If there’s one thing in life to be desired, that thing is quality. If there’s a second thing to be desired, I would suggest irony–something for the soul, and something for the cynic.
Quality … has become something of an obsession. A lifestyle, and a mindset. Something to be sought after (and, on occasion, obtained). Not a mere descriptor (a descriptor that defies definition), but something of an object of its own. And object that surrounds and bathes in light something possessing it.
Quality of experience. Like getting pulled out of my comfort zone at the Yonder Mountain concert, New Year’s Eve. Pulled out of my comfort zone by a short brunette in a metallic-blue tank top. From by bubble into a circle–now of four–to dance. I don’t, mind you. Dance that is. At least not when sober, or when people might be watching. But, like jumping off a cliff, roof, swing–taking a plunge–once you’ve jumped, there’s no turning back. Sometimes, you’re pushed or pulled. But you’re nevertheless committed, and there’s no sense in struggling.
So she yanked me, from my comfort zone. Into her circle. To dance. Honestly, it was poignantly awkward. I imagine I looked utterly foolish, or worse. Who’s to say? But, then, it was too late, and I just had to enjoy it. And … I did. Enjoyed being completely out of character. Being embarrassed, but committed. So, instead of running, I danced. To the intermission music. One, two, maybe three songs. I felt like an utter square–but at the same time thoroughly elated. Then the band came back on, and we continued our count down until 2008.
I didn’t learn her name, or even where she was from. But she has my gratitude.
And so: quality of experience, by being out of character. By being uncomfortable. But, uncomfortable in a good way.
Uncomfortable, as in the driving gusts of a high-plains wind, just before dawn on New Year’s morning. The bitter cold of early morning–my mom tells me it was four degrees–chopping blocks from the brittle crust of a snow drift by headlamp. The eastern horizon glowed with all the hues of pink and yellow of a beckoning sunrise, as I dug around my car, buried in to its running boards. (I’d backed up, backed way up, to get a good running start at the hundred feet of snow drift. I’d made it forty, maybe forty five, like St. Peter walking on the water, we stuttered, stopped and sank.)
Abandoned, the car sat sunk and lifeless. In the absence of man-made noise rang the scratching, whistling stillness of dark plains. The whisk of low blowing snow. There stood a sole moving figure, standing, face in to the wind. His headlamp, from a distance, was no brighter than the stars, dotting the horizon, of which he became a part. Insignificant, diminished. Utterly obscured by the infinity and eternity of darkened undulating hills–pink and white, speckled with bursting tufts of brown in dawn’s nascent glow.
The figure, dark, buffeted, chopping blocks from the wind-crusted snow. Hewing and squaring them, stacking them to build an altar: to the great plains, or, to dark figures toiling on those plains.
…
Quality of workmanship. Quality of design, of materials, of construction. Quality of thought, of intent, of result.
Quality of speech. Well-measured words. Words that encourage. That open-up. That open up the world a little wider. “Oh God, open the world a little wider.”
Quality of action. Of intent. Of intention.
To these things I dedicate myself. I betroth myself to. I claim for my own. I claim for myself. I set my sights on.
These things, and nothing less.
