If you write it, they will come

I'm reading a book about rocket scientists. It's a biography, but it reads like fiction due to the fact that rocket scientists are totally wacky and out of this world (hee hee). Basically, it's a fun read. 

One of the things I learned while reading this book is that people didn't like rocket science, back in the day. It seems to have gone something like this:

• pre-1903: rockets are kind of cool
• 1903: bike enthusiasts fly a plane
• 1903-1941ish: planes are cool, rockets are dumb, and rocket scientists are dumbasses
• post-1941: HOLY SHIT WHAT ARE THESE DEATH TUBES THE GERMANS ARE SHOOTING AT US FUND ALL THE ROCKET RESEARCH NOW

During that ~40yr sweet spot, rocket science took off (I'm on a roll), mostly due to an extremely committed cabal of scientists and enthusiasts that loved sneaking out to the desert and blowing shit up. 

But the COOLEST part of this whole thing is that the rocket science community, seemingly without fail, was comprised of science fiction nerds who read pulp fiction magazines by the pound. And they turned what they read into reality. They read about rockets and space travel, and used their brains to actually turn fiction into non-fiction. 

Let me repeat that for you: nerds read science fiction, and made it science. 

As you know, one of my 4 Great Goals in life is to dig the world's deepest hole. Straight to the center of the earth. Most people scoff at the idea, but only due a lack of imagination. A lack of mystery, of wonder. A lack of understanding. 

What the history of rocket science has taught me is that in order to inspire imagination, I need to write a compelling story. This is one of earth's greatest secrets: the one who tells the best story wins the day. 

So if the 6 Silos Expedition will ever be a story remembered by humanity, it has to start as a story. 

Where there is tension, there is beauty.

 Where there is tension, there is beauty. 

I was catching up with someone yesterday, and said these words. Due to a strong reaction, I immediately walked it back a bit, saying "there is the potential for beauty." But the more I ponder the words, the more I have decided to double down on the original phrase:

Tension, ergo beauty. 

Even if you don't immediately recognize beauty in the tension between things, it's there. Hold tension in your mind's hand. Turn it over, inspect it. Peel back the rind of your experience, and discover the juicy fruit of beauty hiding within. Antinomy is, by its nature, beautiful. 

Great, that seems right. I have spoken truth. The only thing I still need to figure out is what the hell these terms mean. 

Tension seems easier to define. It's multiple objects existing in the same space. Two things that are contradictory or opposing (or maybe just unlike one another), but somehow both things seem true. It's two things pulling away from one another while somehow also moving in the same direction. 

Beauty, though. Oh beauty. What are you? I am someone who never shuts up about things being beautiful, but today I was arrested with the sudden realization that I have no idea what beauty actually is. I point at something and call it beautiful, but I have no idea what the term actually means. 

Here's what I've got so far:

• Beauty has something to do with the reality of a thing, but it also participates in a transcendence from reality. It's both real and abstract. 
• Beauty is a feature of creation, and is in some way related to essence and telos. 
• Beauty exists in relation to truth and goodness, but is also distinct from these concepts. 
• Beauty is objective: an a priori characteristic woven into all things, true for all. Beauty is also subjective: an a posteriori understanding that is unique to each person in each moment. 

It does not escape my awareness that in trying to define beauty, I introduced a series of tensions: real and abstract, truth and not truth, objective and subjective. 

Am I spiraling toward a tautology? Tension contains beauty because beauty contains tension. I could be, but I think there's something deeper going on here. This isn't just a meaningless equivalence; it's a meaningful ecosystem. Tension and beauty exist in relation to one another, each giving meaning to the other--a symbiotic relationship of meaning. 

This whole line of thought leaves me more confused than when I started, but I'm sure about one thing: where there is tension, there is beauty. 

p.s. A cool thought to leave with you. Synesthesia is a condition where perceptual wires get crossed. You hear colors, taste sounds, feel numbers. There are theories that babies experience the world primarily through synesthetic means, and eventually grow to distinguish perceptual media from one another. There is another theory that language itself is a form of synesthesia, where formations of visual lines induce involuntary correlations to collections of sounds, which in turn cause cognitive pathways to fire in the brain and form thoughts. But I digress.

