Poetry Moment: Of regrets and Robert Frost

When I was in fifth grade, as part of our 'graduation' ceremony, we recited a poem by Robert Frost, with very precise articulation, as coached by Ms. Richmond.  I still remember it today, including the emphases.  The emphasis is difficult to type, but it went something* like this:

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood
and sorry I could not travel both, 
and be one traveler- long   I   stood....
and looked down one as far as I could
to where it  bent in the undergrowth...
then took the other as just as fair
and having perhaps the better claim
for it was grassy and wanted wear
(though as for that the passing there
had worn them really about the same)
...
and both that morning equally lay
in leaves no step had trodden black
oh I kept the first for another day
though knowing how way leads on to way
I doubted if I should ever come back
...
I shall be telling it with a sigh, 
someday ages and ages hence
Two roads diverged in a wood
and I-
I took the one less traveled by 
and that     has made all   the difference!

Now I will be forever grateful to my teacher for drilling this poem so deeply into my brain that it stuck for 15 years.  I really love it, and I'm willing to bet that nearly every other student there also still remembers it, but I realized, quite recently, that we were telling it completely wrong!

If you ask people the title of that poem, myself included, they will often tell you it's "The Road Less Travelled" or "A yellow wood" or something like that; but the title of the poem is

The Road Not Taken

This is not a emphatic call to arms, but a quiet reflection on indecision and a meaningless choice between two equal options that shaped the future (or didn't, depending on how you read the final line)

When I read the poem today, I notice other things:

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood
and sorry I could not travel both
and be one traveler, long I stood
and looked down one, as far as I could
to where it bent in the undergrowth
then took the other, as just as fair
and having perhaps the better claim
for it was grassy and wanted wear
though as for that the passing there
had worn them really about the same

And both that morning equally lay,
in leaves no step had trodden black
Oh I kept the first for another day
though knowing how way leads on to way
I doubted if I should ever come back

I shall be telling it with a sigh
someday ages and ages hence
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I-
I took the one less traveled by
and that has made all the difference.

When Robert Frost wrote this poem, he sent it to a friend of his, who also read it as a call to arms.  He enlisted in World War I and was killed two years later.

Now you can read poems however you want, and this observation that we're reading it wrong isn't anything new. But it was new to me.

*Note: Both times I typed this from memory, so there might be minor errors, I imagine they too have made all the difference. 

The rise and fall of Ammon Perkes

per·spec·tive /pərˈspektiv/  
noun - The nagging voice that reminds you that other people have it much worse, and that you should stop whining and get back to productive things; your minor injury doesn't make you a victim. 

Last Tuesday marked the end of a two month run of almost uninterrupted happiness and excitement, a veritable jubilee of wonderful things.  The climax of all that, I suppose, was the news on Tuesday that I had been accepted to The University of Pennsylvania for grad school.  That morning I had left Philadelphia to beautiful weather after a wonderful visit to Penn for interviews, tours, presentations, and meet and greets with professors and graduate students.  Until I got to Penn's campus I had some doubts: Philly is a little grungy, and it was cold and a bit unwelcoming in general.  But the program itself was great, and I would love to be a part of it.  

It's my birthday present to me, I'm so happy!

Monday night, rather than grab drinks with the other students (not really my scene), I took the train out to a climbing gym on the east side of Philly, in this cool, old brick warehouse that looked from the outside like the sort of place you might get murdered.  Inside it was lovely and the nice girl at the counter let me in for free, since it was my first time and I was just visiting.  That was even before she found out that that was my birthday. 

Ammon & Shauna, circa 2 weeks ago

A week earlier I found out that I had received my ORCA grant, which is $1500 cash given to undergraduates for their research, which should help keep me from graduating into abject poverty.  

All this was while I had started dating a girl for the first time in what seems like a long long time.  I'll probably talk more about that in some other post, but her name is Shauna, she's lots of fun and has made this whole semester rather wonderful. We had a great party on friday with all my friends, and a piñata, and thursday Shauna surprised me with a rented puppy (yes, it's a silly place, I've just come to terms with that.  Puppies are great).  Add to that all the amazing adventures I've had with climbing and school and life, and this semester has been unreasonably good, to the point that I was starting to feel a bit uneasy with how many good things were happening, because surely life had to catch up to me at some point.  It certainly did its best. 

Stewart falls, i.e., other adventures

At my soccer game on tuesday our goalie was feeling a bit under the weather, and rather than risk losing on account of him not being able to focus and jump about, I figured I would just play goalie.  This might have been a mistake in retrospect, both because I suspect I might have been able to stop more goals while playing defense, and because it resulted in kidney trauma. 

