Joy Unprocurable

I believe that there are some things in this life which can only be learned through experience. These are the things that you can be told over and over, but until you see it for yourself with your own eyes, you wont fully believe it. One thing that I had always heard was that the best things in life are those that you can't earn. While I never denied this outright, and actually considered it to be true, I never really appreciated the depths of that truth until I saw it in the life of one of my friends. I learned that truth on a summer's day back in 2011. 

One thing that I would consider to be a priority in my life is literature. I love to read. One morning about a year ago I  was reclining in a chair, feet propped, and drudging through the arduous journey known as Moby Dick. Sometime during that morning my brother's phone began to ring somewhere in the house. I pulled myself from the distraction and ventured back into the archaic realm of whaling, revenge, and obsession. Looking homeless and drunk, having been awoken from sleep, my brother came to me and relayed a message.

"Pat wants to know if you want to ride horses... or something." He slurred.

"What? Horses?" Something about his words couldn't be balanced.

"I don't know, man, I couldn't really tell what he was talking about.. I was half asleep and the phone kept cutting out." At this explanation I was certain that the message had been lost somewhere in translation. However, I did my best to make sense of what I was being told and assumed that Pat, a friend of ours, must have wanted to go to a horse track, which in many ways, I now recognize in retrospect, would have been just as absurd as if he were wanting to ride horses with me.

"The nearest horse track is in friggen' Kentucky dude! That's just ridiculous..." As far as I was concerned the matter was settled. I ignored every bit of the previous several minutes and went back to reading. Just moments later Josh began again.

"I'm giving him your number." I persisted in ignoring the situation until it was absolutely necessary to engage. That point came when I answered my phone with quiet frustration.

"Hello?" I did my best to not sound annoyed but rather cheerful. If that were even possible for me, I don't know.

"Hey. What are you doing today?"

"Um, not much, really. Just reading, I suppose." I tried to formulate my response in such a was as to not betray the fact that I had absolutely nothing to do. I suppose that it is generally understood that when someone has reading on their agenda, they aren't doing anything, this being only true for the fact that most people don't consider reading a priority.

"Right. Cool… Hey, you want to go to a race track with me?"

"Well, I don't know… Did Josh say something about horses?"

"No.. Wait, what?"

"He said you wanted to ride horses, or something?"

"No!" He chuckled. "Porsches! A guy from work invited me to come to a Porsche rally and I don't want to go alone. It's at a track in northern Ohio. We can even ride in them!"

The missing and distorted pieces of the message were coming together clearly and my interest was instantly sparked. "Really? That actually sounds pretty awesome, man!"

"Yeah, so you want to go?"

"Of course I do! I mean, when do people ever get a chance to do this sort of thing?" I was now trying my best to not betray the fact that I was actually quite excited by the proposition of hanging around really expensive cars all day. The White Whale would have to wait; Ahab's obsession could endure another day.

Upon learning how long it would take to even get to the race track―3 hours―I felt regret for a fleeting moment. I couldn't help but consider how many pages I could read in that time. I consoled myself with the thought that I would probably never get the chance to experience something like this ever again. I knew my books weren't going anywhere. 

When we got to the track we were ecstatic. Everywhere we looked there were unbelievably expensive cars. They roared around the track, RPMs spiking, gears shifting, adrenaline pulsing. We gawked unashamedly. Pat parked his brand-newish Honda Civic between two Porsche Carreras, laughing to ourselves. One of these things does not belong.

We strolled around snapping photos of every car. Some were race modded, others were stock, all were impressive. Their owners sat in lawn chairs, told stories about their cars, and reveled in the attention and envy their cars evoked in us. License plates from New York and California. I imagined they were CEOs, owners of companies, stock brokers, lawyers. I was envious to the core. But I wondered if they were happy. Really happy. Something in me kept trying to tell me that if I had a car like they did, something in me could be satisfied.

We came across a very self-concerned man. He wore designer clothes and spoke definitively and authoritatively into a blue-tooth headset. Pat approached him and tried to start a conversation. I thought to myself, what are you doing man, this dude has 'not-to-be-trifled-with' tattooed on his forehead. Pat wanted to know who we had to talk to in order to set up a ride-along around the track. I became distracted from the conversation as a bright orange Porsche rolled up before us and stopped. Others began lining up behind. They were queued for the next heat on the track. The kid in me began lamenting that I never became a race car driver. I became aware that the self-concerned man had broken conversation with Pat and walked up to the first car in the queue, got in and led the pack onto the track. What in the world just happened, who was that guy? I couldn't help but imagine him roaring around the track in his Porsche, blue-tooth at ear, negotiating a business deal at a hundred miles per hour. Who were these people? 

