh, the moral of the blog, again, you ask?

I answer you with some questions: As we live this journey, where does the gray end and the morals begin? When do we stop seeing the shadows of who we desire to be, shed the chains of Plato's cave, and walk in the light of God? What kind of extraordinary faith does it take to be faithful in ordinary ways?

In short, most of our lives are blogs that never get revised.

Lonely but Not Alone

Lately, I’ve been pondering loneliness.

It’s not that I’m alone. I have Tiffany and Maranatha and the cat. I have friends nearby to hang out with and friends far away to call, and I even started skyping with my parents.

I’ve always had a strong spirit and sense of independence. And now, I really am independent. Financially and in other ways.

And it’s lonely. I’m not sure I can explain how it’s any more lonely than before, but it is. I feel it.

I think it’s farther from heaven. Independence.

But then, I’m drawn to God in a new, intense way. In a desperate way, really.
This can’t be all bad.

No, it’s a lot of good. Sometimes bitter. Sometimes sweet. Sometimes full. Sometimes empty. Sometimes warm. Sometimes lonely.

Back to lonely.

One day a few weeks ago, Maranatha and I met up with Brad Schleenbaker at the Patio Pantry for lunch. It was entirely unplanned, but great as usual.
We talked about a number of things…
And then, Brad surprised me.

We were talking about…
Engagement rings
Diamonds or pearls
The Pearl by John Steinbeck
Literary analysis that I read about The Pearl

Then, Brad made this unexpected and brilliantly interesting comment.

“Literary analysis is so cool!” raved Brad. “Have you read any literary analysis on e.e. cummings? Like what about a leaf falls on loneliness?”

A leaf falls falls on a what?

There was only one thing to do: Google it.
Get ready… Here’s e.e. cummings.


l(a

le
af
fa
ll

s)
one
l

iness


That right there is a poem, ladies and gentlemen.
It’s perfect. The letter “l” looks exactly like the number 1, the loneliest number. What’s lonelier than a single, dying, falling leaf? What’s more exclusive than stuff in parentheses? Then the word “loneliness” is separated into its loneliest parts. l…one…l…iness.

That’s it. EXACTLY!

I studied literature in college, but I forgot about e.e. cummings.
So glad my medical student friend reminded me of what is good.

What is good? What is lonely?

Me? Maybe.
____________________________________________

I pulled up my iGoogle page the other day to check the headlines and read Thomas Friedman’s latest column. On the “News” tab, I have a box that displays different quotes each day. On this one day, I found these words inside that little cyberbox:

“Coming home from very lonely places, all of us go a little mad: whether from great personal success, or just an all-night drive, we are the sole survivors of a world no one else has ever seen.” - John le Carre

In a more real way than ever I see emotional pain and loneliness around me. I see it in what I read, in the images that shoot into my eyes, in the people with their isolated routines and business faces. I don’t see many people laugh. The sun is always shining, but happiness seems undercover.

I know. I should just chill out. But I feel this atmosphere of carelessness or we-couldn’t-care-less-ness. You just do your thing and check each other out while you pass by only stopping if you think who knows what?

Lonely.

Are you? Maybe.
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Tiffany and I went to Costco where Tiffany bought Meet Joe Black which she watched three times in one week.
I watched it one of those times. There are worse things than watching Brad Pitt play Death.

In one scene, a dying, black woman from the islands recognizes Joe Black (Brad Pitt) for who he is: the Grim Reaper.

“Is it my time yet? Please take me,” she entreats him from her hospital wheelchair.
“No, sister. It’s not time yet,” he replies.

Later, Joe finds the woman in her hospital room silently enduring waves of pain despite the medication dripping through her IV.

“You in love,” she accuses him knowingly. He clutches the bouquet of flowers he had brought for his lover, a beautiful medical resident.

“Don’t you be fooled,” chided the old woman. “We is mostly lonely here, too.”

Are we? Maybe.
____________________________________________

Maranatha and I went to Disneyland after work one night two weeks ago. We rode the Indiana Jones ride twice and looked into the Forbidden Eye…twice. We ran around the park, walked through downtown Disney, and talked about relationships and the lack thereof.

