Awake My Soul

Chapter Thirteen: Heartbreak (Part 4)

Sat, 23 Jun 2012 21:49:00 -0400

I wrote In The Middle Of Nowhere, the story of Rhys and Kaycie. Rhys is a sympathetic newspaper writer who lives in Santa Barbara who falls madly in love for the beautiful Kaycie. After being together and happy for a while, Kaycie decides to end it, sending Rhys into misery. To cure their friend, Brewer and Sam suggest an old Chumash Indian cleansing ritual where they would go hiking in the Santa Ynez mountains carrying all of the sentimental keepsakes Rhys has held onto that remind him of Kaycie. At the top he would discard of the items off a large drop. Rhys obliges. On his way down the mountain, however, he loses his friends and his way. Somehow he wanders over to where the bag of Kaycie-things landed. He ends up lost and stuck on a mountain with nothing but a bag full of the things he was trying to forget, and he has to use those items to survive. As he uses each item, he relives a part of their story. Both his heart and body fight for their lives.

RHYS: She said she needed some space.

BREWER: Ooh. That need-my-space thing is the Vulcan Death Grip of relationships.

SAM: No one ever needs space.

RHYS: Ugh. This has been such a painful week. I just want to talk to her, that’s it. Even if it’s not about us, or anything. Just wanna talk. About whatever. I’m really missing that.

It’s not that hard to see Rhys was very much myself. I kept on wondering what would be the perfect way to end a play like that. Should I give myself what I wanted and have Kaycie come back to him in an epiphany that they were meant to be together? Should I have him be cool with it, or should he let her know how much she hurt him?

RHYS: Kaycie, why do I get the sense you’re trying to call my bluff?

KAYCIE: Well, I was there. I saw that bag, and all that stuff and Ashley kind of told me about everything, and, Rhys, I’m sorry you took everything so hard. I feel like this is all my fault.

RHYS: No.

KAYCIE: What?

RHYS: Do not blame yourself for anything.

KAYCIE: I don’t get it.

RHYS: Look. On Verona, I had a lot of time to think. You were pretty clear about how we outgrew each other.

KAYCIE: Really?

RHYS: Yeah. It made me realize, we ran our course. Like they do sometimes. Sometimes relationships are destinations, ours was amazing, but it wasn’t a final destination. And we can’t keep each other from where we need to be. I still love you enough, and that’s why I can’t force you to stay. I think that in order for me to be happy, I need to see you happy. I’ve been thinking. About the time we were together. There were times when we were together, but you weren’t that happy. And I sensed it, and it was hurting me actually. But the times when you were happy, I was happy. Goofing around a grocery store. Drawing at the park. I won’t ever forget those times. And while I’m a little sad it’s all over, I feel better that it did in fact happen.

Was this what I wanted? The pains of loss didn’t go away for a very long time. I dated recklessly a bit to try and start a revenge relationship. I can’t say I’d ever advise that.
At a certain point I hit acceptance. We were over. It was time to change the photos I had hanging all over the place and to pick some new favorite songs. I went on a family trip to Hawaii, and came back to Santa Barbara in time for my second year at UCSB.

Chapter Thirteen: Heartbreak (Part 3)

Sun, 17 Jun 2012 00:57:03 -0400

Then things got worse. In seemingly no time, she had a new boyfriend. Some guy who didn’t seem to match the person she was and they seemed to have incompatible values in life. He had a big head and often put Facebook statuses in Latin. I thought she was way too good for him. I thought she was too good for me a lot of times, much less him. This new relationship hurt, and seeing how fast he had what I had, and seemingly more of it, was brutal. If it was possible to understand things even less then zero, then I had just entered that territory.

It was awful. It had been wonderful. It was going absolutely perfectly, and I had it all figured out. Then it turned ugly. I couldn’t do anything, because everything that there was to do was in someway a reminder. Every song, various meals, even my clothes. I wasn’t even sure what I wanted at that point. I kind of wanted to go back, but knowing that this was bound to happen, that wouldn’t have made it better. I wanted to see her again. I felt like she disappeared and had been replaced by a new person. I fancied the idea of at least having one day with everything the they once were, if for no other reason than to say goodbye to a person who would soon be disappearing.

My coping process was the same. I went through the motions of living. I decided to turn my heartbreak into script. Over the summer I produced a 120-page screenplay about a bitter breakup. It was pretty heavy on the bitter.

Chapter Thirteen: Heartbreak (Part 2)

Fri, 15 Jun 2012 12:41:06 -0400

It happened in my dorm room and when it did I just felt shaken under the green lights I hung up around the window. I didn’t see it coming. One bit. We ended for reasons I still don’t understand. I don’t think I ever will. To try and explain it would just be a waste of time and energy. It’s one of those things that just can’t be explained.

The next night, I went bowling with a bunch of people. I had spared most of them the news, but the way I was acting that night, I wouldn’t be surprised if they all knew. I barely focused on the bowling, not that I would’ve been any good anyways. I was surrounded by pink and neon blue lights all around, a floor that lit up with different patterns, and colors and thumping bass everywhere. The sounds of the music, the crashing of pins, and the clapping of the bowling balls as they bounced into each other blended with the machines and the fifty simultaneous conversations. And none of that was getting to me. I felt like my body was some sort of room. I stood stoically, like a room, not moving. Inside the room was the real me, sprawled out on the floor.

