Archive for July, 2011

Welcome to the show

I think this is going to be more of a disjointed general update, rather than a focused update.

Of sorts.

At any rate I’m healing, it’s been a mixture of good and bad news. The scarring has been minimal considering the seriousness of the injury.

That being said, the docs don’t know if I’ll ever regain full use of the right side of my upper lip. C’est la vie, I was too pretty anyway.

I haven’t been able to run, which is annoying since it’s one of my better outlets for dealing with emotions that I am unable to articulate with language.

I feel like a curious mixture of both hope and despair. That being said, I am in no way depressed, just reevaluating and speculating.

I have always found that my life nearly always gives me what I need, the reason for this escapes me but I’m sure it will become clear in time.

I am becoming more and more excited about moving. There are several choices on the table, all of them involve sun, sand and salt water. This makes me smile (well half a smile, it’s all I can currently manage).

There are things here in Ohio that I will certainly miss, but the lure of new adventures is simply too great to ignore. I enjoy starting new chapters, it’s a blank slate, there is purpose and direction, but the pages are waiting to be written and I find that filling those spaces with experiences is something I cannot live without.

Life here has become routine, stagnant; an unhappy medium, something I simply cannot let myself become comfortable with.

My life has always been about going big. I have always felt that you can create your own greatness, your own story can be whatever you want it to be. You just have to want it enough. I have always been a creature of passion, of extreme desire to succeed; on my own terms.

I will not become an old man, filled with regret.

There are still so many stories to be written, songs to be sung and adventures to be had. My ambition is to make sure I capture as many of them as I can.

❤

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2011
07/31
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Health
Injury
Inspiration
Life
Love
Observations
Running
Sports
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I, Jedi

“There is nothing so dangerous as a dimwit who thinks they’re a genius.”
-me (during a convo avec ma souer [that’s my sister for all of you non-francophiles])

I feel like long after my death I will be quoted in snarky tones. I wish I could be there for it, but I suppose the foreknowledge that it’ll happen will have to be comfort enough.

I should, once again, be asleep. Instead I am giddy over a softball tournament in the morning and am writing in my blog.

Have I told all of you how much I appreciate the fact that you read the things I write? Well, I do. Muchly, good looking out everyone, you’re the smartest and best-looking bunch on the intarwebz.

Not a whole lot to dish out at the moment, I just enjoy writing, even when I’m writing about nothing. Which I’m sure all of you know by now. I can actually hear my own voice in my head right now as I type this on the ridiculously small virtual keypad on my iPhone.

I realized the other day that I only use my laptop to write books on, I can use my phone for everything else: take that starwars datapad-comlink combo, I have one device that does far more in a galaxy much closer and not so long ago.

But I can’t use the force and to my infinite frustration and regret absolutely no amount of birthday wishes will spontaneously create me a friggin lightsaber.

So we’ll call this one a draw k George Lucas?

Speaking of space, I still feel as ripped off today as I did when I got my first pair of glasses over the knowledge that I’ll never fly a spaceship.

I remember being in third grade, everyone is going around the room with what they want to be when they grow up and the inane chorus of “fireman”, “policeman”, “teacher”, “astronaut” and “doctor” gets to me and I, without hesitation, say: “I’m going to be a Jedi when I grow up.” To which my teacher (who shall remain nameless lest the secret agents in charge of squashing children’s dreams decide to award her a medal after they find out about her infinite evil) replies, “Now don’t be silly Ryan, you can’t be a Jedi.”

I looked her square in the beady, reptilian eyes and said: “Maybe you can’t, but I can be anything I want to be.”

So yes, I have always been this cocky, although I think that confident sounds much nicer, ya know?

❤

2011
07/23
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CATEGORY
Inspiration
Life
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Unwritten scenes, written.

I just had one of those “scene-from-a-movie” moments.

So I’m at work, right now as I write this. I literally just sprinted about five-hundred or so yards to my car to roll up my windows.

After I rolled them up I’m walking across the parking lot, there’s an odd hum in the air, it’s hot but the humidity is way down and it’s light outside, a weird sort of not-quite twilight that sprays the sky with navy blues and violets and magentas. A huge, and I really mean huge like as wide as my house huge, lightning bolt splashes down and the sky just opened up, like god turned on the faucet.

It was absolutely fucking glorious.

❤

2011
07/22
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Inspiration
Life
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Incisons/Decisions

It’s one a.m. I should be asleep, I have a wicked long day tomorrow, but instead I’m sitting by the pool with a rolling rock.

Life decisions are flying at me at the speed of light, I feel gravity trying to pull me back, to hold my feet firmly on the ground. I wonder if there is a happy medium, or if that too is something they tell you at school, something uttered as if average is somehow something you should actually aim for.

I am quintessentially something of a paradox. I dream big, I find hard things easy and yet I still fail and when I do it is usually epic in scope and always tragic (for me at least).

I have so many decisions to make and so fast it seems. I wonder if they’ll be the right ones or if it even matters as long as I jump off of this fence.

Can I just say, maybe quietly to myself, that being a genius is a friggin curse. I do like being smarter than most people but I hate the fact that I second, third, fourth and fifth guess myself on the daily.

K, whiny rant about being smart over.

Side note: I bought http://www.ryanmccracken.org which is now where my wordpress blog resides, the wordpress address will auto-redirect so it’s all good and I chose .org because it’s the first three letters of orgasm and I’m a guy.

I may be a geek, but I’m also a jock and I do have my ridiculously immature moments.

Man, I have to say, despite all the craziness in my life I really do love being me 🙂

❤

2011
07/22
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Inspiration
Life
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Rudyard’s Yard

“Don’t talk of worlds that never were, the end is all that’s ever true. There’s nothing you can ever say, nothing you can ever do.”
– the cure

It’s been an odd few weeks. I find myself pulled south, far south to the gulf. I wonder if it is just my natural wanderlust kicking in or if there is something more waiting on the coast. I miss the saline tears of ocean spray on my face, surely, as much as I miss believing in a dream.