“There’s a worse kind of loneliness than being single,” Maranatha said after a teenage couple walked past us arm-in-arm.

I think I must have nodded.

“The kind of loneliness you feel when you’re in a relationship and still no one knows you.”
__________________________________________

I’m convinced that very rarely will we be completely alone on this earth. But somehow we can be lonely almost all the time.

I’m convinced that heaven must be a lot like Southern Village in 2008 and 2009.

Community is hard to come by. Commitment is hard to make and even harder to find. But it’s the only way home to that place where loneliness doesn’t mean anything anymore.

I’m looking forward to that place and that time when we can’t remember what loneliness ever was.

Meet the Interns

Here we are, such as we are, such as nylons, dry cleaning, a straight edge (for some), and badges can make us.



I thought it would be easy to find out what I am, what we are. Interns. But I was wrong. Here's what came first.

in⋅tern 1  [v. in-turn; n. in-turn]

–verb (used with object)
1. to restrict to or confine within prescribed limits, as prisoners of war, enemy aliens, or combat troops who take refuge in a neutral country.

That's unfortunate.

2. to impound or hold within a country until the termination of a war, as a ship of a belligerent that has put into a neutral port and remained beyond a limited period.

Also unfortunate. No thanks...

–noun
3. a person who is or has been interned; internee.

More of the same.

in⋅tern 2  [in-turn]
–noun Also, interne.
1. a resident member of the medical staff of a hospital, usually a recent medical school graduate serving under supervision.

Getting warmer.

2. Education. student teacher.

Nope. Contrary to popular belief, I've never wanted to be a teacher, of English or anything else really.

3. a person who works as an apprentice or trainee in an occupation or profession to gain practical experience, and sometimes also to satisfy legal or other requirements for being licensed or accepted professionally.
–verb (used without object)

Ok, there it is. Finally, what a relief.

4. to be or perform the duties of an intern.

That's what I do...whatever that is. When I figure it out, maybe I'll blog about it.

Good Green Gr@ss

"A SONG of the good green grass!
A song no more of the city streets;
A song of farms—a song of the soil of fields."

--Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass

So I live in a city. It's one continuous sprawl of creeping concrete from ocean to mountain. I've left the farms of my native Midwest behind. But I do have a lawn, a front yard, and back one. There's this random little stone horse that stands guarding the dusty, far corner of the back yard where the sprinklers don't reach and the grass doesn't grow. It looks how I feel sometimes. Lonely in the desert... (I know, I know. Cry me a river. Sheesh.)

The days have blown by like the broken blades of grass beneath my weedwhacker.
Yes, it's been weeks since I last posted. And yes, I do have a weedwhacker, and I have, as of tonight, finally used it to whip our lawn into complete and total submission. After that piece, I'm a mess, but I'm here at another coffee shop beside a table of "Inland Empire Atheists" (they're wearing t-shirts) and...I swear that woman who just walked out the door was a dude.

It's interesting to me how quickly my life has been blown around this country and transplanted into this corner of the desert. I don't know if you can say that I have roots, but I'm down home here, wearing suits to work, trimming the weeds around my front porch, scrubbing the linoleum in the kitchen, feeding the cat, chatting with Saúl (my neighbor) across the white picket fence between our houses. I've even gone out on a few dates. I'm still living out of suitcases and half of Maranatha's closet, but I'm slowly finding my way. Even finding new friends.

Green spaces are at a minimum here. But new, wonderful, mysterious things are sprouting here, striking stubbornly, haphazardly through the soil of my heart and mind. I can't tell what they are yet, but they're green, I hope they're green. It's my favorite color.

I try to write stories with my life, and I always want them to be amazing, cozy, squirmy, shocking. But the real things, the little green things that just keep growing in spite of the desert heat are making stories for me that I never could have anticipated, never could have written or revised. I'm living miracles. And I'm the one whose astonished to find anything, to find something so green and fresh. Sorry if that sounds abstract or cryptic, but that's just how things roll tonight. That's just how the leaves of grass blow.