I felt like suddenly all the fortunate events in my life that led to each other suddenly went nowhere. I felt like the period of good things in my life had effectively come to an ending. I felt no love. I didn’t think I could ever find anything good again. I figured that I had been with her against such great odds, and none of my other relationships before were ever anything as serious. Having lost that, none of my world made sense. I didn’t think I was loveable. I couldn’t really imagine anyone seeing me as someone that would interest them and I figured I would be alone for a long, long time.

Alone. That was the big thing. I never felt so alone. One of the best things about a relationship is how it helps keep loneliness at bay. You have someone to spend time with and to do things with almost on call. They stayed by your side and talked to you regularly because that was the thing to do. You would eat together, listen to music together, all kinds of things. Suddenly, I lost my conversation partner, my dinners for two, and my “list-of-movies-we-need-to-see-together.”

I hated feeling alone. I never saw life as anything good if you couldn’t share it with other people. I think one of the worst things I can imagine is being the only person on the Earth. I know all the people on the Earth mess things up a lot, but being the only person would be terrible, boring, and lonely. That was how I felt. I had made several friends on my floor, but there were only a few I had things in common with. A lot of them I couldn’t relate to very well. At this point I had yet to feel like I knew anyone well enough to share how I felt. I was pretty guarded about it all. Also, among the friends I made on the floor, many of them had coupled up by then, and it wasn’t helping the situation one bit.

Chapter Thirteen: Heartbreak (Part 1)

Thu, 14 Jun 2012 11:18:46 -0400

My college experience was going relatively well so far, and I was getting more and more confident that Santa Barbara was a good fit. I had Jeremy and Tommy both come up to visit me on separate occasions. I liked showing them my new life. I was taking fun classes that let me write compelling papers and watch Ju-On and the Japanese version of Dark Water. I lived on a floor with interesting people. Being on a floor with a lot of people who chose it because of their aversion to drugs and alcohol was interesting. Things of that nature were very new to them, and I saw a lot of people get drunk for their very first time.

One time, Tommy came to visit me during a week where I had worked a Ra Ra Riot concert, seen the jazz legend Sonny Rollins perform live, and played some songs at a thing called Guitarmaggedon. I thought about how well my life was going, and how awesome it was to be able to walk around every day and just enjoy what Santa Barbara had to offer: a relaxed lifestyle, mountains and ocean, lots of activity. I also enjoyed the independence. I had always looked forward to living on my own, and so far it lived up to my expectations. I was taking classes, making friends, and I was also in love.

I had a relationship with this girl who I mentioned when describing the best night of my life. It wasn’t my first relationship, but it might as well have been. I had never felt the way I felt with her. Most of the time I felt like I had gotten something that I never should’ve had because it was too good for me. I might’ve been in disbelief the entire time. Something felt very complete about it. I enjoyed every minute, and planned on keeping it going forever. It felt like every event in my life had led to me meeting her, and that now that we were together I was in the pinnacle of my own life. I can be pretty sentimental. I saved every movie ticket we ever went to. I constantly shared songs. I took way too many pictures of us, too often. It was amazing.

Then one day it ended.

Chapter Twelve: Philosophy (Part 6)

Wed, 13 Jun 2012 12:55:43 -0400

Anyways, I discovered I liked Philosophy a lot. I considered taking it up, at the very least, as a minor, so I could take more classes that challenged my thought like that one. After reading all sorts of ideas, I came to a conclusion about the existence of God. There were so many arguments that it had locked into a stalemate. People proved and disproved each other on a regular basis, and there were no signs of this ever ending. I decided that the world has seen quite a few people with a lot of intelligence over time, and that whether you were going to believe in God or not, you would have to do so against a lot of natural evidence.

            It seemed to me that if there were a God, He had behaved all throughout history like someone who wanted to tread this line of ambiguity. I wondered why. I don’t think I could easily imagine a scenario where God was just physically hanging around and believing Him was a no brainer. Yet there were so many hints of Him. There weren’t enough to completely prove him, but there were too many to easily disprove him. It took that thing called faith. I wondered why God would want us to use faith to connect with him. Martin Luther once said that, “trust is the highest form of praise.” I suppose, if God really was all loving, then he’d want to have some sort of reciprocated relationship with us, and trust is key in relationships. I was soon about to learn a huge lesson about how important trust is in relationships.
            It seemed like logic, philosophy, and reasoning back and forth all formed this bridge to actually believing in God. Each following plank was a belief based upon the plank before it. But if you kept walking, you would hit a final plank and stop. The bridge just ends. You would hear from some people, “No don’t stop. Keep walking. There’s more to this bridge.” Then you would see other people just sitting there, in disbelief, on that last plank, not walking further than they could see.
            Faith was that unseen part of the bridge. Supposedly if you made it all the way to the other side of the bridge, you would find the most joyful place you could possibly imagine. A place where love flowed everywhere, where Guanilo would’ve booked resort reservations, and where my dad was waiting behind the door of a master bedroom. We all hit this point where we could either walk towards the other side, and risk there being no more bridge at this part where we can’t see, or we could just have a seat on the furthest plank, hang out with the friendly people there, and just be content and happy and stagnant.

I had hit this point on my bridge, and I knew what I was going to do. I was just about to do it.

Then my world got lit on fire.

