Don't worry about what's missing, enjoy what's present.

Loss very often propagates regret or remorse. We fail to truly notice the impact of something until it is gone. Then we sulk in its absence. Yes, we recollect and we reminisce, but we can not fill the entire void with these memories. Something remains incomplete. No matter how hard is tried, we cannot revive that which is missing. Sometimes people will vehemently cry; "Oh! If I could have just one more day with...". This is in attempt to quench some thirst for penitence or rather to simply enjoy old comforts. Sometimes all that is needed is the opportunity to say a final word or two someone who is gone, say something, and really mean it.

I write today, not having lost anything. In fact, I have gained something. To recognize the importance and magnitude of one's own gifts while truly appreciating them before they're gone is to assign them even more value. Take for example extrinsic possessions: I own a car which breaks down before I have appreciated the comforts it provided me. I am quite literally stuck without it. Forced to rely on others, walk more or begrudgingly take public transportation, I can now better assess my car's actual value. Now, take for example intrinsic possessions: I lose my sight, I delete the information on my hard drive, I lose a loved one. Aren't these things seemingly much more valuable to me now that they're gone? Seemingly, yes. But they are much more useful when they are present. This is exactly why I feel the need to make this point. To all things present we must show appreciation. We must take advantage of the abilities to have at least 'one more day with' things from that we must eventually part.

Each day provides us with a finite number of moments, and each moment can be utilized or squandered. It will assign life more virtue to cherish it's true value consistently.


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*note: I wrote this a while back, and humorously stumbled upon it just hours after I was forced to tow my car away for a new starter. I smiled.

The Troubadour's Bane

Leo the Provençal Troubadour took great pride in his lyrical ballads.

Leo's village, Les Baux, took great pride in his lyrical ballads.

Minstrels around and jongleurs abound would imitate his style and plagiarize his words. In fact, there wasn't a line of nobility in Provence that hadn't folded under the sonorous beauty of Leo the Troubadour's notes. Once, Danish King Valdemar had commissioned a poem from Leo for his glorious Queen. To Leo, there was nothing more venerable than the high art of his compositions. To Les Baux, nothing was more august than the airy music that floated through its streets. His music gave life to the quiet village, and Leo affirmed that his quiet village gave life to all of his music. By all measures, Leo the Troubadour was a paragon.

Then, the Lyte Funky Ones came into town. Called "LFO" by the youth in the village, this new band posed giant threat to Leo the Troubadour's success. Aided by their hit song, "Summer Girls", Medieval LFO gained increasing popularity throughout the region. Enthusiasts in southern Occitania could simply not get enough of their newfound objets d'amour. These fans, 'bon vivants', began to request LFO mix tapes from minstrels in the area. They danced to LFO songs at their estampidas. Leo was outraged at the speed and slope of LFO's ascension and his own declension in the townsfolk's favor and upon the Les Baux charts.

With the heavy weight of LFO's success on his shoulders, Leo the Troubadour went back to his proverbial drawing board to write a gab. Leo toiled for months in recluse to find the perfect words to challenge LFO and to reclaim his deserved success. The challenge fueled his writing.

Meanwhile, LFO rewrote the history books with catchy and inspiring lyrics like:

Cherry pez, coke, crush rock, stud boogie
Used to hate school, so I had to play hookie
Always been hip to the b-boy style
Known to act wild and make a girl smile

And smile the girls did. Countless smiles could be seen on any street on which Medieval LFO played. LFO relished in the spotlight shone by their flawlessly crafted songs and lyrics. Because of all the fame and commissions, members of the band would commonly tell fans that their names were: Rich. Despite being so... Rich... public favor turned momentarily against the band when they collectively stole one young vassal's honey like they stole her bike.

Leo the Troubadour took advantage of this bad press. It was soon after the stolen honey incident that he released his new ballad entitled "The vexatious countenance of LFO behind the comely mask". Critics immediately reproached the single for reasons "including but not limited to: It's long title".

Leo skulked out of the Les Baux spotlight, as he famously put it; "to rue for rue's sake." Little did he know that that line, if written into a poem, would have quickly brought him fame again. Instead, he set to write an enueg about his fans. While later considered a technical masterpiece, the album, "I hate my votaries", bombed forthwith. Leo the Troubadour stated shortly thereafter; "Mine own votaries hath bequest me to fall, whereupon I shall fall; and, as such, with great weight." All commissioners dropped his services and Leo the Provençal Troubador was forced to live from the dirt.

LFO went on to write a tepid song entitled, "Girl on TV." Their follow up performance was lackluster at best due to the fact that no one really understood what a TV was. No one heard from Leo the Troubadour or from the Lyte Funky Ones again.

A Slippery Slope in Crag-laden Northwest Argentina pt. 6 of 3

The Argentine bus that I rode had come to a sudden and complete stop, but my sojourn had not. No, I was sure that there were still surprises to come. I strained my neck to look to the front of the bus. Ahead lay fire and a group of men creating a roadblock. Pirates! Well, the men blocking the road weren't as much as pirates as they were radical political activists. But I'll continue to address them as pirates to add to the dramatic elements of my story.