All this is to say, synesthesia is a perceptual experience of tension. And the whole thing seems, earnestly, to be beautiful. 

The 6 Silos Expedition

 The question is: what to do with the dirt? 

The expedition--digging the deepest hole in the earth--is sure to generate a lot of it. But it's a finite amount. A little math will tell us exactly how much. We know the crust is approximately 40km deep. If we want to dig a hole that's 10 meters wide, then we'll get 3,141,592.65 cubic meters. That's just one and a half Sears Towers worth of dirt. 

It seems to me that the best route forward would be to build 6 silos near the job site, each a quarter of the height of the Sears Tower. 6 silos about 36 storeys tall would hold the dirt that is generated by digging the deepest hole in the world. 

Beyond the crust, there is no dirt. There is just fire, molten fire. We'll figure out what to do with that when we get there 

There is a certain romance to this idea. You'd see the silos for dozens of miles before you get to the job site. The silos would tower over the area, lending a certain majesty to the whole endeavor. The entire expedition would become known for these silos. A journey inward defined by 6 spires that soar outward. 

We need this journey. We need an expedition to the center of the earth. We need to know more about what lies beneath us, what forms this terra firma. We need to lay our eyes on it, to stick our hands into it, to consummate our relationship with this planet by truly getting to know it for the first time. Because doing so will literally bring humanity closer together. 

The first step is figuring out what to do with the dirt. 

Done.

On California

There are a lot of books written about California. What’s up with that? Why are so, so many stories and artists transfixed with this one place? What’s so good about it? I have a hypothesis.

I grew up in Indiana. If you’re having trouble picturing Indiana, imagine a piece of paper that has been colored green. Now you can picture Indiana.

Since childhood, I’ve had the opportunity to live in a few different places. The Piedmont region of the Carolinas, a mountain pass in the Rockies, and now the Pacific Northwest. All are places that put effort into being full of splendor.

I haven’t yet lived in California, but I’ve been led to believe that California takes the best parts of these places and makes them better. Adventurous coastlines, verdant valleys, lush rivers, golden deserts. Indeed, gazing on the Sierra Nevada mountain range from a plane stirred such an emotional response within me that it brought me to the realization that I would marry V. California’s very geography overflows with mysterious hints at something grand, something transcendent.

California allows for dramatic rendering. Valleys cut, peaks soar, rocks jut, vegetation consumes, waves crash. The land itself could be a character, as dynamic as the people. The land itself lends itself to a story.

Indiana, in comparison, is passive. The land doesn't do things, the weather does. Wind sweeps, snow dumps, cold destroys. The only notable battle with the land was a finite skirmish, and that terrestrial terror is long dead now that we have learned how to trick farmland into peaceful service. Only the most talented authors can set a story in this wasteland (unless they take advantage of the Mississippi River). 

You live on Indiana. You live in California. Among it. With it. 

I know which I'd write about... 

Shine on Those Who Dwell in Darkness and the Shadow of Death

This weekend, I read something by a good friend on the topic of Lent. He reflected on a memory of running in his church clothes, trying to get to an Ash Wednesday service on time. His experience was a real-life metaphor. I finished reading, reflected about my own preparation for Lent, kissed my wife, plugged in my phone, and went to bed. 

And then I awoke to my own real-life metaphor. 

It was dark, quiet, still. An unnatural stillness, one that I hadn't experienced in a while. No cars, no motors at all actually, even the kind that run in appliances... 

I tapped my phone. 6:25am, 53% battery. The power was out. 

Thus began two uncomfortable days. It wasn't apocalyptic; there was never a point where my environment caused me to abandon a previous moral code in order to survive. I didn't have to kill, or steal. 

But there were uncomfortable moments; like a Cormac McCarthy children's book. The power was out, ice on everything, food rotted in the fridge, devices without a full charge, car snowed in, and cell service unusually spotty. To be honest, most of the time was spent reading books, but there were also aimless walks in the ice to find food, any food. 