Chapter Twelve: Philosophy (Part 5)

Tue, 12 Jun 2012 04:05:12 -0400

Some other day, I would research these theories in more detail. It got crazier. Apparently Guanilo’s Island was pretty weak. There were a ton of other arguments that brought it down. But there were other arguments that brought those down, and arguments on top of those ones. It was more like St. Anselm started a huge chain reaction of people disproving each other. Speaking of his start, more arguments showed up to disprove him, and others to reprove him after those. Philosophers went after each other like rappers did in the late ‘90s.

I think there are a few common misconceptions about Philosophy. A lot of those in higher education believe that the idea of God has grown obsolete and is no longer seen as valid. It seems like all the noteworthy Philosophers have lately been atheist, and that that’s the trend we’re heading towards. Well, first, I was surprised by how many non-atheists were in the field of philosophy, especially at my UCSB, as postmodern and anti-religious as it seemed. I encountered a number of noteworthy thinkers who believed in God and even practiced different faiths.

I also think that people tend to think that atheism is the new train of thought that just seems more reasonable as time progresses. Various discoveries have always led us to drop certain beliefs. It often seems like people started believing in God and other entities or spiritual worlds to explain phenomenon on Earth. Now that we know a lot more about science, those beliefs will gradually be phased out. Well, atheism is far from a new destination that we’ve arrived at as the result of being scientifically aware of reality. The truth is that at all points in history God has been difficult to believe in. The Bible mentions a large portion of people who didn’t believe in God, as do many other ancient documents, and these are from times when seemingly all of society believed in God in some way. But if nonbelievers are addressed, then clearly many had their doubts, for the same reasons we would have now. I think modern culture makes nonbelief less stigmatized, so we might hear about it more today, but ever since there have been nonbelievers. It shouldn’t be too hard to see why. Believing in God requires believing in something that we’ve never heard or seen, at least the way we usually hear and see, and that’s pretty difficult. If there has never been anything supernatural, I think it would’ve been extremely difficult to get all the different religions we have in the world off the ground. Without anything supernatural, I don’t think it’s likely any more than a couple really unstable people who didn’t fit in would’ve developed such complex, specific, and odd beliefs.

If non-belief is nothing new then you’d also have to accept belief is not something that’s old and that will eventually be diminished as humanity progresses. The both of them should at the very least be given equal and respectful consideration.

The other problem with thinking of nonbelief as an ultimate destination of human thought is that it’s a bit of a vain thing to think of one’s own time period as a destination. Who knows if that hint of a trend will continue in the future, hundreds of years long after we’re dead? No one can say what discoveries will come about, and what new trends of thought will be started. The thing is, they’ll all be trends. Not destinations.

Chapter Twelve: Philosophy (Part 4)

Mon, 11 Jun 2012 02:01:00 -0400

Somewhere out of the midst of an internal debate, a paper was born. It was on pace to being one of the best things I’ve written. Before it was finished, though, I had to throw in my own opinion, my own honest opinion, with no need to disprove anyone else’s or to respond.

This is what I wrote down:

Having deeply examined the Ontological Argument, a case against it, and a reassertion of the argument, I am wary of accepting it as a definitive argument in favor of the existence of God. Although I am a theist, I look at other arguments for God’s existence as more legitimate than the Ontological Argument. Instinctually, my first reaction to hearing this argument explained was to feel confused rather than feel as if I had just heard an astonishing revelation. Although there are no rules that require an argument to be instinctually appealing, it definitely has an impact on how it is received by those who must chose whether or not to deny it. There also seem to be many windows open for this argument to be attacked. The idea that we can establish something’s existence based on our conception of it seems rather unlikely to me, despite Anselm’s apparent ability to make it work.

Despite my hesitance to whole heartedly accept Anselm’s Ontological Argument, I feel as though I have no choice to accept it. Having looked up numerous cases against it in addition to Guanilo’s parody, it seems as if none of those refutations are strong enough to turn down the Ontological Argument. All of the objections I have seen can be accounted for within the reins of Anselm. At first glance it seems as though there are many points in the argument where it could be logically and reasonably challenged, however the fact that this argument has stood for years without being definitively toppled at any of these points leads me to think that this argument is stronger than it first appears. If one were to ask me to prove the existence of God, I would likely pick a different argument. However, due to lack of an ability to sufficiently turn down the Ontological Argument, I shall accept it.

I did it. Somehow I managed to prove God without going over the page limit. I printed out my paper and went out into the hallway where the guys were having Asian Night. We had a pretty large Asian-American population on the dorm floor I lived on, and so every Wednesday they would break out seaweed, spicy things, srirracha sauce, and a bunch of other delicious items I don’t remember the names of. The best part was having a full on rice cooker present at every Asian Night.

The night I proved God, I ate rice wrapped in a crispy, salty sheet of seaweed. It didn’t feel like I had proved God at all though. Not in a way I would’ve ever expected. I didn’t feel like erupting in worship, changing my life, or reinventing myself. All I wanted was some more seaweed. I felt like He was proven only in the most algebraic way. The logic added up, sure, but that just didn’t do it for me. Discovering God shouldn’t feel like I just did an algebra equation. If God is all loving, He wouldn’t be a math problem. My relationship with math problems isn’t one of love. If that was all there was to believing in God, then St. Anselm sure earned his sainthood.

