Chapter 26

It’s called polarization. And it’s literally defined as a sharp division, as of a population or group, into opposing factions. It also explains a lot of the properties of water that are so fascinating. It’s how I live my life.

Until now I can honestly say that most of it has been by accident. I subconciously hate or love everything I encounter, from people to foods to situations to emotions. I even polarize musical instruments for Pete’s sake.

I love the cello. The vibrant, rich tones. Playing the cello has to be the most pleasurable physical experience I have ever encountered. It rests on you like no other instrument does, demanding to become a glossy, resonant limb. Playing it makes your soul mimic the vibrations of the tones you’re sweating out of that celestial wood. It makes heretofore unnoticed parts cry out in pleasure or recognition or despair, entering the instrument through the straining fingers and flowing out, amplified by the mirror image f-holes that flank the strings.

I hate the oboe. If I had any desire to hear something nasaly and irritating I would listen to a mediocre high school choir’s alto section. I’ll pass, thank you very much. I would happily destroy every oboe in the world with no regrets.

I love small quantities of perfectly spiced food. Scratch that – I love any quantity of perfectly spiced food.

I hate any quantities of bland food. I’d rather chew cardboard.

I love walking outside at night in the summer and feeling nothing but the pleasure of warmth kiss my skin. No excessive clothing., no wet unpleasantness, just…. Warm.

I hate feeling hungry. I wish I could explain that away with some traumatic experience, but all those who have known me for a significant number of years will tell you that I just hate to feel hungry. I also hate having to use the restroom and not being able to find one. Hence why I have performed my most basic of physical acts in as many places as you can think of. To name a few, in between cars in Chicago Illinois. Behind a dumpster in Provo, Utah. In the middle of the street. On top of a mountain. In a bucket in the backseat of a taxi. In countless gas stations across the western half of the united states. At squaw peak, the make out point for BYU students.

Mediocrity.

Normality.

Averageness.

This is what I crave. Some are born great, some earn greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon them. Well, hate to break it too you folks, but the same goes for drama. Some are born overly dramatic. Some develop that trait over the years. And some of us, the lucky few (please note the sarcasm), have had DRAMA thrust upon us since the day we were born.

I am one of those people.

Do NOT call me dramatic. I am not dramatic. What happens with me is that unusual and sometimes disturbing circumstances place me in unusual and sometimes disturbing positions, and I react in a totally appropriate way. So NO, I am not dramatic. I simply react with the appropriate amount of drama to the life that has been thrust upon me.

Most of the time, it’s not really my choice. Most of the time, I just happen to be that 1 in 1000 chance. The fluke. The accident. The freak. The odds are against what happens to me in my daily life. From being bit by a seagull to becoming the hit part of a hit and run to the random places which I have desecrated with my urine, it has all been chance. I wonder what the numerical odds would actually be of my life, compounded into one highly entertaining but mildly screwed up statistic.

But I get ahead of myself.

Lets just put it this way. I am not a heroin in anyone’s life, including my own. So far in my life, I have made decisions based almost entirely on what others expect me to do. That’s why I chose my school, why I play instruments, why I have the job I do, and even why I have a particular hair color.

Anna says my moods are like the moon. They come in phases, she said. We sat across from each other, at the wooden table that soon she and Buck will share. We were dwarfed by the stacks of freshly printed invitations. As we folded the pearlized dreamcatchers, she explained in 30 seconds what it seems to have taken me a lifetime to understand. Sometimes, it’s a new moon. A sliver. Or a slice. Or a half-circle. Right now you’re in the full moon phase, where you get in these ‘I’m going to do something reckless just because I can’ rages.

Like leave armenia.

Or buy a cello.

Or take a secret trip to rexburg.

Count that one as a fluke as well. I took off on a random, savage trip to Rexburg, Id. A strange place to choose to “get away from it all”. And it turns out I was just jumping from one shit pool to the next. I went from swimming in my own emotional defacation into the overwhelming landfill that is marriage planning. Crossing the border from Utah into Idaho felt like cutting the puppet strings. Wandering off the stage and standing on my own two staggering feet. A foal in its first moments after birth. Except I wasn’t covered in all that slimy afterbirth crap.

In Idaho, there are certain parts where you only get 2 radio stations, and both of them are country. For the first time in my life, I rolled down my window, turned up the country and let the hot Idaho air seep into my lungs. My first free breaths in years. It was the first time in over 4 years that I was where I chose to be, in the moment I chose to be there. And it felt damn good.The vacation was, as they always are, less exciting and more mundane than I expected. But what made it so wonderful was that I was mundanely existing somewhere that I chose to be.

I had only ever done that one time before.