So here’s the deal. I have been meaning to start a blog for a while now. In fact, this site has been organized like this since August. But now that the press of my master’s thesis has finally lifted and with it the feeling that writing = overwhelmed, incompetent, and a bit pukey, it is time to start writing again. I used to think a journal was enough. But I am a terrible journal writer. I usually write too soon after an experience and spew emotions and lame phrases that sound like they should be in a high school yearbook or I become melodramatic and once again misrepresent the truth. It seems my problem is audience. Of course I am going to think “he is SOOO awesome!” because the only person I have to account to is, well, me. But as a writing instructor I recognize that audience is everything. I am not trying to amuse myself in my journal, or share my favorite music, writings, truth, and snatches of Arizona sky. Nope. It’s just me and my little brain. But here, I can share. And I love sharing. Actually, I think that is why I am a teacher. Because sometimes things are too wonderful, clear, ridiculous, inspiring, and awkward not to share them and help others recognize them as well. In fact, that is what I see as beautiful, that process of connection between people and places, humor, knowledge, inspiration, and truth. And I am in search of all those things.
During parts of my life I have wandered from one place to the next, collecting these bits of beauty or as Everett Ruess, the man whom the title of my blog was originally written for, once penned, “I only live to see again. To mix and match my colors with the visioned splendors I’ve failed to catch.” That is what makes a vagabond so restless, or at least me and Everett. We are always on the move, in search of this beauty wherever we find ourselves. It crops up in the most interesting places, like this semester in the words of one of my 19 year old students who woke to his crying infant daughter and instead of just calming her and heading back to bed, he held her for an hour so he could “learn to understand her deep brown eyes.” That kind of beauty is everywhere, mixing, growing, morphing into the genius that created “Scrooge / Muppet's Christmas Carol,” digital SLR cameras, spam haikus, or homemade waffles.
You can call these moments gifts, or for some of you— coincidence. I call it being blessed with an extraordinary life. But beware, once you start looking for the beauty, recognize that it is, in fact, all around you, it becomes addictive, buries itself deep inside and you crave it more and more. But don’t fight it. Give in, like me and Everett, until “the wild silences have enfolded [you], unresisting.” You’ll thank me when you do. Just make sure you share those flashes of inspiration when they come, or you’ll find that someone else has patented your “Baby Cage.” And no one wants that.
Now here we are, at least for the moment.