It wasn't 40 days, but it was a Lent nonetheless. We spent days in darkness, pregnant with meaning, and on the third day the light returned. 

There was Resurrection in that first shower. I spent two days in my own filth--using a cold sponge under my armpits doesn't really do the trick. The warm water washed me, and I emerged feeling like a new man. A true novus homo, reborn into a fresh way of life. 

But the real Lent in this experience was a little more abstract. It wasn't one experience, it was a line running through all the experiences, twisting through us to spell out the meaning of the season. We spent most moments with a sharp sense of now, concerned with the maintenance of heat, and food. We made mistakes and regretted them, and lived each moment in the momentum of the last moment. 

But each moment also contained a bit of the future, with us peering through the darkness expecting to be rescued by the light. Squinting, dreaming, hoping. We knew the power would return, even as we fumbled around with smaller things. We anticipated the light. We expected it. 

God told us that he is Love. The little we've tasted of love causes us to expect things from him. Love is faithful through darkness; love brings warmth. Love begets life, doesn't forget life. 

The Resurrection is God making good on a promise to be love. Lent is time spent with that on our minds, fumbling with small things and peering toward the horizon. Waiting for sonrise. 

Just like my real-life metaphor.

Writer's Block is Just a Fancy Prison Term for Solitary Confinement

 I'm feeling unmotivated. Uncreative. I've got nothing to say. 

This is a terrifying place for someone like me. As a member of that untouchable social class of Aspiring Writers (always aspiring, never a spire), I lack a few key things. 

First, I haven't yet established a real rhythm to writing. I write in spurts, in the corners of my day. Writing doesn't pay the bills, and time spent writing is time away from my wife. I need to want it to actually do it, and often I end up wanting to do other things instead.

Second, I don't have a body of work. I've got a mythical briefcase stuffed with paper fragments, some loosely held together with themes but mostly just a jumble of individual bits of prose that make me smile. 

Lacking these fundamental things, a dearth of motivation can be deadly for my Aspirations. 

When there's no rhythm, habits are powerless against laziness or competing priorities. When there's no body of work, a momentary pause can raze the piecemeal confidence that I might have constructed. And so begins a spiral: sitting down to write, fitfully starting sentences that are immediately erased, giving up in frustration, feeling worthless, thinking that maybe I should just stick to what I'm good at, and then losing myself in a streaming binge. 

A pause becomes a space becomes a drought becomes a desert. Months later, I jot something down and smile about it, and the Aspiring Writer is reanimated. 

A lack of inspiration is a painful journey inward, a stroll into insecurity and pain that lies hidden beneath the surface. It's just solitary confinement, a walled-off cell away from other voices, my own voices. And it's all self-imposed. 

So today, I fling open the barred doors of my cage to continue Aspiring. Today, I get past writer's block by writing about writer's block. 

Raven-Haired

Three times I’ve written a letter to a friend, in the past month. Each time to a different person.

Three times the recipient received that letter and immediately called my phone.

Three times I ignored the call. Mostly because I don’t like talking on the phone, which is why I was sending a letter in the first place. But not entirely.

Irony - expectation turned on its head. It’s a simple surprise cooked up by the Universe.

Irony is the tiny hairline fracture in the sturdy foundation of “knowledge.” It’s the simplest and best counterpoint to the idea that we know everything.

One of my coworkers has blonde hair. Her name is Brenna, a name which means “raven-haired." I’m sure her parents had a great aunt named Brenna, or maybe they just liked the name and never even knew its meaning. Whatever the case, this golden-haired girl goes through life named for the shade of earth’s darkest birds—a living irony.

Living irony is also written into the urge to respond to a letter with a phone call. A letter is such a distinct form of communication—slow, written, deliberate. A true opposite from a phone call, with electrons passing through wires and satellites—immediate, dialogical, casual.

Irony is naturally humbling, which means by its nature it is a good thing. But occasionally, irony isn’t welcome.

In those moments, I write letters.