I often think that perhaps I think more than is good for me. But for some reason I cannot quite grasp I find my thoughts constantly turning toward the sun and sand of Louisiana. The swamp and the river compete for my attention in my dreams. I remember the smell of the jungles of my boyhood and often wake with a slight upturn to my lips, a curving smile that actually reaches my eyes.

The jungle has a smell/sound that will forever be imprinted in my mind, whenever it rains in the summer I am suddenly in central-american rainforest, wondering-wandering through my earliest years.

Omnia Causa Fiunt.

❤

2011
07/21
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CATEGORY
Inspiration
Life
Love
Observations
Writing
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Someday(s)

Someday.

Someday is a dangerous word. Dangerous because it’s really just code for never.

I dislike never, dislike it because I cannot countenance the idea that I have any limitations.

I have been disabused of that notion many times throughout my lifetime. Sometimes violently, as in watching a dream terminate with extreme prejudice. Sometimes subtly, as in watching something you believed in, something you thought was so real, fade into the great oblivion that is broken hope and un-manifested destiny.

Sometimes I think that someday is just one of those childhood wishes that should never be wished, but today I simply believe that someday is a euphemism; a tale of never-was and never-will-be, but somehow so close you could have grasped it in your hand, and felt it slide through your fingers like sea water: the last memory a film of salt on your palm.

❤

2011
07/20
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Life
Love
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Why

I am a catalyst. A brazen wish; something half-way made and not-entirely sane.

I rather enjoy this shell that I inhabit, and that “I” inside is a perfect fit. I wonder what other people believe about this life.

Not the empty things they mouth in class or at church, but what they really believe, deep down, those thoughts they never share; that’s where you find the real measure of someone. I’m always open to discussion, to theorizing; finding truths and guesses.

I think that it’s important to understand where we’ve come from, it may give us some clues as to where we’re going; as a species and as individuals.

I’ve heard so many ideas about the how and when and the where: my favorite question, since I was a little boy, has always been why? it’s my favorite, I believe, simply because it’s almost always pure theory and for me a person’s theories are the best way to understand them, and I study people (anthro geek baby!) because to me they’re the most interesting and dynamic thing going on…and because it gives me a better understanding of real cultures so I can create fake ones in my books.

That was an incredibly long sentence. My apologies about the structure. In any case, some people will never make sense to me. No matter how well you think you know a person there is always a little held back, a little corner that’s off limits. I believe it’s because we wouldn’t like what we’d find there.

Like the heart of darkness, up that river lies only pain and sadness. Unfortunately for me, “why” always lies up that river and I’m a strong swimmer.

Two plus two equals four. Agreed? Okay, now tell me why.

❤

2011
07/15
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Inspiration
Life
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photo app funsies

20110714-105601.jpg

2011
07/14
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Inspiration
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Meddle(r)s

I’m not certain I know what I want to say today, I woke up oddly disconcerted.

I am, sadly I think, unable to process it as yet. Which is in itself odd for me, I can generally place the source of most things rather quickly.

On to other things, perhaps more important than my vague sense of unease today.

Life has been fairly busy lately, which hasn’t given me much time to think, or write, or let out most of what I want to get out of my mind.

I feel filmy and sort of unreal. It’s as though the reel is unraveling at both ends and I stand in the midst, meddling in the middle; trying desperately to stay whole and in motion.

it’s the middle of the meddle, and I’m not allowed to leave, you took the shine off of everything, now there’s nothing I believe.

I wrote that years ago, not knowing why the words came to me, oddly now they feel like prophecy.

This is why I am strange and have quite possibly lost the plot. Ah well, at least it’s never boring in here.

I think I’ll leave it at that.

❤

2011
07/14
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Inspiration
Life
Love
Observations
Writing
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iWonder

I had often wondered how people could become so sad, until of course, I experienced some sadness myself.

I survived, I got my mind back and while my heart has a few stitches and dents in it, it’s still quite functional – just a bit more cautious and maybe a little wiser.

Life is for the living. Stay there if you can.

I think that everytime something or someone hurts you that you kind of die a little faster for a little while.

Sort of.

I think its a combination of the effects of stress and depression coupled with the idea that your mind can affect your body; like the placebo effect but in a harmful way.

Conversely, I also believe that if you can find a way to stay above the pain you can keep yourself in the land thereof for a while longer than you perhaps would have.

Just throwing this out there but:

I have some very odd theories on life, the universe and the purpose and meaning of both.

Someday I may even share some of them. Maybe.

I also wonder where the job title ‘sage’ went. Where did they go? I still hear about ‘sage advice’ but seriously, when was the last time you met a sage?

My point exactly. Ah well, maybe the world doesn’t need or want sages anymore. I always imagine them as opinionated people, ones that make nuisance of themselves until their most excellent advice is taken. Come to think of it, the world could use some sages.

There are many, many other things that I wonder about. My mind is a strange place, a place where quantum mechanics sit down to lunch with post-modern theory and discuss the finer points of deconstructionism, or maybe it was structuralism they were discussing…or was that at tea?

You get the point I trust. I am always interested in learning, in knowledge of any sort, be it applied or theoretical, fantastic or mundane. I love the new, the old, the ordinary and the extra-.

I love writing most of all, even when it only makes sense to me.

❤

*This post was weirdly disjointed. I am both a fan of it and not quite sure if I like it simultaneously. I suppose one can never be sure of something written after waking up from odd dreams.

2011
07/12
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Fun
Inspiration
Life
Love
Observations
Writing
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