The pirates boarded our bus and I slid my camera under the seat in front of me: "Attention, ladies and gentlemen, we represent Seu Andseu running for office here in Tucuman Provence."

'Wait', I thought, 'why on God's great big ball of mass were we still in Tucuman?' That was still ten hours from Buenos Aires.

"We demand a donation from every passenger to support his campaign," the men began walking down the aisle collecting coins from all the passengers. This was nuts! I was a little excited because I had never been held for ransom by pirates before. Now I can't say that. (Not only because of this bus ride, but also because of my weekend in Somaliland. (Which, of extreme importance to note, is NOT a family-friendly theme park but rather an autonomous region of Somalia with a literal ton of pirates*)) . On the bus, I wasn't nearly as fearful as I was satisfied that, again, more turmoil was added to my journey.

It appeared that God's plan lay right before me in the wrinkled countenance and bad breath of a Tucumani Pirate. I reached into my wallet, 'Oh crap!', I realized, "I don't have any money"[insert the incarnation of a frown-face emoticon here].

Enrique handed them another peso. "No," demanded a pirate who was scowling at me, "what have you got?"

"An empty wallet?" I tried to escape my quandary with humor. No, he didn't like that answer. Damn pirates never laugh at jokes about money, politics or Rabbis I would later find out.

"Fear?" I tried again. No, no empathy towards my situation. The tension rose like mercury on Mercury. In a sly movement, I shifted my seat and kicked my camera further hidden under the seat affront. I searched for anything else to give them. How about an action figure? No, he knew that it was dead. Notes from a friend back home? No, I left those behind. I wish I had brought my chest of golden medallions. I always seemed to forget that when I needed it the most (see: Somaliland mistake).

Finally, providently weighing consequences, I chose not to play with fire. I mean, these were pirates that I was interacting with, and I am no ninja. I unfortunately had to resort to my inference skills rather than my Ninjatō or Shuriken skills. This was a real shame because I can think of no better situation for the use of a ninja star. Notwithstanding this dilemma, I descried** from across the aisle that one of the most brute of pirates was not wearing socks with his alpargatas. A pirate without socks? What gives? Boat decks can get rather damp and slimy, especially to the wavefaring marauder. After an instant's pause, I looked up, shrugged and then carefully rose my foot to offer an unspoken barter: my socks for the toll.

A head nod closed the deal, and Seu Andseu's campaign had a new pair of white Reebok ankle-length gym socks that had been embrowned by the Altiplano dust. I had my life, a ten hour trip ahead of me, slight hunger and the newfound opportunity for athlete's foot. But this was the worst that it could get, right?

[[Right??? Come right back for part 7 of this emotional 3-part Argentine odyssey.]]
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*After a mild case of Stockholm Syndrome, I joined my captors in a rather short lived game of "Biggest Somali Pirate Loser" where we measured our collective weight to be exactly 2,002lbs.

**Do not attempt to use the word "descry" in a pickup line at a bar (or in a pickup line at a whale-watching conference***).

***Do not attempt pick up girls at whale-watching conferences (do not attempt to pick up the whales either, it usually takes a crew and a crane. Mere quixotism and the 'I can!' attitude will not suffice).

Things that are good about the CTA

Bob Loblaw's Law Blog:

This entry really isn't a law blog. I just chose to adopt a catchy title to lure in potential victims readers.

I did not post a single entry in the month of November. I feel that I have let all two of my readers down. Example of this failure:

My Chinese friend, Bocheng, having just arrived from the Fuijan Provence of China, was uncorrupted by American influence, and therefore a perfect opportunity for me to exploit. He came to the United States without a single bookmarked page on his brand new laptop computer's internet browser. I honed in upon his blank digital canvass and strategically deceived him into placing a link to my blog in his bookmarks toolbar. I was excited to see that someone, anyone, had saved a link to my blog. Now, a month later, the bookmark is gone. Perchance Bocheng has found new information to keep accessibly located at the top of his screen and ran out of room, or perchance Bocheng realized that I'm a joke (no matter how many times I tried to convince him that my normalcy was lost in the translation).

So, now, here I am committing to myself, (and not as any form of seductive enticement to potential readers), that I will write more consistently and more often.

Bocheng, bookmark me again.

A Slippery Slope in Crag-laden Northwest Argentina pt. 5 of 3

Given the precedent set by the previous events on this tour, my rest was better than I could have expected. I was only awoken a few times through the course of the night, and the person behind me was gracious enough to let the little hand hit the six before he started to shout.

"I'm dying. I'm dying. I'm dying," he pierced the general hum of the moving road with his shrieks, "I'm dying!"

My heart jumped up and so did I to turn behind my headrest. There sat a five-year-old boy banging two plastic men together.

"I'm dying. I'm dying," it was kind of cute, I thought. There were other verbs he could be using while banging the men together.

"I'm dying," he gave me a huge toothless grin while his mother, after years of practice, remained quietly asleep aside him.

"I'm dying. I'm dying, " he continued, dissipating all lingering forms of cuteness in his play.

"I'm dying. I'm dying." What a wonderful narrative surmise of my trip, I thought, and it's getting really annoying.

