Day 6

i am just engrossed an obsessed with environment. it surrounds me and it is me. it is what draws out parts of me to be expressed, parts of what i need to do the best that i can with that environment, and use it to my advantage. my advantage. it may seem all about my advantage, but it doesn’t mean that it’s no-hold-barred to reach that end, but that’s subjective, depending on the environment. i am surrounded by this cloister, my apartment, my workplace, the area i live around, it is my microcosm. even the surrounding area is other small microcosm. other people’s abodes. my parents house. the doctor’s office. the supermarket.

i take a car, or a bike. i think i love biking so much because it makes a trip into more. because when i am on a bike, i am outside, using my muscles for something that is so modern and human. an engineering marvel that is so efficient for our anatomical makeup, and an ability to be in more direct contact with the elements. to be an active part of your journey, as opposed to the more detached microcosm of your car, is just a huge difference. both are necessary for my microcosm though. there’s only so many roads i can take with a bike, and trails are safer than roads, so i’ll end up riding the most efficient route , because riding with cars just sucks, so i avoid it at all costs, leaving me with a lot less options. so i see pretty much the same route whenever i go for a ride anywhere within a 10 miles radius.

but i’m down with exploring. it’s fun to just ride wherever and flesh out the neighborhoods in the areas between the major thoroughfares and just go up countless dead ends, most of them with brutal hills. the more i ride it, the smaller it gets though. things are pretty close to each other around here. lake washington is around 13 miles end to end, and you can really cut down on the mileage when you can be alot closer to the shore, with no lights to slow you down.

but i digress. i’m still really thinking about microcosm and environments, just very specifically. those details are part of my microcosm, and i take all of these places i have ever been and jumble them all together in my head. this, for all intensive purposes is my universe. all the places i have seen from Bellingham to New York to Tokyo to Redmond and everything else in between is up in my noggin, to be remembered. maybe with a little embellishment, with a few events standing out more than others. they are the definitions for those areas. they are what you found in that environment, and what you appreciated most about it. you took that part in because out of sensory assault that is specific to every place you have ever been, a couple veins rose out of the patterns, and were in turn applied to everything else in the environment, like it just couldn’t be helped.

they are hazy when i try to recall them straight up. but if i have chances to revisit these areas, it’s nice to do from time to time. see what it’s like now, if it has changed. if it has changed, how do i react? i think i find it interesting. this area is growing as i grow. this environment i am a part of is growing as well, growing at a tremendous rate. i am a part of this community at times, when i go out in public. where just about anyone is allowed to roam free, to do mostly as they please. i join the hustle and bustle to live my life, tackling my environment with so much energy burned to get from one resting period to the next.

i think i see where news and politics and sports and reality tv and all other media fit into this community. in this area, if you’re say pumping gas, or waiting for an elevator, and there are people around you can inadvertently start talking about democrats taking over the house, but maybe not the senate, world affairs, local affairs, what happened on Lost last night. these are all an easy way to gauge people, with the complexities of social discourse. do they agree with you? do they disagree? resp[ectfully or disrespectfully? witty? dry humor?

a million variables that are broadcast through tone, inflection, gestures, in a hugely complex way of expressing ideas.but it must work sometimes as i would like to believe i have retained much of what i have gathered and stocked over my life, drawing life experience out of certain microcosm in my universe. knowing that moment where you realize what you should have done, how you could have nuanced the situation a little better and maybe achieved a different result, resulting in more general happiness for yourself and everyone else involved.

i exist in this environment, but it is also a projection of myself. i interact with parts of it directly and indirectly, and thus make it me. life experiences happen in these areas of my universe, and i use them to better myself, or for refuge, or to try something new. without this environment, i would not be the person i am today, not exactly. i would probably have a near same experience with my direct family, but if my parents had decided to live in ohio, with my dad at the steel mill, i would be a similar, yet completely different ryan.

and i think alot of musing always ends up on some tangent of how your life would be different if something did or didn’t happen. if i had chosen to work at a bike shop instead of the movie theater, i wouldn’t have met the love of my life, and my life would be completely different. what if? my environment is directly and indirectly responsible for all of this, as i react as the person i am, as what i prioritize in my life. with importance based on a scale only i can define.

i am so lucky as to be able to choose and thrive in an environment where i can be so free. this is so a privilege. of hard work generations before me, when i come in on the coat tails of the people that paved the way. there’s no way to really express gratitude but to keep going, to succeed, be somebody. i’m fine with that. as long as i get to have a say in some of it, following some rules isn’t that tough. it’s not like i haven’t had to work, but there have been comparable periods of just gliding by. but still, there is so much privilege involved. i guess there must be some reason behind the lower-middle class though, and i hope i am doing my part to contribute.

i really have to say that i am happy in my life. i feel i have come to terms with my environment, and in accepting that, come to terms with who i am and how i fit in. to my social network, to my family, to everyone involved in my life at other microcosm they share with me, with overlap. connections upon connections upon connections. of a universe i have chosen to the best of my ability with the information i had on hand at the time.

too pragmatic? perhaps. but then, that’s part of who i am, right?