Front Porch Coffee

This is what it looks like to fly vfr over the top at 2000′ over the cook inlet

Over the past handful of years some experiences and some people and some stories have together helped me form two ideas: I want to relish and savor every day, breath, and smile I get to have in this life, and I want to never, never ever wish away life (i.e. “I wish I was some-amount-of-time in the future instead of here in this now”). Really, they are just different facets of the same idea: appreciating life.

Terribly original thought, right? Well..er…yeah. Moving on..

Life philosophies don’t come much more straight forward than that one, but I quickly found some trickiness in putting it into practice. So then I have spent the past such and so many years trying my hardest to really do it, to really, really really appreciate life. I think I’ve had moderately good success. And along the way, I’ve come across different ways, lenses really, through which I could look at this idea, appreciating life.  Zoom forward to the other day: my wonderful girlfriend sends me a link to a video. And lemme tell you, this video, wow. Holy shit. First: the cinematography is stunning. Second: there’s a clip of a de Havilland Beaver on skis taking off from a glacier. Third: there is an idea. A really good idea about how to think about appreciating life.

Let’s suppose that you were able, every night, to dream any dream you wanted to dream. And that you could, for example, have the power within one night to dream 75 years of time. And you would naturally, as you began on this adventure of dreams, you would fulfill all your wishes. You would have every kind of pleasure you could conceive. And after several nights of 75 years of  total pleasure each, you would say, “Woah, that was pretty great! …but, now, let’s have a surprise.”

“Let’s have a dream, which isn’t under control—where something is going to happen to me, and I don’t know what it’s going to be.” And, ah, you would dig that and come out of that and say, “Wow, that was a close shave, wasn’t it?”

 Then you would get more and more adventurous, and you would make further and further-out gambles, as to what you would dream, and finally you would dream where you are now.

Some old things and some new things that I’ve been thinking about recently..

First, flying. I flew a lot over the summer — almost every day. Then all of a sudden, poof, I didn’t fly for a month and a half. Wow! I went absolutely bonkers for it. Mid-October I got to fly around some, but sadly the fix has already worn off! Ahhh! Thankfully the flying I was so lucky to get to do was really, really really good, so it was a big fix and lasted this long. I owe a huge thank you to robert & darla for it, and a huge thank you to shana for coming along and making it about 800 times more beautiful, memorable, and special then it otherwise would’ve been. I’m pretty sure I will actually write a special post, with some pictures and maybe even a video, all about it.

Teaching. How much there is for me to learn about it, what it means for different places, and how to do better at it while working fewer hours.

Love. Man, love makes the world go ’round :)

Crazy future schemes

This poem by Khayyam..

The sky is a belt
woven from our tattered lives.
The mighty river was formed
by all the tears
our eyes have shed.
Hell is a spark from our
searing pain.
Heaven is a breath
drawn from our
moments of peace.

And this poem, which this very special gal introduced me to:

Before you know what kindness really is
you must lose things,
feel the future dissolve in a moment
like salt in a weakened broth.
What you held in your hand,
what you counted and carefully saved,
all this must go so you know
how desolate the landscape can be
between the regions of kindness.
How you ride and ride
thinking the bus will never stop,
the passengers eating maize and chicken
will stare out the window forever.

Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness,
you must travel where the Indian in a white poncho
lies dead by the side of the road.
You must see how this could be you,
how he too was someone
who journeyed through the night with plans
and the simple breath that kept him alive.

Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside,
you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.
You must wake up with sorrow.
You must speak to it till your voice
catches the thread of all sorrows
and you see the size of the cloth.

Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore,
only kindness that ties your shoes
and sends you out into the day to mail letters and
purchase bread,
only kindness that raises its head
from the crowd of the world to say
it is I you have been looking for,
and then goes with you every where
like a shadow or a friend.

~Naomi Shihab Nye

On the left: DELICIOUS PIZZA

On the right: Cheney Munson, musician & writer / teacher / teacher-teacher who came to alaska for a few days to teach some teachers some writing things.
http://www.tacomanarrowsny.com/

Things I have been thinking about newly, recently…

Stars, brilliant little pinpricks of light in the inky celestial sphere
running my hand through dewey grass on a midsummer morning
seeing a flower growing in the rocks
squishing earth between my toes
smiling eyes that light up the world
love
cobwebs

here’s to those things, and here’s to fires of happiness and waves of gratitude and having a hell of a story or two to tell if we’re around later on, here’s to a present worth remembering.

DARK SIDE OF THE LENS from Astray Films on Vimeo.

My stanley coffee thermos is one of my most prized day-to-day-use possessions. There is nothing like the goofy sounding ‘fffuummp’ noise that comes from the lid when I first open ‘er up in the morning. And the following rich aroma of freshly brewed coffee. Mmmm!

I must enjoy it, because 4 cups later I find myself pouring the last few drops, out come the dregs, and that’s all she wrote. The last cup, it’s a bittersweet cup. I’m glad I had the thermos, though.

Better to have had coffee and run out than to have never had coffee at all.

Flying is that way, too. From the moment I passed my checkride, my flying days were numbered and began to count down. I may lose interest or the financial ability or I may move somewhere where flying isn’t really a possible passtime. Those are unsure, but what is sure is that someday I will no longer be physically fit to fly and on that day I’ll hand over my license and my wings will be clipped for the remainder of this life. Teaching, too. There are days that are so staggeringly poignant and beautiful that when they’re over all I can do is sit down and stare off into the sky and marvel at the bigness of it all. And someday I won’t teach any more, whether I find a different career or retire or something else.

Sometimes when I’m not paying attention I down all four cups of coffee and then my thermos runs out and I’m like “oh shit! no more coffee!” Other times I remember to savor every cup. No matter how I drink my coffee, whether I down it all asap or whether I take my time, pace it out, and enjoy and appreciate each cup, no matter, after four cups that thermos is empty as empty gets!

It’s no new way to look at life, I know, but it’s something that came to me a month ago and it was interesting to think about.

So what then? What does that all mean to me? Life’s a thermos of coffee. Come by and set on the porch for a while with me and lets savor a cup o’joe.

:)

Hmmph.

More soon…

by Jason P.

Lessons:

Trail design: miniature warning signs are best placed immediately before dangers.
GoPro: the best reason to wear a helmet.
Smart riding: mystery is key to excitement, don’t scout trails.
France: trolololol, argentinians.
Teamwork: we’re all in this together, boys

A Question, by Robert Frost

A voice said, Look me in the stars
And tell me truly, men of earth,
If all the soul-and-body scars
Were not too much to pay for birth.

Just a few important life goals that have come to mind on this particular friday afternoon–they are in no particular order of importance:

1. Get my instrument ticket, commercial license, and CFI cert in time to teach my nieces how to fly*.

2. Learn to sing and play on the ukulele “The Lion Sleeps Tonight.”

3. Learn to sing and play on the ukulele “The Love Song of the Last Thylacine” (this one also sorta needs to be written, too. sorta).

4. Become one of those teachers that is so good you think they must secretly actually be a wizard.

That’s pretty much it for now.

The view of a beautiful dawn from my classroom: