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.



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