Santa Monica

The spring that I was in eighth grade, my parents bought me an acoustic guitar. It was some kind of Yamaha; not the most expensive thing ever but certainly nice and easy enough to bang out some chords on.

A few months later, my grandfather died. That whole time was one of the strangest events I've lived through. I remember sitting in my room after hearing about it, crying a bit and playing my guitar. I was teaching myself "Santa Monica" by Everclear. It's not a very complicated song (probably all of about 4 or 5 chords, plus whatever solo) but then, I wasn't very good so it still took awhile. I also recall thinking to myself "Yeah, I can be sitting in my room learning this song as an escape from my torrents of grief..." and realizing that if I was actually THINKING that thought, then playing the guitar probably wasn't actually part of whatever grieving I was doing.

(Okay, Jenn, what's the point?)

Two points, kind of.

Earlier this week, I saw "In the Shadow of the Moon" which is the documentary that just came out about the missions to the Moon starting back in the late 1960's. I loved it (probably drove people nuts with my glee) partially just because the space program is overall awesome, and partially because it reminded me a lot of my grandfather (and of my family in general.) At the risk of sounding melodramatic -- every now and then I get the feeling that Grandpa is really, really, close and that's how I felt for most of the film.

Whenever I get that feeling, it always makes me stop for a second and think, "Would Grandpa be proud of what I'm doing with my life right now?"

It's really easy to want to contrive a life that could fit into a resounding "yes" to that question, which is what I was getting at with the beginning part of this. It's so much easier to live life by putting together the right picture, but I also think that in the long run that makes it harder to get where one actually wants to go.

I guess now I can admit that all the times I got really upset about all the "pressure" at CMU...it wasn't because I honestly felt like other people were expecting things, or I wasn't measuring up, but more just that I wasn't doing as much as I felt I could have, or doing the things I really wanted to (more or less just telling myself I couldn't.) So, I guess the construction can go both ways.

I think all that this entry is saying is that I'm becoming more and more of a Buddhist, which will be highly satisfying for some people to learn (sigh) and is kind of strange for me on a number of levels, in any case. It's hard to imagine giving up going to Mass; at the same time, I'm questioning a lot. I suppose that's good and the idea is that questions lead to truth, no matter what the truth is, but...meh.