Chapter Twelve: Philosophy (Part 3)

Sun, 10 Jun 2012 10:16:45 -0400

The next round went to the inner skeptic. He used a strategy known as reductio ad absurdum, fancy Latin that meant if you could apply an argument to prove something so absurd that everyone knows isn’t true, then that argument structure is false and you wouldn’t be able to conclude anything. It’s the same approach the more vocal atheists take with their whole flying spaghetti monster campaign. This fight used the help of an old Benedictan monk named Guanilo.

Guanilo used the same argument to prove the existence of an island. He imagined an island so perfect that had palm trees, and wine, and oranges, and penguins. Basically it was the greatest island of all time, a utopia. He then went through the motions, talking about how this island could exist as a concept or as reality, and deciding that it had to exist as reality. Except it didn’t. Everyone knows that there’s no such thing as Guanilo’s Island with its lakes of hot chocolate and perfectly constructed baseball diamond. Apparently Anselm’s Ontological Proof wasn’t so solid, if you could use that structure to prove just about anything.

Now it was time to take the fight back to the believer. This would be a harder part yet, since I didn’t have any sort of existing theory to work with. I’d have to get past Guanilo on my own. I noted that there was a difference between God and the perfect island when it came to working with this proof. An island is much more subjective; what one person perceives as a good island might not work for the next person. With God, all-good and all-knowing allows for God’s supreme knowledge would enabling Him to determine what is good, and that He always delivered on doing good, so there was no room for subjectivity. I also noted that an island, by definition has limits, and God, as an all-powerful being, wouldn’t have limits. Then I wrote something that my T.A. really liked, and that probably boosted my grade quite a bit. I threw out the suggestion that if you switch the word island with place, and tried to describe the best place imaginable, Guanilo may have unintentionally proved the existence of Heaven.

Chapter Twelve: Philosophy (Part 2)

Sat, 09 Jun 2012 23:21:00 -0400

It was my first paper, and I had to determine whether or not God was real in a double spaced, 12-point font. That was quite a tall order. I wasn’t completely without guidance, though. We were given arguments by St. Anselm and Thomas Aquinas and Rene Descartes, and we had a format to follow. First we would have to explain an argument that proved the existence of God. Then we had to follow it up with an argument that nullified the first one and proved He wasn’t real. Then we had to argue against the nullification to reinstate God into reality. Finally, the fourth part of our paper was to state our own belief, the part that gave me the most freedom.

I most sincerely enjoyed writing this paper. I felt like inside me there was the believer and the skeptic and the paper allowed me to split them up and let them fight against each other. Maybe my paper was so well received because of how passionately those two sides were going up against each other. The inner theist was the kid who grew up in the church and was conditioned to automatically cringe when the idea of no God was mentioned. He had hopes for a Heaven and that every night while he prayed he wasn’t just saying words that ultimately weren’t heard. He had a very relieving experience with the Bible before, the book that usually confused or disinterested him, and he wanted to come out victorious. The inner skeptic, on the other hand, didn’t care so much about who won as long as he knew what was true by the end. He looked at everything, from the reliability of scientific theories that didn’t match up with Genesis to just how unlikely it seemed for all the wild claims of religions to be true. He felt what he was sure most people felt, that somehow we drew some wild conclusions in attempts to explain things that couldn’t be understood. These two sides were given a grading rubric, and ten double spaced pages to let their arguments fly.

I had never been given an opportunity to allow these two sides of me go to war before. There were four rounds, but the first three already had decided victors. In round one, I was about to work my way from proving that there is such a thing as reality, to that there is such a thing as God. I started with Descartes, who pointed out that our own consciousness is a sign of reality. That led into St. Anselm’s infamous Ontological Proof. In short, this proof says that everything exists in two ways, as concepts, or as reality. The Ontological Proof went as follows:

1. God can be defined as an all-powerful, all-knowing, and all-loving being, and nothing can be greater than God.

2. Things that are real are automatically greater than things that are only concepts, because things that are real are also concepts.

3. God exists, at the very least, as a concept.

4. If God exists as only a concept, then a real God would be able to be greater than this conceptual God.

5. But, if nothing can be greater than God, then God cannot exist only as a concept. Everything exists as either a concept or as a concept and reality. Therefore, God exists as a reality.

That was a strange way to prove God’s existence, and it certainly didn’t feel like I had proved His existence once I finished. But, following proper logic and argument structure, it added up. It was also hinting that this idea of God and of an absolutely perfect being had to come from somewhere. As my pastor would later put it, “It would be weird to feel thirst or hunger if there were no such thing as water or food.”

Chapter Twelve: Philosophy (Part 1)

Thu, 07 Jun 2012 16:35:51 -0400

One of the things that made me excited to start going to UCSB was my schedule. I was signed up for an acting class, since I wanted to continue acting, a class on maps, which had always interested me, and a class on Japanese horror movies. That class was a good one. The one class that really put my thinking in motion was an introduction to Philosophy class, and I really enjoyed it. Something about hearing somebody else’s perspective on the world and why everything was the way it was ended up being very captivating.

