The Sound and the Fury.

No stadium to report this time. Sometimes I get in a mood and I just like to write, and I had a nice outing today so I thought I'd stop in and say hi, and try to explain a little about myself, and why I love baseball and solitude so much.

Today I went to a nature center nearby, equipped with my camera as always, to seek out some nature. It's kind of sad that we have to do that, but that's a post for another time. It always strikes me how we live our lives (most of us, anyways) in a tight little concrete circle, and the amount of people, money, and time we spend to bend nature to our will. When if we let it go for just a few days, it would start to overtake us again. That's just the power of nature.

I drove to the nature center, and anytime I go to places like this, my senses are always attuned. I turn off the car, get out, and start walking. Slowly, the thud of the car doors, the screams of the kids, the people complaining about how their cable guy was late, the phones, the shouts, the client demands...it all starts to meld together into a general hum. And then the hum lessens, and lessens...until all you hear is silence. When you first emerge into your place (I cannot tell you where your place is, and I will not tell you where mine is, but when you are there, you will know) there is just silence. Nature is wary at first of your intrusion. But if you sit, and relax, and respect what is going on around you, and understand that you are there to be with it, not to tame it...then the sounds come back, and you have been accepted and can start to truly disconnect.

The slow melding of the external sounds into the sounds of nature is great, but that's not why I go. If I wanted that, I could buy a CD. It's mostly to meld the interior noise into...something, anything else. I am an analytic mind. I like to count, to organize, to figure things out. That served me well in my previous life as a scientist, and serves me well at my current job. But I don't know how to turn it off. It is probably the cause of most of the difficulties in my life, and I have found few things that can temporarily cage the frightened rat that is my mind. One of them is breathing the cool breeze as it blows through the trees, another is travel, and another is baseball.

I have not found anyone, really, that understands that. Football is awesome, and I love my 'Canes. But when I go to a baseball game, and the national anthem is sung, and the bats start cracking...there is a hypnosis to the rhythm of the ball being pitched, and returned...a rhythm that you can't find anywhere else. There is certainly no lack of sound, but there is a big difference between sound, and noise. Suddenly, there is no worry about work, about situations, about people, about money. There is just. Pop. Crack. Cheer. Smile.

I may be able to hit another stadium this year, which will leave 13, and at this rate I should probably be able to finish in a few years. Part of me doesn't want to ever finish, because I don't know what would come next. But if anything up to this point is a guide, it should be interesting.