Desiderata

So there's a story that goes along with this... I was in Basic Training, and it was my unit's turn to do "Base Beautification Duty". That's basically the Army's way of doing lawn care and landscaping without having to pay for it. They get us up at the usual hour of 0430 and we're all standing there, knowing that we're all in for a long, long, day of hard work. They call out the names of people who are going to be on which detail; 20 in some group to mow lawns, 15 in another to rake the pine needles. There were only 7 others in my group, one of the smallest there was, and they didn't tell us what our detail would be. I have to say I was pretty nervous, not knowing. There was something safe in knowing what your doom was. Every one else was carted off to their far off places to be put to work, lunches in hand. At least we knew we'd be back for dinner. We were loaded on a bus, and a Drill Sergeant took us down the road. We sat in silence, wondering, I'm sure, what we were in for. The Drill Sergeant noticed the silence, and decided to make us sing "The wheels on the bus go round and round", so that made us laugh, and we sang out hearts out, prompted by the promise that if we didn't preform to his liking, it wasn't going to be good for us. He took us out to a land fill looking place, and introduced us to the man who was to be in charge of us for the rest of the day. The man, a civilian was very easy going and very nice, much to our relief. Many civilians, knowing that we were brand new in the Army, tried to boss us around and humiliate us like we were theirs to command.

It was our job, once the grass clippings and pine needles were raked up, bagged and brought to us, to empty the bags. That's it. About 10 minutes worth of work every hour! At first we didn't know what to do with our free time, it'd been weeks since we were left totally unmanaged (the old guy had gone into his office down the hill)! He even left his truck with the keys in it so we could listen to the radio when we wanted. We started digging around the junk piles, and found an old baseball bat and a few balls. Between the piles of trash, we found a perfectly formed baseball diamond, and we each took turns hitting a few balls around. There was a frisbee too, which we used for most of the day. We were careful not to be seen by the other Soldiers bringing back the bags of refuse, word of us having a fun relaxed time while everyone else was working wouldn't sit well. We had a leisurely lunch, and laid in the bed of the truck soaking up the sun, listening to the music, the few girls that were with us actually volunteered to give back rubs!

We spent the day totally relaxed, a vacation from the stress and worry of boot camp. At the end of the day, we all shuffled down to the small one room office at the bottom of the hill, and entered into it's air conditioned glory. We took turns using the (fairly) clean bathroom, and absorbing the cool air. As we waited to be picked up in the bus, I looked up and saw the words below on the wall. I started to read them aloud, not knowing what it was, or what the next words would be, and as I did, a hush fell over our relaxed group. Soon, everything was silent, save the hum of the air conditioner as I read the words. A peace fell over us, and as I finished reading, nobody spoke, because it seemed that we all wanted to hang on to that silent peace. As the bus rumbled up, and we marched out, we each took one look back at the words on the wall. Upon our return to the barracks everyone had already heard what an enjoyable day we had, and compared it to the misery which they had to deal with. Soon we were back to the hustle and bustle of our training, and that day seemed a forever ago. Yet as I looked back on that day, a remnant of that peace filled my heart, and I have tried to live my life according to the words which capped the perfect day.


Go placidly amid the noise and the haste, and remember what peace there may be in silence.

As far as possible, without surrender, be on good terms with all persons. Speak your truth quietly and clearly; and listen to others, even to the dull and the ignorant; they too have their story. Avoid loud and aggressive persons; they are vexatious to the spirit.

If you compare yourself with others, you may become vain or bitter, for always there will be greater and lesser persons than yourself. Enjoy your achievements as well as your plans. Keep interested in your own career, however humble; it is a real possession in the changing fortunes of time.

Exercise caution in your business affairs, for the world is full of trickery. But let this not blind you to what virtue there is; many persons strive for high ideals, and everywhere life is full of heroism. Be yourself. Especially do not feign affection. Neither be cynical about love, for in the face of all aridity and disenchantment, it is as perennial as the grass.

Take kindly the counsel of the years, gracefully surrendering the things of youth. Nurture strength of spirit to shield you in sudden misfortune. But do not distress yourself with dark imaginings. Many fears are born of fatigue and loneliness.

Beyond a wholesome discipline, be gentle with yourself. You are a child of the universe no less than the trees and the stars; you have a right to be here. And whether or not it is clear to you, no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should.

Therefore be at peace with God, whatever you conceive Him to be. And whatever your labors and aspirations, in the noisy confusion of life, keep peace in your soul.

With all its sham, drudgery, and broken dreams, it is still a beautiful world. Be cheerful. Strive to be happy.

The flower and the corporation

As I was walking past the library to institute last night, I saw the strangest thing. A man stopped and smelled the flowers which were planted along the path. At first I thought it was odd, even though that familiar old saying popped into my head. I found myself slightly envious of this man, who had thought to take but a moment out of his life to appreciate the seemingly little things of this world. I thought about stopping to smell the flowers as well, but I didn't. I don't know if it was out of fear that I didn't want this guy to think I was mocking him somehow, or if I might have been embarrassed had someone seen me doing something out of the ordinary. For some reason, I was totally self conscious about it. The whole walk back to the institute I was thinking about going back to smell them, just to see what they were like. I didn't really care anymore if they smelled great or wonderful, but within me, I wanted to know that I had taken the time to enjoy something small. I'm resolved that the next time I'm on campus, I'm going to stop and smell them, and I hope that lots of people see me. You never know what actions you take which might inspire someone else to enjoy something previously taken for granted in their lives. And yes, I went on a rant about the qualities of a friggin flower, gush if you please.

