Chapter 1

My partner is an artist. Lately, she’s been into fluid art or rather, experimental art. The best way to describe her work is: imagine if a wave had emotions, or if color had sounds. Too arbitrary? Too abstract? Good. We’re getting somewhere. Watching and enjoying Cammie’s art has taught me many things, but one thing I think it has developed is my willingness to paint a picture for my audience. Not literally, of course. So here’s a piece of abstract art for you. Buckle up, and enjoy.

Close your eyes. Now open them. Wait a second, you cheated. How did you know to open them, if you had to open them to read the phrase, “Open Them.”? Nevermind. Now you’re out of the zone I wanted you in when your eyes were previously closed. My bad.

THIS IS YOUR CURRENT SITUATION: You’re sitting on the freeway, stuck in traffic. You just “got off of work”. Rather, you left an hour early because life has just been too difficult. You’re recently married, except you don’t feel like it. Oh, that happiness and joyfulness and silliness and giddiness and all the mushy gushy tooshy love stuff is still there. But you don’t live together. Instead, your wife lives in the town you both hope to end up in, and you live in the town that’s two hours north of her, commuting another two hours each day to your job’s actual location. You go home (home is where your spouse, is am I right?) on the weekends, which is always the most amazing “hello” of your life. But it is constantly followed by the “worst” goodbye every Sunday evening, or if you’re feeling crazy enough, 3am every Monday morning. You are sad. You are tired. You are done with it.

Oh, did I mention you are also a COVID-19 victim, actively recovering? Although you are constantly being told by everyone around you “you’ll survive, you’re young and healthy”, you have a sinking fear that there might be some long term repercussions to your three-year smoking habit, that you just recently kicked. But it’s okay. That hernia that’s developed on your chest from the violent coughing and the washy lungs is just a cold. Or “you’re always sick anyways, so you should be used to it by now.” The phrase “It’s not that bad, I had it back in December” comes up constantly while you watch your wife cry every evening because she is unsure of how things are gonna turn out. She is scared. And rightfully so. But you’re on the mend. Things are looking promising….other than that hernia.

So we’re back in the car and you’re just sick of it. It’s been a hard few months in what should have been the most thrilling, passionate, and exciting times of your life! Recently married! So your emotions go back and forth. You continually pump the brakes, so you don’t rear end that teal Tesla, and with each pump, your mood changes back and forth from confused to happy to sad to excited to angry to worried to confused: an endless, exhausting, cycle in the throngs of Bay Area traffic.

The song “Sea of Voices” by Porter Robinson comes onto your stereo. Well, that’s one of your favorite songs! It reminds you of simpler times. Your college bestie used it in a video project that one time and you loved the way it made you feel then, so you’re constantly living in the nostalgia of those past memories, even though your spouse teases you about how nostalgic you are. The gentle clinking of the wind chimes in the song relaxes you.

You get an urge to pull off on the next exit. The sign is titled: John Murr Adventure Trail. Better than sitting in Bay Area Traffic, you think to yourself. The trail is long. You tell yourself you won’t push yourself because you just got done with the exhaustion and coughing fits that accompany a COVID-19 victim and you don’t want to wear yourself out. But secretly you do want to push yourself because you want to see how far you can go and how long your breath will hold out until you succumb to the coughing fits. You make it about a half mile before you feel winded and decide that little adventure was good enough for the day. On your way back down, you notice people are giving you strange looks. Maybe its because you’re wearing khakis, dress shoes, and a branded polo on a hiking trail. Maybe they don’t like how they can see your nose peeking out from your company branded mask. you don’t really care, you just enjoy the attention that you’re receiving.

You get back in your car. Those wind chimes strike up again and you’re whisked back into the nostalgia that “Sea of Voices” brings you. You wish you would’ve looked out over the top of the half-mile you just trekked. Might’ve been a good view. But as you’re looking out at the rolling hills of the North East Bay, they don’t seem to be the same shade of brown that they usually are. They’re not a poop colored brown. No, instead those same poop colored brown hills have morphed into a nice warm, chocolaty brown, the same color as your wife’s favorite ice cream. “Well, that’s very nice,” you think to yourself as Porter Robinson plays in the background. The song completes itself, but you want to chase those feelings of optimacy that have been absent for so long. So you repeat the song.