A kid got a bit of a breakaway and I was running towards him.  I want to say I got to the ball first, but he basically plowed through me, got the ball and scored.  I yelled, because it was clearly a foul, and the ref called it.  But about three seconds later the pain hit me and I had to sub out.  It was more or less overwhelming–to the point that I couldn't really think about who should replace me or what, I just got out and lay on the sideline, where I stayed for the next hour or so, long after we had lost the game 2-1 and turned out the lights in the facility, which was actually quite nice, since they were incredibly irritating anyway.

Eventually I managed to stand and make it home, but the pain wasn't getting any better, and near midnight my roommate and Shauna took me to the ER.  At this point I just wanted pain killers, and each question they asked became more and more irritating ("No I don't have allergies to medication, what sort of an idiot question is that? Just put morphine in me now.").  They ran a CT scan and seemed pretty concerned–actually, that's not entirely true.  They seemed incredibly calm and nonchalant, but they were quickly doing lots of things–and surgery seemed like a fairly likely outcome.  Happily the results came back and my kidney had stopped bleeding (it had been bleeding).  

The next day was rough.  I couldn't keep anything down, I was in a lot of pain, and lying around all day doesn't suit me, but I could barely walk to the bathroom, so it was a bit of a necessity.  Since then the pain has gone down, my appetite has come back, and I can walk all the way to campus like a tired old man.  Lying around still doesn't suit me.  
Right now I'm recovering, I'm not allowed to do anything more active than walking for another two weeks (not that I feel capable of anything active right now anyway) and then the Urologist is going to decide what needs to happen.  There were some other problems with my kidney, some related, some not, and so I might end up having surgery, but we'll cross that scary, painful bridge when we come to it.  In the mean time I'm gaining a great appreciation for baths, cheerios, the ability to move and function normally, and friends who care about me, not to mention a girlfriend who is willing to take care about me when I feel like I'm dying (and a roommate who did great when she wasn't around). 

Did you know that Where the Wild Things Are employs chiastic structure?
So does stuffed french toast.

So I'm still fairly content with my life, there are much worse things that can happen than being out of commission for a few weeks, and as a whole life continues to be wonderful.  My children's book book club has gained some momentum and is a lot of fun (this last week we discussed Winnie the Pooh. I'm fairly sure I could find existential, meta-fiction in anything as long as I'm in the right mood.), and it looks like I will be going to grad school.  (Penn seems most likely at this point. Although Berkeley and Harvard are not technically impossible, I suspect I would have heard from them by now.)  I'm sure I'll have all sorts of time to reflect and write profound blog posts during my convalescence, since the number of other things I'm able to do is at an all time low.  But I'm often reminded that other people have it worse off, so I'll keep my griping to a minimum.  

Onwards and upwards.  

I'm sure someday I'll make some analogy with climbing and falling
and the role of ropes and quick-draws.
In the mean time, check out how cool this picture is!

Sometimes blogging is hard

I'm going to start carrying this in my wallet to give to people in case they ask me my philosophy on life. Also, this is pretty much how I expect to parse a proposal someday

Blag.  That's the noise I make when my blog post just doesn't come together. That's actually happened a lot recently, I have about 4 posts that were in the works that just weren't coming out how I wanted them.

This time, I was going to make a comprehensive analysis of my psyche and my life story in regards to why I approach life the way I do, but it wasn't making for very interesting writing.  Oh well. Lets just say I'm all about adventures and leave it at that for now.

Posts from 10,000 ft: missing Mississippi?

The view from way up here

From my cramped, middle-seat in row 42, without even the distractions of free wifi ($6/hr is $6 too much.  Take note, Delta), I'm doing my best to appreciate the fact that I am flying through the air at 100's of miles an hour. So far, I'm unsuccessful.

But I'm no less happy for it, I managed to hop on the standby list for an earlier flight (for free!) and got out of Atlanta an hour and a half earlier than scheduled. So now, at this moment, instead of inching along the tarmac in Atlanta, I'm sailing over the bright, golden-hazy meadows of Oklahoma.  

Since, relatively speaking, I'm not going anywhere, I thought I'd talk a bit about Mississippi.

See?  Boring. 

I'll open with a confession: I get bored in Mississippi.  A lot of people asked me why I went home for such short time.  There were a lot of good reasons–I needed to finish up projects in Provo; it was hundreds of dollars cheaper to fly christmas and new years eves; and I wanted time to come back, work on things in Provo and get ready for the school semester. A big part of it was just habit: for a long time I've had very limited time for vacations because of the MTC, so this Christmas, even though I had fewer obligations, it felt strange to leave for more than a week–but a lot of it came down to the fact that I always get bored when I stay in Mississippi for too long. I miss the near-constant adventures available in Utah.

