Pretext
Generosity—the gift and/or spirit of giving without concern of ego, self, or benefit.
I’m so grateful to my parents, Irv and Fran Troutman. The act of generosity and faith to bring a child into this world blows my mind. I’m so grateful to be alive, really alive, alive like the first fish to use its fins to see what the hell was going on above the waters edge, alive like you are in this tiny little pod amidst the darkness of black space looking down on this little dot that is mostly blue with a little green you call home, alive like the gasping breath you take after being underwater for what feels like eternity. My parents gave me life, took the plunge, and I’m still swimming along, the baby Homer Troutman, just eeking out another day of existence.
Then they say to me, “Hey, why don’t you come to Australia?” I make excuse after excuse for five years until they do everything in their power to remove the excuses. Its amazing what they’ve done for me already in life, as a child of theirs, and they continue to offer me opportunities as a maturing adult into his 30’s. Thanks Mom and Dad because I would not be here, be going there, or be in Latitudinally 30.22 to 30.30, without your support and inspiration.
I could go on a endlessly with a list of other really important people in my life but I’ll save that for the Oscar award speech of my dreams. Of course there are these people but this is a pretext and that means before all of you, and you I hope should, if you don’t already, know who you are. If not, I’ve done a poor job of expressing the joy you bring to my life and for that, I’m sorry, the stony exterior is an easy defense.
This blog is a step, a wet fin on dry land step, because I have a fear of going public. So she says, “Why, what’s the point in all that writing if you aren’t going to share?” Two—shay! She is write and there isn’t any use in fighting it. I’ll make this avowal:
“I Jared Paul Troutman.”
“I Jared Paul Troutman. STOP, you don’t have to repeat after yourself when you are making yourself take an oath, as my Pennsylvanian uncle would say, Jagoff.”
“I Jared Paul Troutman promise to be candid, resolute in my conquering of fear, devoted to daily uncensored uploading of stream of consciousness , and to give it my all.”
“There.”
I’ve felt in the past that blogging was narcissistic because it was trying to draw attention to one’s personal knowledge of a subject or area of expertise to make one’s self feel more self important. I hope that my blog disavows this viewpoint because I clearly have little expertise in any subject matter. I’ve found that the more I try to gain a better knowledge of something, the more I find myself questioning myself, questioning every little exposed facet of the knowledge block, questioning anybody else that claims to know something about the block, doubting that my decisions from standing up upon the block of knowledge must be blinded in some way, and so on.
However, in the face of resistance, keeping the oath in mind, I will play with the pain of self doubt, the professional human always plays with pain, and I will happily blog away on the Googlesz. I will coin my blog not as a profession of knowledge or expertise but as an inquiry into that which is my own reflection against the backdrop of a once in a lifetime vacation from the normal. A personal freedom from normal constraints limitations, and restrictions, which being the good culturized world citizen that I am, are all at this point in my life, internal rules where I alone do the policing. I am long past the point in my life where my activities actually require the policing of law enforcement, although that was a fun part of life I must say, and my moral compass is quite capable of being a kill joy 99% of the time.
Topics of typical vactionhood will be inevitable. Something like, “Wow, this place was freaking beautiful!” Or, “Standing next to that giant sheep made me wonder, ‘Did sheep grow as large as dinosaurs back in the day?” The non-typical I hope to capture are all the intangible relationships of me to the scenary, me to the people, me to my parents, me to the cultural shift, me to the difference between American English and Australian English, me to the utter divorce from that which is my typical wake up and go to work day, me to the perspective of looking through one end of a camera’s lens, and so on. Because what really is vacationing? Why do people need to go on vacation when they are living perfectly happy and fruitful lives?
Yep, it happened, I’m tired, so the answers, or shall I say, the inquiries to these questions will have to wait.