The course was taught by an excellent professor with a midwestern accent. He was balding, and had a strong Abraham Lincoln-esque beard. One day, he showed us some clips from Vanilla Sky to demonstrate how it was incredibly difficult to prove what’s real and what isn’t real around us. He would do things like forget to turn off the DVD menu, which kept running in the background of his lectures. The Vanilla Sky cinematic soundtrack provided the perfect backdrop, as he would shout things like “So what is real? We couldn’t possibly know! Could we?” flailing his arms. It was really entertaining and unintentionally epic. Often when someone would ask him a question, he would start drawing an illustration on the chalkboard without announcing it. I always thought it humorously looked like he just got bored with the question and wanted to start to doodle.

One of the reasons why this class was such a good start to college was because a paper I wrote for the class went over really well. My T.A. Justin said he thought it was a lot better than most of the stuff he usually saw from freshmen, and that encouraged me. The other reason was because this class was centered on the stuff that so often lingered in my mind, namely if God was real.

Chapter Eleven: Campus (Part 5)

Wed, 06 Jun 2012 12:55:14 -0400

The only time work was ever mandatory was during Extravaganza, our school’s big day of music festival. My first year was the 30^th anniversary of the concert, so they went all out. I worked a lot of hours the day before, setting up the stage in the soccer stadium. At night, I went to the track where a 24-hour walkathon for cancer was in progress. I walked a few laps, and then joined one of my friends in a tent that she had set up for all the people on our team. I got some rest after working ten hours that day.

I woke up to the sound of some guitarist strumming the most basic chords and wailing a fairly cheesy hippie song about how we don’t give enough money to poor people. I went back to the field to continue setting up. I would stay there until 5 A.M. the next day.

In the afternoon, the artists’ vans started appearing, and by the early evening, the lesser-known bands of the lineup had taken the stage. I was resting underneath it when my boss announced that popular DJ and mash-up artist Girl Talk was looking for dancers on stage.

“Seriously?”

“Yeah.”

My co-workers and I wound up participating in the best on stage dance party ever. It was a blast. After the set I ran into Girl Talk backstage, and he offered me some of his catered food. I declined in exchange for taking a picture with him, and told him that it was one of the most fun experiences of my life.

A little while later, Ludacris was performing. An odd amount of police had gathered in the area, and I wanted to get away from the crowds and found a back platform of the stage, where some random people were hanging out. I figured they were part of his crew. I was nodding along to the music.

“When I move you move,” I repeated along, looking at a girl on the same platform.

“I don’t know this one,” she responded, very stoically

Whatever. I continued enjoying myself. A little while later I went down from the platform and ran into my friend Erika.

“Why were you talking to Lindsey Lohan?” she asked.

“What are you talking about? Stop being weird. You’ve been working too long.”

I left her and found a groundskeeper I had befriended after spending the entire day working on the same field. The cops were still all around.

“Why so many cops?”
“I think that it’s because Lindsey Lohan’s here,” he said, pointing at the platform.

It turns out that Erika wasn’t so crazy and I really did talk to Lindsey Lohan, and she really didn’t know the lyrics to Ludacris. My boss eventually got the pleasure of telling her she couldn’t come back onto the platform, his one opportunity in life to tell her off.

After working on this show until five in the morning, I came to the conclusion that my life in college would continue to be ridiculous as always, incredibly entertaining, and I was pretty glad about that.

Chapter Eleven: Campus (Part 4)

Fri, 01 Jun 2012 15:40:19 -0400

I also landed myself a job, completely on accident. One day, while being the Yes Man, I filled out some application, which I figured was for a position with a student government organization. It was a single application and the reverse side listed different tasks, and told me to check off everything that interested me. I wound up checking nearly every box. A week later, my phone rang while I was in the cafeteria.

“Hello?”

“Hello, I’m calling about the application you filled out.”

I filled out an application, so that must have meant I wanted something, even if I couldn’t remember what. I didn’t want to hurt my chances, so I humored my caller.

“Oh yeah. I did.”

“Cool, would you be able to come in on Wednesday for an interview?”

The next thing I knew, I was in a little office room surrounded by three other people, who I could tell were students, except they were older. I didn’t really know what I was interviewing for, exactly.

“So do you have any experience working with audio equipment?”

“I was in a band during high school.”

“Oh cool, what did you play?”

“Keyboard. I wanted to do vocals, but our drummer’s girlfriend ‘girlfriended’ her way into the band.”

They laughed.

“Are you cool with heavy lifting?”

I could use some bulking up.

“Sure.”

“Cool. Well, here’s all the official paperwork, but you’ve got it!”

Right off the bat, I got a job, and I wasn’t even sure what that job was. It turns out that I landed the coolest job on campus. My only other job I’ve ever had was at a grocery store, for a couple months during high school. This was so much better. My job was to set up the audio equipment before and after concerts and performances that would be on campus. I got paid to stay for the duration of the show and we had some really good performers come through. Within that year, we saw Lupe Fiasco, Ra Ra Riot, Death Cab For Cutie, Cold War Kids, and a whole lot of other performers. My favorite show I ever worked was for Fleet Foxes. I was a huge fan of the folk band, and knew all their songs by heart. I was able to work the stage lights for that show, and flipping the switches on beat made me feel like an extra member of the band that played a visual instrument. After the show, I got to meet the band as I helped them load up their van and they were the nicest performers we’ve had. Robin Pecknold extended his hand and introduced himself warmly by saying “Hi, I’m Robin, thank you so much for doing this.” I had him sign a vinyl record for me, which I held on to.