That said, this last week was lovely.  I think this last year I mellowed out a bit and realized that I actually enjoy a lot of things about Mississippi and being home that I've never really appreciated.  Here's a little shout out to my home state.  It may have problems with obesity, poverty, education, and teen pregnancy, but it's not for nothing that profound people come out of Mississippi.

There are also no dogs in Provo

When I was younger, whenever we would go to Utah, when we came back my parents would always talk about how Mississippi was "So green!!". I never saw what was so fantastic about the greenness.  Now when I come home I love how the entire state is alive.  Everywhere you look, there are trees and bushes and vines and life.  There are squirrels and birds and bugs everywhere. Everything is slightly damp and smells like life.  Everything breathes.

Mississippi might not be a popular destination for carefree, outdoorsy europeans and asian tour busses (although it might, they always seem to pop up in the strangest places), but its outdoors are somewhat wonderful.  Open water kayaking is fantastic, and walks in the woods have this private, secluded, even romantic (in the truest sense of the word) feel that is hard to find in the exposed, oft-overcrowded wilderness of Utah. You can turn a corner in the woods and find yourself with no human in earshot. It's really the best type of solitude.

Here we see Perkes in its natural habitat

There was a time when I thought snow was the most magical thing in the world and I could play in it forever and never get bored.  Admittedly, that was last Sunday, but the more time I spend in Utah, the more I appreciate winters that aren't quite so frigid.  It is wonderful to stand barefoot in the gulf, or walk through the woods in a t-shirt (having fallen into the water from a tree of dubious integrity), or simply go outside without gearing up for war.

In regards to the people, I might just be projecting, but I feel like everyone here, myself included, is a lot less high-strung. It's sort of hard to judge this, because I live in a stressful college town, and my parents live on the beach in a casino town, but I think it's a fair observation.  People in the south just take time to talk to people or to sit.  I think that's the reason there are so many porches in Mississippi compared to Utah. (I don't actually know if this is true, but I suspect it is.  When I have internet again I'll look this up.) The one time we tried to get a porch in Utah the Home Owners' Association threatened to fine us.  Why?  Because they hate relaxation.

Crepes for lunch

Returning to Mississippi, you wouldn't know if from how skinny healthy everyone in my family is, but we do food right.  Eating my parents cooking is great, and the bagels and cream cheese flow like water from the tap (and unlike tap-water in Mississippi, bagels and cream cheese are delicious).  Actually my family does everything I love right.  We play games, we cook fancy meals, we talk about science, we go outside, we watch Doctor Who.  It's very reassuring.

So I really enjoyed this week, and being in Mississippi.
I'm not saying I'd like to build a summer home here, but the trees are actually quite lovely.

People watching just to pass the time

Notes from my voyage:  

First flight awful, stuck between two people, both college students.  Good enough people–they don’t take up my space, make noise, or smell bad, but the whole thing is very claustrophobic.  Guy on the right wants to be a naval pilot, studying flash cards of pre-takeoff checks, slept most of the trip.  Girl on my left in pajama pants, sleeps, reads.

Young family to the left with a fairly quiet baby.  Sometimes she cries, but that’s how I felt also.  The girl next to me was making faces at her and making her (the baby) laugh. As we approached Atlanta, baby was sitting on tray table, pressed against the window, looking at the world below. 

In the airport café, black ladies at the cash register.  Probably around my age, messed up Hispanic guy’s order, didn’t really face him when they talked to him.  Didn’t include his bread bowl, and wouldn’t give it to him because he hadn’t paid, agreed to charge him for it and give it to him, but found out they were out of bread bowls.  Hispanic guy (an airport worker, maybe on the tarmac? Has a vest with initials on it, can’t remember what) retorted as he left, “it’s a holiday, y’all need a cook!”

My lunch  was  mediocre.  Chicken salad sandwich careless, raw onions always a bad decision.  Four croutons does not a Caesar salad make. Now my hands smell like raw onions.

Second flight: Drunk (?) woman with seat next to me argued about baggage space with passengers in front of us (old married couple, made snide comments and didn’t really acknowledge her directly), coming from home in Charlotte to visit her husband who works for VA in Biloxi. Short dress and makeup, but fairly disheveled.  Face puffy, seems like it’s seen plastic surgery, but could have just been a bad day. Probably drunk, definitely kicked off the plane.

In front of me, old, colonel sanders type friendly with young, smart, relaxed black guy. Sanders is in a suite, black guy in a white t-shirt with tattoos.  Both in first class, ordering drinks, bonded over drunk lady.