Then you look at the trees. They’re no longer that common, grass, green color. Instead, they’re the green of your wife’s dress that she wanted to try on for you. That green dress looked so pretty on her. She looks pretty in everything to you, except that night, she felt pretty for herself. And that was something that not only made her happy, but it overpowered you with joy because it felt so refreshing to see your wife get a glimpse of how you see her: as the most beautiful creature in the world. You felt that night like she truly understood your views of her. Better yet. You felt like she understood how God sees her.

And then the song completes itself. So you repeat it again so that the current you’re caught in won’t end.

The trees are green. The hills are brown. The cars are shiny, and now you hear (?) a smile from God. He’s talking to you or smiling at you. And you don’t see it, because you can’t see God, but you know that you felt it. You felt that smile. It feels warm. It feels comforting. You start crying in the middle of Bay Area traffic as the crescendo hits on “Sea of Voices”. At first, you’re crying because you feel relieved that God has finally contacted you, even in the subtlest of forms. You thought he might be angry at you or punishing you these past few months. How else could you explain the terrible terrible luck you had dealt with? Canceled wedding plans, a four-hour commute to work that included not living with your wife, and a month-long battle against a disease that is taking the world by storm. You feared His wrath, so you avoided confrontation with Him.

And then you’re crying because you’re angry. God’s supposed to love me. Why would he allow you to go through all this stuff? This has been the hardest few months of your life. “Sea of Voices” ends for the third time. You just let the car sit in silence. But you want that optimism back. So you start the song over again.

Traffic clears up a little, so your brakes start to groan their gratitude. Groan? Oh great. Another thing I got to take care of. But then the Porter Robinson wind chimes remind you of that smile you just heard. And now you feel guilty. Maybe you’re not deserving of that smile. Maybe you misheard. Maybe…just maybe…that smile was meant for somebody else. And then you look at the trees. You’re reminded of your wife in her green dress. And how beautiful she felt. And you felt like she saw herself for an instant as you see her. And then you start to cry again. Because in the midst of your spiritual body taking beating after beating, you’re not thinking about everything that went wrong.

Instead, you’re thinking about last weekend, when you and your wife went to REI to blow that 400 dollar gift card that was generously gifted to you. And on your drive there, you were dancing ridiculously to “Blinding Lights” by The Weekend at the stoplight, just to make her laugh. She’s laughing hysterically, but not at you. She’s laughing at the two teenage girls making fun of you. But instead of shriveling up, you double down and roll down the window and crank the volume. And they, in turn, roll down their window. Ironically, you are both listening to the same radio station and you end up having a mini dance party. You laugh and head to REI.

Your thoughts drift to the same weekend when your wife asked to watch the Narnia sequel: Prince Caspian. But instead of watching the film, you spend your time rewriting the films to accommodate Nicholas Cage, his father who is a Cactus Cooler soda can, and his search for a Narnia’s national treasure. What a good time, you both had.

And now you’re back in your car, crying again, not entirely sure if its because you miss your wife, you love the memories you have with your wife, Porter Robinson is just so damn good, or a combination of all three. But you choose to look a little deeper.

You feel alive.

And you realize that this feeling you’ve been chasing…this feeling of life that you’ve been using poor Porter’s damn song to chase, has been there all along. You truly are alive. And God’s smile, within the midst of a canceled wedding, a long-distance married relationship, and a month-long crippling illness, has always been there. You have been more alive now, then you have ever been before. And God loves you, the way you love your wife. And He loves it when you see the way He sees you. And He loves Porter Robinson and the song “Sea of Voices”. Maybe He even used that song to speak to you, even though the song doesn’t have any words. What a life we live when a song that has no words speaks and a smile that makes no noise sounds clearer than the chimes of a Porter Robinson track.

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I don’t think it’s any secret that what you just read was not made up to paint a picture for you. Nor is it really any secret that this was an experience that I myself had and wanted to write about. For those of you that made it this far, I am going to assume that you felt some semblance of connection to the text above, or your my mom and have to read everything I write because I’ll get mad if you don’t. If you are either of these parties, I will reveal to you why God put this story on my heart to write about:

This has been a tough year and I know many of us have had these mountains to climb. Survival and getting through this year have been at the forefront of our minds. Life is stressful, but life will not become any less stressful once 2020 ends. There will be new challenges and new mountains to climb. I have felt a deep conviction these past few days to continue living, to continue enjoying, and to continue pursuing passions, even though the world we live in is constantly going through a system update. Find a song. Listen to it on repeat. Find a mountain. Climb ’til you can climb no more. Find a canvas. Paint until there’s nothing left to paint. Choose to live. Because there is always beauty, even when the mountains are poop colored.