I never actually knew what I was doing with the audio equipment. I would often forget and confuse the names of cords, but I was willing to do some heavy lifting so I stuck around. This was a great job because I never had to come in to work. They would just post in the office when they had shows that needed to be worked, and I would sign up based on my own availability. It was perfect.

Chapter Eleven: Campus (Part 3)

Thu, 31 May 2012 10:58:19 -0400

I got back to my dorm and my roommate was watching anime programs on his computer. I would only get more right about how quiet he was. He wouldn’t say very much to me in the future after this point, and it was a very awkward room to be in. I later found out that I was on the floor for students who didn’t drink or smoke. I didn’t mind since, for starters, I didn’t really enjoy those things that much, and also because if I ever wanted to, half of that floor was there by accident as well. I figured the school had a sizeable population of students who indulged in those things and that it would be nice to closely befriend people who did a lot of other activities.

One girl on my floor said she was looking for a church, and I expressed a little interest, hoping to find something like Ivy’s church. I went with her to this one place, twice, and it ended up being a bit more like my Independent Fundamental Baptist Church from ages ago. Besides, they didn’t have five services. They had one. And I liked to sleep in a lot, usually until one or two.

I spent the rest of my first week getting to know the campus a lot better, and going to a whole bunch of meetings. I went to seminars on relationships in college, on studying abroad, and on getting internships. I signed up for everything I possibly could. I had a constantly full plate that last year of high school, and I figured it worked then and that I should try it out again. I was basically Jim Carrey in the movie where he says yes to every offer given to him. I even found myself sitting front row at a Ralph Nader campaign stop when he ran for office in 2008. I went because of the novelty of going to a Nader rally, and figured it would be a funny story to retell. I sat back and was surprised to see he had some pretty serious supporters in the crowd. He also had a single protester, who I thought was the funniest thing there.

Chapter Eleven: Campus (Part 2)

Wed, 30 May 2012 12:02:27 -0400

I liked Santa Barbara. Its beauty couldn’t be overstated, since any time you were outside you were either looking towards the sweeping ocean, or blanketing mountain ranges. In addition to its obvious beauty, it was a place with a vibrant culture. People in general were more cultured, and there were always things to do around school or in the city. People biked from place to place a lot. Especially on campus, bikes were king, and this was where I fell in love with biking. Any given moment, walking around downtown Santa Barbara, campus, or Isla Vista, you were bound to pass several of your friends around the area. It wouldn’t even be that dramatic of a coincidence, since everybody was always just around. Santa Barbara possessed the social atmosphere I was missing in my part of San Diego, which was weird since it was a fraction of its size. One of the best parts about living in a college town was that stores closed a lot later.

One day, my parents and I would cram as much of my stuff as we could into a Scion xB, and drove the four hours up to SB, which turned into six hours on account of Rob’s driving habits. After Los Angeles, the ride turned completely scenic, right where the freeway runs alongside the Pacific Ocean, and the water allows the sunlight to be reflected gently on the road. Right after this part, you were practically in Santa Barbara.

The very first thing I did in college was take a nap. That was pretty appropriate, and a bit prophetic, too. When I woke up, I met my roommate who seemed like a quiet guy. I then started unpacking and sorting out my things. We had a meeting to tell us what to expect, and then they shuttled us out to campus, where there was an ice cream social where we could go and meet other people.

I got there and there were a lot of people, but not much meeting going on. Nobody knew anyone else, and everybody was awkward. Everyone was repeating their name and where they were from, as was I. Not much other information was being exchanged, and I hopped from group to group incredibly bored. Towards Storke Tower, a DJ was playing some hip-hop, and dancing got started. I’ll never understand why people think going towards mass crowds over loud music and fast paced action is a good way to meet someone. You get to know people best on a one-on-one level, where people’s tendency to broadcast some desired self-image is at a low. That stuff comes later.

I was bored, and wanted to go back to the dorm. I left the girl I came with, and tried to find my way back to the bus on my own. I had yet to familiarize myself with the geography on campus. I walked for a bit, realized I remembered where the buses were, and turned around to find them. When I turned around, I met one of Santa Barbara’s more disliked residents. A skunk.

This skunk was pacing back and forth across the sidewalk I needed to take. There wasn’t any great way to walk around him either since there was a bush on one side, and a street on the other. The one thing I did know, was that the last thing I wanted to have happen on my first day of college was permanently become “the guy who got skunked.” That would’ve stuck, no doubt. Fortunately, I timed my walking with the rhythm of the skunk’s pacing, and walked past him diagonally.

Chapter Eleven: Campus (Part 1)

Wed, 23 May 2012 11:20:46 -0400

UCSB is a paradise of sorts, and in many ways. It’s located right on the south-facing beach of Santa Barbara. Its location can be envied by just about any other school in the world. It’s a school where, if you have a class that ends at five and a meeting at six, that hour would be enough time to walk towards the edge of campus and into the ocean to cool off during a 100º day in the late summer with a few friends who you just ran into along the way. I’ve done that before.

The school itself has a very laid back culture, that still manages to excel. It’s an academically competitive school, and is constantly ranked among the top in the world. As much as it had to pride itself in its academics, UCSB was first and foremost a party school. A few years before I started attending, Playboy named the number two party school in the nation, a source of pride for many students. The ranking was well earned. The one thing that the students and the administration generally shared was a pretty liberal philosophy. Things like social progress, minority rights, and freedom to do whatever you like were highly valued. I related to these values well enough, although I often thought students and professors were being liberal for the sake of being liberal. It was a place where one was more likely to lose faith than find it.