Take off, empty seat where upset woman would have been; she smelled bad, I didn’t ask her name. I unceremoniously nabbed her seat for my stuff after she was escorted off.

Diamond rings do disco–reflect the sunlight all over the cabin.  Looks like stars. This ring’s owner is a white, middle-aged, thin woman with grayish buzzed hair.  Did she do chemo, or is she just a little edgy? Husband reading CNN, sort of a Newman type, now he’s on E-trade, CNN money. (Making stock decisions?) Old woman in front (the couple who argued with lady from Charlotte) not wearing a ring.  Are they just family? Unmarried? Or do her fingers swell on airplanes? I can’t see the husbands left hand without being obvious. She’s reading “Born in Fire” Husband (?) has typical old man hat: tan, canvassy, large.  Woman has anchors embroidered in gold all over her blouse.

Middle aged couple (with the diamond) ordering white wine, joking with stewardess.  Classy Folk, southern accents, going home. 

Stewardess is older (mid 40’s?  Early Fifties? Black women tend age well) A bit old fashioned (shoulder pads, hair curled in rollers) but classy, friendly.  She opens cans with a card to save her hands. Clever.

Other flight attendant younger (30’s?) more modern style, smiles more.

They keep offering me refills, why don’t I take them? These pretzels are making me thirsty.

Afterward: 

I started this because I was reflecting on the drunk lady and didn't want to forget how that went down, I finished because I was bored.  As we de-boarded I noticed the older fellow had a ring, so I'm going with swollen fingers.  Additionally, the diamond ring lady had her leg was in a brace and she asked for a wheel chair, and they were talking about having had surgery.  Bone marrow transplant maybe?  Christmas can be a rough time for people.  It's good to be home. 

Thoughts of an recently-busy, oft-overprivileged yuppie, or Further proof that my dad cloned himself

"Perhaps I am more than usually jealous with respect to my freedom. I feel that my connection with and obligation to society are still very slight and transient. Those slight labors which afford me a livelihood, and by which it is allowed that I am to some extent serviceable to my contemporaries, are as yet commonly a pleasure to me, and I am not often reminded that they are a necessity. So far I am successful. But I foresee that if my wants should be much increased, the labor required to supply them would become a drudgery. If I should sell both my forenoons and afternoons to society, as most appear to do, I am sure that for me there would be nothing left worth living for. I trust that I shall never thus sell my birthright for a mess of pottage."
                     ~Henry David Thoreau,  Life Without Principle

Reading Thoreau makes me feel like less of a generation-Y idealist unwilling to settle down and get a real job and more like a generation-Y idealist in pursuit of a worthy life. Not that there's anything wrong with working hard–I suppose all good things that exist are the result of hard work–but the idea of sacrificing a joyful life for money to provide for an expensive one terrifies me.

I was going to make this long and thoughtful, but that's really all I have to say on the subject, plus I just realized that I actually ended up posting my failed attempts at a good analysis of this semester last month.  I don't think all people who make a lot of money are selling their soul, a lot of people are passionate for things that compensate well. I'm fairly lucky in this regard actually.  While I'm not passionate for anesthesiology, there are a lot of people willing to pay scientists to explore the world, and that's a pretty good gig.

Maybe people who have actually pursued careers will be able to inform my opinions on this, but for now I'll stick with this. I've had a lot of examples in my life of people for whom a career is about so much more than a paycheck.

Looking for Walden

The view, walking out of my programming midterm.

Today it rained, and it was cold. My helmet got wet, and my hands were dying.  Like most other days, I spent hours underground in the most depressing building on campus. Opening the door to one of the most beautiful sunsets I've seen in Utah was a nice moment.

Ordinarily I try to stay busy doing things I enjoy and look for joy in between.  This semester hasn't really left many opportunities to do the things I love, but I am still managing to find some good times in between.

For the first time in my life I'm enjoying walking.  I've always enjoyed what I'm doing so much that wasting time either before or after whatever I was doing to walk someplace always seemed unreasonable, but in my current life of stressful things walking is an island of reflection in a sea of business busyness.

This semester has been an interesting view into what a busy, stressful, work-filled life looks like.  I don't like it, and I don't understand why anyone would choose such a life. This is the life that Thoreau was escaping from. I think what I am getting at here is life is far too short to waste it doing something you don't enjoy, and there are far too many things out there to enjoy to trudge along, being busy without doing anything meaningful.

That's really all.  Whatever you're doing, I hope you enjoy it. And regardless of how much you enjoy it, I hope you're doing something in between to put some joy in your life.  If not, you might consider rock climbing.  It's one of a few things that are keeping me sane.