"WHY! who makes much of a miracle?
As to me, I know of nothing else but miracles,
Whether I walk the streets of Manhattan,
Or dart my sight over the roofs of houses toward the sky,
Or wade with naked feet along the beach, just in the edge of the water,
Or stand under trees in the woods,
Or talk by day with any one I love...

To me, every hour of the light and dark is a miracle,
Every cubic inch of space is a miracle,
Every square yard of the surface of the earth is spread with the same,
Every foot of the interior swarms with the same;
Every spear of grass—the frames, limbs, organs, of men and women, and all that concerns them,
All these to me are unspeakably perfect miracles."

--(Again) Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass

To the Power of Twice

Lately, I've done a bunch of things twice. Twice. Double-teen.

I just finished my second summer working at MiVoden. El campamento extraordinario. Took it to the second power. That's right.

I went on a roadtrip and fed prairie dogs in South Dakota (on my way to MiVoden). Then took another driving adventure to my new casa in Southern California. On the way, I stopped in Weed, California by Mt. Shasta mostly just because of Weed being Weed and a little bit because of Mt. Shasta. It's breathtaking, really. So, roadtrip times dos.

That brings me to my new state and my new state of being. I am a resident of California, the country. It basically is. My new mechanic even says so. I am also a management resident. That's my job title. Ambiguous, I know. So I'm a double resident residing in a green Victorian house built in the late 1800s with a cat I didn't know I had coming. The cat is Maranatha's. Maranatha is my MIA roommate. She has been loosely calling the feline Harriet the Spy, but since she peaced out for Nicaragua the evening I got here, I've decided to call Harriet Halloween. Actually, Holla for short. I can't help it. She's black and orange. It's perfect.

I talked with my new neighbors twice, in Spanish. Love them. Love Spanish. Love them in Spanish.

Back to that new job of mine. I've gone to work twice so far. Yesterday and today. And today in general orientation, I learned that our corporate values are: Compassion, Teamwork, Wholeness, Integrity, and Excellence, which spell the word TWICE acronymically. Ode to Corporate Acronyms.

What else?

Oh, I've caught the bridal bouquet twice this summer. Two separate weddings. Two separate bouquets...in my hands. I might have tried for the first one (just a little out of respect for the tradition). I hardly saw the second one coming, I swear.

You just never know what's in store, when you'll discover you like the random cat you didn't know you had, or when irony will strike like a wedding bouquet.

What's in store? In the Store of Life, sometimes we get to choose; other times not as much.

Time for my second passion tea here at Starbucks? Oh, choices, choices. Choices.

Made for Walking

I've done it before. No big deal. I type in my current address in the A box and my destination address in the B box, hit Enter, and the directions come.

But tonight was different. Everything worked the same as always, until I noticed a little car icon by the "Get Directions" button. There was a mysterious drop-down list I had never seen before. The default option was, of course, "by car". But just below it was another option: Walking. Not train or plane or any other form of motorized transportation. Walking.

From Camp in Idaho to my new place in SoCal:

2 feet
408 instructions
1392 miles
19 days & 4 hours (I'm not sure how this is calculated. Sleep?)


Google's Walking Directions are still in beta, and I'm not planning a walk-a-thon. But, there was something awesome about measuring space and time differently.

This time in my life is new and different from everything that has come before, and a lot of the promise of the future is threatened by fear of being given a grown-up, tax-paying label and placed in a box.

It's good to remember that beauty and joy in life have a lot to do with perspective. It's good to remember who we are in addition to, apart from, in spite of the perceptions of society. It's good to remember that our feet can do more than just hit the brake or tap the gas.

Maybe that line of thought is a bit of a stretch. Measuring miles with just 2 feet. Differentiating our ideas and ourselves from what is expected. Remembering the source of our meaning and the purpose of our journey. All from Google Maps.

Maybe Google providing Walking Directions is even more of a stretch.
Maybe we'll try them out sometime anyway.

Same road. Different method. Big deal. Then again...

Where We're Going We Don't Need Roads?