The majority of the students lived in a little neighborhood, about one square mile, right on the coast that shared a border with the campus. Isla Vista was a college student’s heaven. Every week, parties would line the streets, and the streets would line the ocean. With the neighborhood being completely occupied of almost all students, there was a carefree spirit, and an atmosphere that suggested that everybody who lived there already knew each other, even if they had never met. It was a lovely place, right on the coast, full of apartments in drastic need of repair. Every Halloween, around 70,000 people from places outside Santa Barbara would come to partake in the town’s festivities that it’s residents got every day.

Chapter Ten: Summertime (Part 3)

Fri, 18 May 2012 12:59:41 -0400

I discovered that the church that Ivy and her family went to would appeal to me more than I expected. The first was the five services thing. Allowing me to sleep in was the key to my heart. On top of that, this church was pretty stylish. It wasn’t like the church I grew up in. Women could wear pants, people with tattoos and piercings were all over the place, and inside the large auditorium was, not just a drum set, but a whole music platform that could have accommodated a large rock concert. These things would’ve been sins in the church I grew up in. People walking around came from all sorts of walks of life, just the way they were.
On top of that, the pastor actually was kind of fun to listen to. He was a really smooth talking guy, and his sense of humor occasionally crossed into irreverent territory that my previous church would have condemned. All of it was within the range of God’s sense of humor, whatever that was, I figured. He didn’t take to the pulpit shouting about the public school system, but he stood calmly, comfortably, and started talking about why it was important to follow God’s plan in your life. I finally heard a message from church that I could see being useful to those that believed. It was a lot better than telling a bunch of people not to do cultural activities you couldn’t possibly imagine them doing anyways. The pastor’s claims were bold, but he didn’t seem like an unintelligent man, and he wasn’t just speaking from some pit of emotion. He had his stuff researched and reasoned.

I ended up unsure whether or not I would continue to go to church. I still called myself a Christian. I still doubted God. I decided that if I were to go to church a regularly, that would be the one. I went every now and then, but I was in the middle of a very crazy year, and a crazy summer.

I continued to live my life in the very charmed way that I lived it in high school. I did things as I pleased, enjoyed the good company, and loved every minute of it. I was falling in love. I went to a lot of jazz clubs with Tommy. I went to picnics and clubs and bonfires. My high school story had ended on a sweet note, and I didn’t know much about the college I would attend, except that it was supposedly really pretty. I figured I would make some friends there and continue living it up.

While all this was happening, my family and I found some time to go to the Philippines to celebrate my grandma’s 90^th birthday. She lived with us on and off all through our childhood, and our family decided it would be best for her to come back. I figured it would be good to keep our household population at three when I took off for college. Ivy and her family had returned, my grandma had returned, and I was about to leave.
Towards the latter part of the summer, I went up to my university orientation and signed up for classes and learned a bunch of things about the campus, only a few of which were important. A month and a half later, I drove up the 101 freeway, this time with a fully loaded car to move into my freshman dorm.

Chapter Ten: Summertime (Part 2)

Wed, 16 May 2012 14:12:04 -0400

One day, they invited me to go to church with them. Although I had managed to keep my faith on life support my investigating the confusing parts of scripture and praying for the things that made me feel hopeless, I wasn’t that big on church anymore. I felt like I got so much church growing up that it was enough to fill a lifetime’s quota. I also noticed that whenever the word “church” was used in the Bible, it was always used to refer to Christians as a whole. All that ever comes to mind now when people say the word “church” is an organization with a building and weekly meetings. Companies, practically, with official names, and official pastors, and official people with official positions. They operated very similarly to businesses, and I was sure that this was a consequence of a capitalist society. I figured back in the day churches operated like they were governing bodies, the result of a monarchist society. Even though I had yet to read him, I would’ve agreed with Althusser and Foucalt’s assertions that the church was just a device used by whoever was in power. It had become seriously corrupted from the way Paul and Jesus used to use the word “church.”

I thought all this, but when Ivy invited me to go to church with them, I obliged, not wanting to reveal to them that I wasn’t exactly the same believer I was when they last saw me.

They went to one of the largest churches in town. It had five services every Sunday, which made it possible to sleep in to my heart’s content and go to a later service. As I walked in with hoards of others, a guy out front was sitting in a chair by himself, holding up a tall sign which read God Is Imaginary. Everyone just shuffled past, not bothering him. I felt kind of sad for him. I felt that I could relate, having had my doubts about God’s existence, but I couldn’t relate to what he was doing. Why would I want to spread that news? I figured it was probably some sort of reciprocal action, since I’ve seen first hand how much of a nuisance Christians could be when trying to get others to convert. Even then, though, I didn’t understand. Christians and other religious people actually had some motivation to get people to convert. If they actually believed in a real hell, and that some people would go there, I supposed it would be kind of mean not to warn anybody. I don’t know what motivation this guy was getting out of his sign, but it made me sad. Not because of what it said, but because he was alone, and his melancholic face stood out in the sea of overly peppy churchgoers. At the same time, I felt like I related to him in some way that I couldn’t explain. Maybe it was the link of shared sentiments. Maybe he was myself from a parallel universe, one that was destroyed, and somehow he managed to survive by making his way into this one. I had a lot of doubts that this God thing was real. At this point I was still going off hunches, and it felt often like I could very easily and very soon discover something that would make me abandon it. It felt like something could happen very soon that would lead me to sit by myself all Sunday in front of a large church telling the happy people entering that what they believe was false.

