order and chaos

"When you're up here and aloft and all you're really trying to do is figure a word for the exact color of the sky, or count the whitecaps risen in a certain square of sea, or make sense of the almost infinte distance between yourself and the person driving his car on the lonely dead-straight road below, you don't want to engage in the familiar lingering intimations, allusions, narratives, all that compacted striated terra-firma consideration, but instead simply stir with this special velocity that is in itself worth the whole of any voyage, this alternating tug and weightlessness of your constant departure."
-Chang-Rae Lee, Aloft

It's weird having not written something of substance in here for so long, although it seems to be an ever increasing trend over the last few months. I can't really say that I've grown out of the writing stage, but I'm finding less and less time to devote to writing. When summer starts, I'll have a lot more free time so I should be able to update more frequently starting around May.

First, I finished off the book that I've been reading off and on for several weeks, that being Aloft by Chang-Rae Lee. I actually read a write up in Time magazine over a year ago about how good of a book it was and the whole theme of the book struck me as very interesting. The basic theme(according to Time) was about this aging man who seemed to be able to find his peace in life in the skies, yet when he returned down to Earth he couldn't do anything right. That was the essence of the book, yet some of it remains an enigma to me, mainly because I think that it's something that you have to read at least twice to get a really good feel for the story that the author is trying to tell. The real plot of the story shuts on and off, as Lee spends as much time reflecting upon the past of the main character Jerry as he does telling what actually happens to him. I think this is a pretty easy trap to get caught in, but Lee does a good job saving himself by writing pages of interesting plot to coincide with the past exploits of the main character. The book gets really, really good at the end(which I enjoy) and the images at the beginning of the book and end of the book provide stark contrasts and really do renew the faith that at no matter age, we are capable of change.

I hate to keep going back to books, but the title of this post is directly derived from a very good book that I read last year called Building Wealth. If you ever want to read a really, really good book about where the future of money, power, and education lies(how nerdy did that just sound?) pick that one up for sure. In the book, the author says that the key to creating a great society is to preserve a mixture of creative ideas and regimented discipline(chaos and order). The great thing about books is that if you actually apply the good ideas to your life, things will undoubtedly turn around for you. The whole order and chaos thing got me to thinking that if I apply this as a microcosm to everything I do, I probably will find the perfect mix of things. What I mean by this is that if we try different things and take different approaches to situations, we will more easily find a balance that exists. The world looks a lot different to someone who is looking down from the sky as compared to someone who is on the ground looking up towards the sky. And now, I'm officially rambling so I'll move on to the next topic.

The last few days have really reminded me how excited I am to go up to PSU Main and how I am not looking forward to coming back to Pittsburgh anytime soon. By nature, I'm a person who loves to travel, not necessarily be a tourist. As a little kid and even up through middle school my goal in life was to walk around the world and see every country. When I grew a little older, that dream just transformed a little to "I want to see a lot of historic places without having to walk to them." After I graduate from PSU I want to move to New York and trade with the big boys on Wall Street, because to me, that is the zenith of achievement in the business world. Anyone who says I'm not competitive enough obviously doesn't know that I hate to lose at anything. The only thing worse than losing is watching someone give up while they're losing. So there is a little peak into what I'm looking forward to come 6 months from now and beyond that.

I'm going to leave you with a poem that I saw recently, but always reminds me of the book The Outsiders. Enjoy it

Nothing Gold Can Stay
By: Robert Frost

Nature's first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leafs a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.



mh

a better way forward

Hold onto dreams
For if dreams die
Life is like a broken-winged bird
That cannot fly.

Hold fast to dreams
For if dreams go
Life is a barren field
Frozen with snow.

-Langston Hughes, "Dreams"

It's funny what a long time away from something makes you do. I haven't written in here in about two weeks and I've had a lot happen since then. The problem was, I either felt the time wasn't write to put something down here or things were happening too quickly and usually a quick verbalization of your thoughts when those kind of things happen results in you sounding like an uninformed dumbass(see my posts from 2005 :-) ).