Today I went to orientation. I've lost count of how many times I've been orientaterized. This time, it involved big cartoon posters each the size of a twin bed. My boss Heather presented at my table of ten people where she unfolded one of the posters depicting a hospital. When I first looked at it, I thought of the second Back to the Future movie where Marty travels through time to year 2020 (or something) when cars and skateboards fly.

On the poster, front and center, was an ambulance with wings flying in front of the hospital over "Status Quo Boulevard." On the front grill read the Health System's mission statement under the Region's purple and teal logo.

"They're called learning maps," said Heather as she handed out the first flashcards for us to read to each other around the table.
Ooooo. Learning maps. Sweet.
On the second learning map, there wasn't a hospital in sight, no flying ambulance. Instead it was a cartoon waterfall with a four-gated dam on top running down into a little river with mini-tributaries.
"What do you see here?" asked Heather smiling and rolling down the sleeve of her teal sweater.
"Niagara Falls," said the Indian rad tech sitting next to me. A few people laughed.
"It's the financial cycle of our company," said Heather.
Sure enough. The dam's four gates represented our payer mix: Self Pay, Medicare/Medicaid, Other Commercial Insurance, and Blue Cross Blue Shield. We read more flashcards and placed them in corresponding boxes on the map. As we discussed insurance statistics, I realized something.

For the first time in 23 years, I have no health insurance. Zero.

This means I could be ambushed on the street by five adolescent thugs with knives intent on murdering me for gang initiation; I could survive only to arrive at the ER with no insurance in need of immediate surgery and hundreds of stitches and sutures; I could come through surgery too weak to work or move to California, only strong enough to take a car ride with my sister. Of course, I couldn't use a seatbelt because it would hurt the hundreds of stitches zigzagging across my body. Of course, while I'm telling my sister about the attack, she fails to see a car stopped in front of us, so we hit it going 60 mph. Next thing I know, I'm on the pavement 30 yards away from the wrecked vehicles, bleeding once again, somehow still alive. Next thing I know, I'm back in the ER with no insurance facing my surgeon who tells me if I had worn my seatbelt I would be dead because it would have ruptured all of my sutures. Not wearing my seatbelt saved my life? Not wearing my seatbelt saved my life. But that won't help me pay off the hundreds of thousands of dollars that I owe. My medical debt. No insurance. Maybe it will make a a good story, and I can win a competition for the Moth podcast. Oh, wait. Ed Gavagan already did that. Check it out: http://www.themoth.org/listen. He didn't have insurance either.

For the last week, I've been playing phone tag with people in Wisconsin and Maryland trying to figure out how to stay covered. I knew time was running out for coverage under my mom's policy since I just graduated from college. Not that anyone contacted me about it. No, I just knew. Lucky for me. Or not because my coverage still lapsed for 48 hours, the perfect opportunity for the gangsters to get me.
This is where I could write about the millions of Americans without health insurance and the difficulties they face. Or I could narrow the scope and write about Nick L. and Ben F. who don't have insurance either, probably won't have it for a while, and probably don't really need it as long as they stay away from the thugs. I could write about these things, and it might be worthwhile, but I don't really feel like it right now.
I feel like...
First of all, I should say, as of this afternoon, I now have health insurance. Bring on the thugs...No, don't. But at least bring on the summer sports and maybe a visit to the podiatrist because you've gotta take good care of your feet, you've just gotta.
I've had my share of transitions, I think. But none have ever been so exciting or so full of anxiety. I need a learning map for my life, and let's hope Ed Gavagan's thugs put things back into perspective for me.

Million-dollar Castles Across the Street

This week I...

graduated from university finally...
spent hours packing...
then more hours driving...
met the man my cousin has been trying to set me up with since Christmas...
moved into a room with a view of a three-million-dollar castle made out of stone imported from Italy...
I've gotten lost three times in the past twenty-four hours...
Remembered I hate preemployment paperwork...
Remembered I should get a haircut...
Remembered I like cooking...
so I went grocery shopping and made food...
which reminds me I should check the granola in the oven...