Chapter Ten: Summertime (Part 1)

Wed, 16 May 2012 02:58:34 -0400

High school was quite dramatic story arc. If you look at it, it’s kind of a story in itself. It’s a story about how a random friendless kid went from being depressed and questioning the meaning of life to finding ways to run the school, having an explosion of fun, and going to prom with the prettiest girl in school. But in reality, it was just a story within a bigger story.

One other important event that happened during high school was the return of Ivy, Alex, Uncle Bob and Aunt Viv. They had spent the past several years in Spain while Uncle Bob was stationed over seas. He had just retired from the Navy, and they made a triumphant return to California, with the tranquil nature of the Spanish culture fully infused into their bloodstream. My mom and I once visited them while they were there, and Spain was indeed tranquil. I was excited to have them back in town, even though I would soon be leaving. In my mind, we were still very much like siblings, despite all the time spent apart.

Alex went to my high school. He was a freshman and found his own group of friends early on. Ivy went to the community college nearby with plans of transferring somewhere to pursue something along the lines of healthcare. They moved into an apartment about ten minutes from my house, and we visited them frequently. It was an ideal situation.

Chapter Nine: Senioritis (Part 6)

Mon, 14 May 2012 02:50:09 -0400

At the end of high school, I led a life that would have related well to Ferris Bueller or Max Fischer, Jason Schwartzman’s character in Rushmore. I didn’t exactly fit in at school, but I did my own thing and wound up pretty pleased. I got away with a lot of stuff. I managed to figure my way around the school’s system well enough to basically get myself whatever I wanted.

I ditched school a lot. My friend Lindsey and I made “Psych Ditch Days” a regular occurrence, where we would bail ourselves out of Psychology class using passes I would write for myself and do something fun like go buy junk food and hang out at a park, or get sandwiches at C’s Deli, our preferred high school hang-out.

Surprisingly and unsurprisingly, I spent my last day of school in the principal’s office, with the principal and both vice principals present. We had printed a really controversial piece in the paper about the pep rally where the school’s administration gave a kid detention for doing a William Hung impression yet turned a blind eye to a group of students wearing t-shirts that spelled “white power,” white being the sophomore class color. I argued that our mock William Hung was being considered an Asian stereotype, while he was really just doing a specific celebrity impersonation, and that “white power” was a lot more blatant. To be sure, I took a picture of the students in their shirts and published it.

I mostly did all of that since they wouldn’t allow Jeremy and I to do a routine we picked up from YouTube called the Yes Dance. We were told that we could, but if we did and a single person was offended, we would be banned from prom. I couldn’t possibly risk doing that to my date, so I backed down and got my revenge in print. As the administration dealt with me, I mostly zoned out, my mind entering summertime mode. Soon enough, the bell rang, and I joined the Class of 2008 in the middle of campus as we lavished each other with chocolate syrup, sparkling cider, confetti, and whipped cream.

Chapter Nine: Senioritis (Part 5)

Fri, 11 May 2012 18:28:35 -0400

One other thing that Tommy and I were to bond over was the difficulty we had in choosing which colleges to attend. He had a wide array of options after applying to music schools all over the country. He took a lot of weekend trips to Boston, New York, and Miami, and eventually wound up at Berklee College of Music in Boston.

I had hoped to go to either Northwestern University or UCLA. Northwestern appealed to me because I loved Chicago, and because I had a mental image of me walking out of a café on a street corner during a Chicago winter, waving at my friends wearing trendy clothes as I left down the sidewalk. UCLA appealed to me because the girl I dated the summer before went there, and she made it seem like fun.

In the end, these two, as well as NYU turned me down. My remaining options were Boston University, University of California- Santa Barbara, University of Missouri- Colombia, and Pepperdine. Boston and Pepperdine had big names and solid reputation. Santa Barbara actually received the highest academic rankings out of all of them. Mizzou boasted one of the nations top journalism programs in the nation, and that was something I wanted to do with my life.

It took me until the evening of the decision deadline date to make my choice, and even then it was difficult. The hardest part was saying no to schools I would reject, because when I did that, I would completely end the possibility of whatever could’ve happened there, the friends I would’ve had, the girls I would’ve dated. I didn’t want to say goodbye to Boston and my chance to go to school near Tommy, or to cancel Mizzou and my ambitions of inheriting Anderson Cooper’s journalistic throne. I had started reading some philosophy books that talked about parallel universes and I realized that night I would have to destroy three universes.

I thought long and hard and listed all the pros and cons. I prayed about it. I wondered what it was that I wanted to do with the rest of my life and how the school I went to would help. I asked one of my more reliable teachers for advice. All of this was necessary; I was about to destroy some universes. On the night of the deadline, I went online, and committed to attend UC Santa Barbara in the fall. I decided the combination of it being the cheapest, and highest ranked should win. It was a bit closer to San Diego than I would’ve liked, but from what I knew about Santa Barbara- and most of that was from my beloved TV show Psych, it was a pretty nice place. They didn’t have a journalism major, so I decided I would study both Film and Communication.