I'll begin with poker, because that seems as ubiquitous in this blog as any other topic that I've covered. As most of you know, I had a huge score about a month back. I believe I even wrote about what happened during that session. Unfortunately, since then I wasn't able to really get anything going. I have come to the realization that I have indeed come a long way in the year and a half that I've really taken poker seriously, but I have a long way to go. Every great pro will tell you with a smile that "they have been broke a million times." Poker is one of the few professions(no, poker is not and will not be my job) where you can rise from obscurity to fame and back into obsurity in a quick span. For me to stay on top and play at a level that I need to in order to win consistently, I'll need to vastly improve my game and learn better emotional discipline. The first comes with experience and the second with maturation, two things that go hand in hand. For now, I think I need a break from that lifestyle. I came to this conclusion as I was flipping through the channels saturday night and saw the first PPT final table on the Discovery Channel and I flew by it thinking "If I watch this, I am going to be so bored!" This is definitely not the right mind set to have if you are going to play anything resembling winning poker. I think that with every hobby that a person dedicates time to they have to have these "soul searching" moments so to speak, especially when times get rough.

In terms of my personal life, things are changing as well. Anyone that has read this for a decent amount of time knows that I don't like to delve too far into things personally, so I'll give you a somewhat rough sketch of what's happening. A very good friend of mine has descended into the "I'm madly in love with my girlfriend" stage that he goes into routinely enough. It upsets me because he more or less neglects every one around him when this kind of thing happens. I have always been one who said that when you meet someone that you really like it is okay to put them ahead of your friends on the depth chart. However, that doesn't mean that you need to completely eliminate everyone else.

Another thing that I've realized about my writing is that I hardly ever write something original. This is because for the most part, I'm scared what people might think when I stop writing like someone else and start being myself. It's easy to rip on a friend to get a few good laughs, but how many friends will actually stand up for another friend when someone starts tearing that person apart? We walk a fine line between jabbing at someone and throwing the knockout punch with our words; and often it's a line that we tend to jump over easily.

The crux of this post, however, I wanted to focus on the title. This weekend, I had some time to think about all the things that I've done in my life so far. The list isn't too full, but I have definitely accomplished some things. As usual, I got to thinking about what the future had in store for me and realized that the time had come to stop dreaming about those things and start actually turning them into reality. Countless times at night I have dreamed about the many things that I want to do in life and now all that's left is to start acting upon those things. I have always envisioned myself making a decent amount of money somewhere in the business world and being a person pretty accustomed to travel. Next, at some point I want everything to slow down and be able to get married and start a family(like every other person in the world). Also, I so badly want to play in a big buyin tournament in the WSOP or WPT. By far this will be the most difficult goal because I want to do by either winning a satellite or building a bankroll high enough to sustain a 10k buyin. At this moment, I realized that in my little fantasies so to speak, I only saw myself holding up the cash. I never saw myself grinding out thousands of hours beforehand to get there or long days at the tournaments(coupled with massive amounts of luck) to get to the final table. In everything else in life- school, work, friendships, I've never seen that there was no clear end to the journey. Coincidentally, I've been pretty successful at all three of these things. On the other hand, with things such as relationships and poker I've always thought that there would be a happy go lucky ride to the top ending in perpetual glamour(moving in together/marriage or winning big in a cash game/in a big tourney). Through 19 years I've come to this conclusion: the things that we do indeed fail because we are looking way too far ahead. Not only that, but sometimes we have to put in a lot of time in these things because although we might like them, we aren't necessarily genetically gifted in these areas. You're going to "go broke" a million times during your lifetime, but the important thing is how quickly you get back in the game.

To conclude, I've selected a poem by Thylias Moss called Tornados. Very fitting to end this post if you ask me.

Tornados
By: Thylias Moss

Truth is, I envy them
not because they dance; I out jitterbug them
as I'm shuttled through and through legs
strong as looms, weaving time. They
do black more justice than I, frenzy
of conductor of philharmonic and electricity, hair
on end, result of the charge when horns and strings release
the pent up Beethoven and Mozart. Ions played

instead of notes. The movement
is not wrath, not hormone swarm because
I saw my first forming above the church a surrogate
steeple. The morning of my first baptism and
salvation already tangible, funnel for the spirit
coming into me without losing a drop, my black
guardian angel come to rescue me before all the words

get out, I looked over Jordan and what did I see coming for
to carry me home. Regardez, it all comes back, even the first
grade French, when the tornado stirs up the past, bewitched spoon
lost in its own spin, like a rouletter wheel that won't
be steered, like the world. They drove me underground,
tornado watches and warnings, atomic bomb drills. Adult
storms so I had to leave the room. Truth is

the tornado is a perfect nappy curl, tightly wound,
spinning wildly whne I try to tamper with its nature, shunning
the hot comb and pressing oil even though if absolutely straight
I'd have the longest hair int he world. Bouffant tornadic
crown taking the royal path on a trip to town, stroll down
Tornado Alley where it intersects Memory Lane. Smoky spirit-
clouds, shadowns searching for what cast them.



mh