I don't really know where I'm headed, but for now I'm living in one of the richest little villages in America. I haven't seen a pickup truck since I entered the town limits, only Acuras, Mercedes, Lexuses, BMWs, high-end Toyotas, and a few Chevy SUVs. I've been here before to visit, but I've never been so aware or overwhelmed by the opulence. This place hasn't changed; It's me. A few times today, I felt like running away to a place where I wouldn't have to look at million-dollar real-estate and three-car garages, but I don't have the biology trails in my backyard anymore.

I wonder what Dr. Leatherman would say. The professor whose last car only cost $1500 and gives money every month to international sewer and sanitation system projects. Money in other people's toilets. What an investment.

I'm trying to figure out how to live as my life changes. There are so many examples. How and why do we choose what we choose? All I know is that the compass in my heart has changed. Here's to finding some direction.

Love as a Dude

"When love beckons to you, follow him
Though his ways are hard and steep.
And when his wings enfold you yield to him,
Thought the sword hidden among his pinions may wound you.
And when he speaks to you believe in him,
Though his voice may shatter your dreams as the north wind lays waste the garden.
For even as love crowns you so shall he crucify you. Even as he is for your growth so he is for your pruning.
Even as he ascends to your height and caresses your tenderest branches that quiver in the sun,
So shall he descend to your roots and shake them in their clinging to the earth."

From The Prophet by Kahil Gibran

I read this in a book the other day. It's one of those things that makes me "Hmmmm..." to myself and then think "Dang it! That's tough."

Nothing new. Just something true (in a poetic way).

I Run the B-trails, Charisa Takes the Road to Kona

This morning I ran the trails across the street behind the village for the first time this semester.
I missed a day of training this week after getting sick, and it felt good to revisit the b-trails for a few miles of quality time.
Until today, I've been training for a halfmarathon indoors at the gym on a treadmill primarily without music. I'm not sure why I've done it this way, the weather hasn't been impossible for running outside. And even though marathon rules prohibit headphones and listening devices, most participants use them anyway.
Maybe I figured that if I could conquer the monotony of pumping out 4 to 6 and more miles on a treadmill, I could do anything with that mental discipline. Well, sure, maybe. But as I circled back today on the main trail on the bottom of the dale, I remembered that I really like to run. It wasn't until then that I realized I had forgotten that valuable little fact about myself and my reasons for training.

After the b-trails and class, I got an e-mail from my Aunt Rhonda. She passed on an article about Charisa Bauer Wernick, a Southern grad and Ironman finisher. I could say many things about the article and Charisa (or rather what the article says about Charisa), but I'll maybe get to that later and let you check out the article at this link:

http://ironman.com/events/ironman/worldchampionship/matthew-dale-profiles-ironman-competitor-charisa-wernick

For now, I'll just say that it inspired me and reminded me of being with Tiffany Blazer on our day off from Camp watching Ironman competitors cross the finish line in Couer d'Alene, Idaho. Unbeknownst to us, we probably saw Charisa finish there.

Parting Comment: I'm over treadmills.

Classic Einstein

I read this earlier today and a sense of validation for studying literature and the humanities washed over me. Not that I needed it, but if anyone wants to know why I find value in my education, Albert Einstein has provided an answer.

"Somebody who reads only newspapers and at best books of contemporary authors looks to me like an extremely near-sighted person who scorns eyeglasses. He is completely dependent on the prejudices and fashions of his times, since he never gets to see or hear anything else. And what a person thinks on his own without being stimulated by the thoughts and experiences of other people is even in the best case rather paltry and monotonous.

There are only a few enlightened people with a lucid mind and style and with good taste within a century. What has been preserved of their work belongs among the most precious possessions of mankind. We owe it to a few writers of antiquity that the people of the Middle Ages could slowly extricate themselves from the superstitions and ignorance that had darkened life for more than half a millenium.

Nothing is more needed to overcome the modernist's snobbishness."


[By Albert Einstein. Written for the Jungkaufmann, a monthly publication of the "Schweizerischer Kaufmaennischer Verein, Jugendbund," February 29, 1952.]