The Blog with an Outline about Mammoth and Rap

I don't usually start these bloggings with an outline, but today I am.

• Gary
• Church
• Eminem

And that, my friends, is the most organization you'll ever see from me.

Quick backstory: my roomie and I went snowboarding this weekend.

Gary. So I guess you need to get gas before the 200-mile-ish stretch of nothing when driving to Mammoth. Or, if you find yourself in a situation like ours, you stop at the one Shell between civilizations and you use Dave's Mini Mart's restroom to brush your teeth and take out your contacts, as one had previously fallen out of your eye which then forced you to make your roommate control the steering wheel highway fiasco while you stabbed it back in. You'll probably make a joke about how the flickering neon sign looks like Dave's Mini Mar as the "t" is burnt out. And as you walk inside you will see Gary. He will be staring out the window as if he could see the world turning or the blackness breathe. He will have a bone-shivering horror music soundtrack playing and the store will be littered with clocks and mechanical middle fingers and tourist mugs. He will try to make a joke when you are walking to the restroom, one that is just as not funny as it is inaudible, and he will laugh morosely to himself as if to save his efforts. He will look down at his hands and metaphorically, but much too realistically, taste the familiarity of understanding that he is misunderstood.

Because that's what happened to us.

Angeli and I were in the bathroom. I was mid-tangle brush in the hair battle when we heard a knock on the bathroom door. We looked at each other. I opened it quizzically to find Gary standing there. He reminded me of Spongebob's Gary the snail... sized with a considerable round body, a sphere-like head sitting atop it, and a shaggy, rusty-colored bowl cut to (quite literally) top it off. I actually don't really know how he reminded me of a snail besides the name resemblance.

   "How are you doing?" he asked... creepily, sheepishly, lonely.
   "We're good. Thanks for... asking," I replied.
   "Oh." His small, button-like eyes turned towards the floor again, "okay." I could imagine the mental attack in his head, beating him down, those little insecurities punching in his brain tissue with the self depreciation that I know all too well. We stood there, my hand on the bathroom door, his mass standing like a frozen tree.
   "What is your name?" I asked. If he was previously frozen, spring happened... a magical spring like the one in Narnia when Aslan roars and breaks the boundaries of the white witch. I don't know if I've ever seen anyone's face light up and literally produce illumination, but his was close.
   "Gary" he replied. His words were not words to me. I think his words were what life-hope would sound like if life-hope was a sound. He stood there, basking in the idea that someone actually cared about what his name might be, and then shook himself to come back to earth and the logic that goes with that.
   "What's...what's your names?" His tongue pushed out the words like they were too big for his mouth.
   "I'm Ashley." I stretched out my hand and he shook it, and for a second, there was a shared sense of community between human souls. There was a lightness in that strange little mini mart starting from the bathroom border that spread to the corners. I closed the door with a smile a wave and a "bye" and he left us to finish our nightly routines. I left him a "Happy Thanksgiving" note on the chalkboard in the women's restroom, but realized that he will probably never see it... because it is in the women's restroom.

Church and Eminem combined because I can't even stick to my own outline and my thoughts bleed all over each other. Angeli and I camped at Mammoth. We slept in the car the second night after realizing that no amount of layers could victoriously battle 19 degrees. Angeli and I always seem to have a theme song. It is unintentional. It has no reason, and definitely no rhyme. It chooses us.

Day 1

There is a Light that Never Goes Out - The Smiths

Day 2

Water Fountain - tUnE-yArDs

One of my favorite feelings in the world is waking up in my tent or the back of my car. And that second day I got to wake up in the back of my car in the bare-bone basin of the mountains. They surrounded us like they were the edge of the soup bowl and we were the soup. I love how gold glints off window dew and how ice forms on the inside of the car when you've been breathing all night in it. It melts, and the drops sprint down with their gravity incentive to pool in that little rubber lining around the window for such times as these. And then I got the stunning feeling that I was overwhelmingly small. That there is space and a globe and countries and that I'm a part of it. Later that day I watched the snow gusts snake their way along side of me while I snowboarded. When I paint, I see the artwork forming, but when I snowboard or wake up to the sun I feel as if I'm actually an active part of it. I feel as if I am a part of creation screaming the name of its Creator, and I feel close. Close to the intentional beauty meant for the world. Close to purity. Close to the God that orchestrates it together.

This picture represents a large sacrifice of body warmth.

Fast forward through two less-than-half-priced Mammoth dream days to the drive home. To the dark and those random neon lights as you pass through those random towns in that random cold desert. Through those five hours I discovered rather randomly that Angeli has a sweet-tooth for rap. Dare I say "old school" rap. A fresh Spotify playlist and a few hours later we came to Eminem. She showed me his song Headlights and told me how it was his response to his song Cleaning Out My Closet in his earlier years. Both are about his mom, and Headlights is his apology. 

A pre-cursor disclaimer: I believe church can be an absolutely beautiful thing in the way that it was intended. Encouragement. People meeting together with the same fire in their heart. That concept is a beautiful result in anything really. Two mathematicians create brilliant formulas. Just thinking about two chefs in the same room makes my mouth water. And there's something so beautiful about people getting together who understand what having a relationship with God is like.

I believe that God is omnipresent. But I feel that there is a beauty lost when people stagnate "worship songs" into circles like those round-about driving things. I see so many more of God's qualities in Eminem's song Headlights than I do in the production of many church services and modern "worship." There is so much more authenticity, repentance, and beauty in this song than in any wooden pew. I believe that the heart behind the words, including the explicit ones, overflows just as much, if not more beauty than a perfect harmony or fancy chord progression. This... the cussing, the thoughts, the repentance, the search for new life is the deepest part of who he is, and I believe that is a beautiful thing to the heart of God. Jesus walked a life worth following, and by stumbling, sometimes backtracking, often wandering from but returning to those footsteps I've found a depth provided by a God who simply wants our authenticity. And the closer I get to Him... there's a continual clean slate, growing depth, and thirst for more like I've never known before.

(I especially like 2:25 and on)

Aaaand some more pictures. Adventure on and live deeply my friends.