"I'm dying. I'm dying." How long does it take your plastic man to die? I turned around again and chided him.

"Shut up," I said. But this time his mother was awake and she gave me a look that could be read word for word as follows:

"My kid? Shut up? Listen, punk, you shut up! Ha! The guy who made the whole bus stop last night because he couldn't hold it in is telling my kid to shut up? Turn your honky-ass around!"

Well, maybe her look didn't scream that last part, but it was effective enough to make me turn and bear disgrace.

"I'm dying. I'm dying." We spoke in unison, "I'm dying."

Unable to return back to a semi-peaceful state, I stared out the window to watch the sunrise. Ah, yes! When one wakes before the sun rises, he can make the most of his day. He is blessed with opportunity. A sunrise provides both literal and figurative enlightenment. The entrance of the sun allows me to push yesterday's woes behind me and to bask in today's chance to make anew. Yes, the sunrise brightens spirits and fills each day with a spectrum of....wait! Why was the sun rising out of my window on the right of the bus? Even being in the southern hemisphere couldn't explain this anomaly.

"Take 'er really easy, Chris. You don't know what's going on." I thought. But that was the problem, I didn't know what was going on anymore. The best solution at this moment was to sigh and accept. This was a cursed trip from the outset. The realization should have made it more manageable, but it didn't. I stared out the window, I had nothing with which I could pass the time we were heading backwards except for my journal. (At this instant, I'd like to point out that my notebook was more of a Magellanesque tale of adventure than a pre-teenage girl's diary. Well, who am I kidding?)

"Dear Diary," I wrote. "I can't wait to finally get back to my room where I can rest peacefully and dream of all my crushes, omg!" I continued with seemingly endless similes for what my heart felt like. I think I was writing about the way Danny looked at me during third period when a sudden interruption shook my pen. The bus had slowed as a result of the sudden friction applied to it's wheels by the break pads, in other words: the driver slammed on the brakes when we came to an unexpected (yet unsurprising) obstacle in the road. What was surprising, however, was what happened next.

[[You'll unfortunately have to wait a short time for the shock and awe that follows this lingering suspense/angst. Part six of this three-part odyssey will be presented soonafter we complete contract negotiations with a certain Hollywood A-List celebrity who may be playing the role of the Bus Driver. We've already signed Danny DeVito on as the five-year-old boy in the forthcoming crag-laden movie.]]

A Slippery Slope in Crag-laden Northwest Argentina pt. 4 of 3

Alone we sat in the darkest of the Altiplano steppes. My need for use of a bathroom had caused my entire bus to stop where there was nothing but an expansive lack of restrooms. The driver's frustration-fueled forceful stop was sure to have awoken those easily awoken by frustration-fueled forceful stops. The parallel structure of this moment was that while my entire bus was isolated from civilization, I was the lone maverick who was isolated from them. There I stood on the steps of the bus, a solitary bohemian*, segregated by my fellow Passenger, ready to take charge, unaccompanied, peering into the think black yonder. **

I slowly stepped from the bus, which as dark as it was outside, remained even darker on the inside. I was wise enough to know that this caused a problem of physics. I wouldn't be able to see in, but all who were on the window could easily see definition of figures out. I didn't care. Because even though there wasn't a shrub large enough for the Knights who say Ni!, I really, really had to go to the bathroom. So I took in a large breath, gathered myself and ran alongside of the bus. It was hopeless to try to run out of sight, so I analyzed that my best option was to hover as closely to the side of the bus as possible.

Well, I didn't have much time to think so I simply acted. And, picture it if you must, there I sat exposed to my greatest fears. I sure put the "Bare Ass" into embarrassing. But I was relieved! (Pun intended).

Then, like a brick face to the wall, the realization hit that, in my haste, I hadn't prepared myself with paper. I started to grow concerned and began to frantically search around me. Nothing. I patted myself down to find to my elation and/or discomfort that, in my pants' pockets remained the letters from my friend back home.

"Well," I settled the idea in my mind, "If there's ever been justification for this... now is the time." With a great sense of guilt amalgamated with my excessive embarrassment and half-nudity, a large and grotesque allegorical monster crawled inside my chest. My stomach felt better, but my heart rate was askew. Externalizing my palpitation, I jumped up, left my letters for the Alpaca, covered up the hole I dug and boarded the bus.***

Refreshed, yet head hung, I skulked back to my seat. If I had a tail, it would have been hiding between my legs. Enrique showed my a picture he took of me outside and then the bus stopped five miles later at a rest stop for gas and snacks. From what I heard, the toilets were nice...

[[Please stay tuned for part 5 of this knuckle-whitening, teeth-clenching, throat-gagging 3-part series of my adventures through the Argentine desert. Don't touch that dial, I'll be right back.]]

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*Note: I'm not Bohemian with a capital B, but rather a bohemian, with a lower case b. I'm American, duh.
**Wow, there are a lot of commas in that sentence.
***I wanted to ensure concerned readers that I did, indeed, dig a hole despite my stress. Also, in my first draft, I had written, "covered my hole", which really didn't sound how I intended it to.