I'm sitting at my job while I write this, and I have to say, for "work", I kinda like it. I have a couple friends, and I can talk to them via the chat program we have at work. It hasn't quite turned into the homework encouraging thing that I'd hoped it'd be, but then again, if I weren't doing this, I could be reading. And yes, I'm still way behind in my reading for school. They have what they call Clinics, where people come in to hawk their products to us to get us to both be more knowledgeable for our customers, and hopefully be more inclined to sell their products. I've not learned a whole lot attending the two that I've gone to, but I did win a sweet set of headphones from Skullcandy, and today, I broke a $500 watch from Suunto. In my opinion, Sunnto is a huge waste of money (obviously if I can break it in just holding it for 5 minutes), but skullcandy is a pretty decent product. I love how companies come out with new and exciting "technology" each year for things that we somehow can't do without, and it costs just a little bit more than what we're willing to spend, but dang it, some people just have to have the latest and greatest. If you can't tell, I've learned to hate most corporations. I think that by and large, most of them don't serve any useful purpose to society and yet somehow they take advantage of gullible consumers to stay alive or even flourish. Look at me! I've gone from pondering the pleasures and wonder of the small things in life, to a semi sermon against irresponsible capitalism, they're totally related if you ask me. I love blogging! I suddenly make so much more sense to myself!

Random note- My desk is facing the West side of the building, where I can see outside. This also means, as the sun sets, it shines directly into my eyes for a good two hours. So yes, I'm sitting at my desk wearing my sun glasses. Suddenly I'm much more interested the in visible light transmission percentages of sun glasses!

For those of you wondering, I'm still behind in my reading for school, and I've consigned myself to the fact that I probably always will be. There's just too much going on with it. Not to mention that it's mostly all written by crusty old men who haven't seen the outside of their offices in a decade or two, so it's a little bit dry.

My First Blog

Well, this is exciting, isn't it? You get to read all my innermost thoughts! HA, not quite. I've been pondering for most of the day about what to put in this first post. Should I put my annoyance with drivers who have a turn lane, but still insist on using only half of it while keeping their arse ends sticking out in my lane? My constant amusement with the Utah poof I see on girl's heads every year in school? Eh, I don't know. I'm sure I may put something up about each of those yet.

What I know this will not become, is a place for me to vent my frustrations about the other "fairer" sex. I could go on all day about this. I'm just going to do a blanket statement, which should cover quite a bit of my frustrations with them for all time. The ones who say they love me but don't do anything about it. The ones who have my attention, know that they have it, but don't return phone calls, texts, or whatnot thereby leaving me hanging. The ones who say they want me, then don't, then do, then don't. The ones who get offended too easily. The ones who don't realize that I'M A GUY, I DON"T THINK THE SAME WAY YOU DO! The ones who say they only want something, but then want something totally different. I know there are more out there, but sadly that's all my brain can think of right now. This is legal notice that you all hereby pretty much annoy, frustrate, or otherwise cause undo stress in my life, and i'm sick of it. If i didn't like you all so much as a gender, I'd get a restraining order. Now I don't mean to say that I won't mention girls in my posts, seeing as how they are roughly half the world's population, they're bound to interact with me during the course of the day. Such as the girl in my Intro to Islam class who shoved her (nice) butt in my face and told me that she was horrified to find that she had put those jeans in the dryer, which was why they were so tight. I thought it was just because she wanted to shove her rear in my face. Either way, I didn't mind terribly, but I wondered if she somehow thought I could understand pulling out shrunken jean from a dryer. I don't think I've ever noticed anything other than expensive sweaters shrinking when I put them in the dryer.... moooving on.

Yes, that's a good idea of what this blog will probably be like. I've decided recently that there are things which sometimes keep me up to all hours of the night, and it'd be best if I wrote something down instead of laying awake thinking about them. Oh yes, and about the name of my blog, The Black Rock. It's not some stupid reference to something off of the tv show LOST as undoubtedly at least one of you was thinking. It actually hit me today while walking to class, it's a song by OAR, and it's quite fitting for a blog. I'd like to get it and put it on here if I could, maybe a friend who has music on their blog will help me... hint hint...

Well, that should do it for today, between this and facebook, I'll probably fail my classes yet again. Hope you all come back everyonce in a while, and maybe this will be updated. If you come back tomorrow looking for more, you're fooling yourself. If you want to know what's going on in my life right then, just text me. I realize I spent most of my time writing about what I won't be writing about, but maybe that'll free me up to write about other, more important stuff. Heck, I might even come back and add to that list of things I won't write about. Ok, I've got like 200 more pages of reading to do before Monday, and I won't have any time this weekend, so I'll catch you all later.