We eventually found out that we had missed our chance to participate in the ride-along. Instead we watched the cars fly around the track. It was a road course, with varying elevations, which wound all through the hills of north central Ohio. After taking pictures of just about every car, our favorites from multiple angles; and after speaking at length with a gentlemen who owned and introduced us to his Formula One race car, we left for home with a virile, masculine satisfaction. Driving through the country side in the Honda Civic we recounted all of our favorite cars. We decided that one of our favorites was an Audi R8, obviously misplaced at a Porsche rally, but no less appreciated. As we made our way home, we passed an Amish Buggy, drawn by horse, clopping along the side of the road. We were in Amish country. It occurred to me then that many of the cars we had seen that day were worth more money than these people would ever own in their entire lives. It further occurred to me that this was not something that I should feel sorry for them about, even despite how much I had envied the people of that rally all day.

When we got back into town we decided to stop in to see Phill, one of our best friends. In our minds, we had just experienced one of the coolest things we might ever experience, and we wanted to share it with him. Once inside, we found Phill and his wife Christina in their living room playing with their 6 month old son, Eli. We were greeted warmly, but briefly, their son regaining all their attention. We sat down beside Phill and proceeded to show him the photos of the exorbitant vehicles, hoping to evoke from him the same awe that we had experienced. At first he paid us mind, but soon his attention went back to his son, laughing jovially at the various baby noises and expressions that his son made. He had only one priority; one care, and it wasn't some worthless sports car. I noticed it right away, rather more perceptively than I tend to be. I shut off the camera and put it away and just watched a man play with his son. There was more joy then and there than I had ever seen in quite a long time, certainly more than I had seen or experienced all day. True joy. It had nothing to do with something that could be bought. It wasn't due to something that could be earned. I would dare even say it was a gift that none of us really even deserved. And after an entire day of gawking at possessions, wishing I were more successful in life; after watching grown men play with expensive toys and then a young man playing with his son, I finally got it. 

You cannot earn joy. It cannot be bought.

Art

Ever since I was a child I have always felt the need to express myself artistically. When I was young this expression was manifested through visual art. I spent most of my waking days illustrating the world around me. It was no secret to my family that I was artistically inclined. My parents in particular appreciated my art more than anyone. But although they consistently praised every picture that I produced I never felt as though I was satisfied with anything that I drew or painted. It was never good enough.  

I was a realist through and through. I wanted to capture images in a detail just as crisp and comparable as what my eyes perceived. However, I was seldom able to do so. I would draw and redraw a particular detail a hundred times over just to get it right. Many times I would rub away an entire eraser just trying to complete one minute detail. It was in those moments when, after many failed attempts,  frustration would begin to set in. Tension would fill my strokes. The tip of my pencil would penetrate deeper and deeper into the paper, until finally my failures were etched into the paper itself. And though I tried, these were the marks that couldn't be erased. I would turn the pencil on its eraser and then rub to no avail. On one occasion, when working on a picture of a wolf, I was having a particularly hard time illustrating a satisfactory nose. In my frustration I erased a hole right through the paper itself. It now seems ironic to me to observe that when no paper remains, neither do any of the mistakes; the indelible marks of failure.  

This process occurred on many occasions; inspiration, failure, further attempts, further failures, frustration. Though I couldn't see it myself, I was told that I had an innate talent for visual art. When in elementary school I won a contest that awarded me with lessons at an art institute near where I lived. Later on I began entering my pictures in various art contests and placed first more than several times, though I honestly couldn't see why.     

Over the years, though the task was never mastered, I became much better at capturing detail. The best I could do in my own eyes was make something satisfactory, never anything exceptional. But it was then that a new vexation emerged in my art. I then began finding that, in my obsession with detail, there was an adverse neglection of the bigger picture. This problem could only be perceived after the completion of a picture when I surveyed my work only to find that the larger image was slightly askew. Though the details in and of themselves were satisfactory, I would find that I had failed to properly coordinate them to each other. Unlike the problem of accurately capturing detail, this problem was one that I never sought to correct. Rather, I slowly turned from expressing myself through visual art all together, the urge for expression remaining all the while. 

Now, I want to be a writer.