metal and plastic, glass and love

For me, this month has been full of dangerous, exciting choices, but none have anywhere near the consequence as the decision I face tomorrow:  WHAT PHONE DO I GET?

My biennial upgrade is coming in tomorrow, and it couldn't come at a better time:  two tremendous competitors have recently been released in the past few weeks, in the form of the HTC One and the Samsung Galaxy S4, and there's no question in my mind that one of these two is the phone for me.

In this post, I'm going to explore what I like about each phone, and hope that I come to a decision by the end.  So strap yourselves in for:

SCOTTPHONE DECISION 2013!!!!

I'm so sorry about the lens flare.  I couldn't help myself.

Now, a few words before we begin.  I am a huge fan and advocate of Google's Android operating system; I am 100% attached to it and, therefore, unwilling to even consider an iPhone or Windows phone.  Even jailbroken iPhones are so limited in what they can do compared to Android that they hold no interest for a crazy-techy person like myself, and I don't really care for the software design, app ecosystem, or suite of associated services that Windows phones offer (that's not to say that Microsoft's services aren't excellent; they are, I just prefer Google's).

So why just these two phones?

There are a few requirements I have for a new phone.  It's gotta be Android.  It's gotta have the best screen available.  It's gotta be fast.  And it's gotta be available on Sprint.  Since I only get a new phone with an upgrade discount, cost is not an issue.

There a lot of other important and/or cool features that I would want to consider, but nearly all of those are covered when you limit your selections to the phones with the best screens.  And in this case, best screen means highest resolution, not most inches.

History and Brand Impressions

My first Android phone was the HTC EVO 4G, which I purchased in the summer of 2010.  It was amazing, and I loved it, but a great deal of my excitement was just having a smartphone; I'm sure I would have been similarly impressed with any Android phone at the time.  And while I greatly enjoyed using it, it turned out to be a lemon, needing regular repairs; the touchscreen never really worked properly, and I was without it for over a month at one point while Sprint tried to fix it.  Eventually they made good, but it was still a huge hassle.  I recognize that I just had terrible luck; although the EVO 4G was reported to have had several different issues with the screen, my issue in particular was one-in-a-million, so I didn't have very much ill will towards HTC despite the tremendous inconvenience.

That's why I was happy enough to purchase an HTC EVO 3D as my second phone, through Sprint's generous trade-in program.  All told, it has been a pretty good phone; it's now showing its age, and the 3D features were never more than a gimmick, but they didn't interfere with the phone at all.  The thing that has bothered me most about it is something that would never, ever affect the average user:  HTC never fully unlocked the phone's internal software, meaning I couldn't download and install whatever version of Android I liked.  That's one of my favorite things about using Android, and not having access to that has made me dislike the EVO 3D a lot more than it deserves.  It is, all in all, a spectacular and peppy phone that just never achieved its full potential.

So my history with HTC is checkered, but pretty good overall.  And the problems in design and security have, from all reports, been eliminated in the HTC One.  And, although I don't normally go in for such sentimental bunk, I do feel a warm and fuzzy sense of loyalty to HTC for making such cool phones for me to use, even if they haven't always worked exactly the way I wanted.

On the flipside, I've never owned a Samsung smartphone personally.  I have, however, owned a Samsung phone, the Upstage, that was the worst electronic device I have ever encountered in my entire life:

Oh, look.  It's the worst phone ever.

Just...just look at that thing.  Take a minute and realize that there are controls on both sides of it.  You can't use both sides at once, of course, so how would it know which side you wanted to use?  Answer:  it had no idea.  It was a constant battle to convince the phone that I didn't want to listen to music, or to convince the music player that I intended to make a call.  It just didn't work.  It was a living nightmare.

I understand that Samsung probably had all of the designers of the Upstage sacrificed on the altar of Cheukshin.  I understand that Android phones, with only one side that's meant to be used, are largely immune from most of the horrors that the Upstage inflicted on me.  I understand that a lot of people I know, including my wife, have a Samsung Galaxy smartphone and love them.  I've held and used my wife's Galaxy S3 a little bit, and I found it to be very enjoyable to use.  I know that Samsung has historically been a much better supporter of opening its products to have their software modified than HTC has.

But...some scars just never really heal.

Design

So let's talk about the hardware design of the HTC One and the Samsung Galaxy S4.  I'm not so concerned about software design; as I said before, installing custom versions of software is something I love to do, so any of the default software design choices are probably going to get wiped out in short order.  What I'm left with is the hardware to consider.

Keep in mind, however, that I haven't actually held either of these, or even seen them in person.  I've read tons of reviews and looked at videos of them both in use, but I really won't be able to formulate my feelings until I know what it's like to touch them.

The Galaxy S4 has a good design, in that it stays out of your way and does its job, but nothing about its look excites me.  I do like the hardware button in the middle (sorry, Google and HTC; if I can't have zero physical buttons, then give me a real one, not just capacitative), but everything else is just par for the course. Reviews are describing Samsung as playing it safe with a design that works, but I like to live dangerously.

Something about the design of the HTC One just grabs me.  I feel like I'm looking at something new, special, and exciting.  This might just be a testament to the power of HTC's marketing team, but I really think that the phone is gorgeous.  Reviews have supported this idea, calling it essentially a joy to hold.  I want to hold things that are a joy to hold!  I don't really care too much about metal vs. plastic, but this might be a turning point for me.  Really, I'm not a very aesthetically-minded person in general; the fact that the physical appearance of this phone is even a factor bewilders me, but that's the way it is.

But...am I going to want a case for my phone?  Do I really need one?  If I get one, won't it just cover up the beautiful design?

Technical Specifications

These phones use the same processor and have the same amount of RAM, so performance-wise they should be identical.  However, some benchmarks have marked the Galaxy S4 out as having slightly higher performance when running games, somehow.  The Galaxy S4 also has about an hour more battery life, on average, but I'm never very far away from a charger, so I'm not too concerned about that.

They both have a 1080p screen, but the Galaxy S4's screen is slightly larger, meaning that there's better pixel density on the HTC One.  The Galaxy S4's visuals are also more highly saturated, meaning that the colors are more vivid (but less true to life).

The Galaxy S4 continues the trend of back-mounted, relatively crummy phone speakers; the HTC One, on the other hand, includes true front-mounted stereo speakers, for what is reportedly the best audio playback experience of any phone, ever.  As someone who likes to use his phone to play music while taking a shower, that's a very exciting prospect!  I can usually barely hear my phone with the water running, but apparently the HTC One's speakers are fantastically loud.

The most important points to me are the Galaxy S4's removable battery and microSD card slot.  The HTC One doesn't have those; that means that, with the HTC One, I can't carry around a spare battery, replace the battery if it goes bad, or increase my total amount of storage space.  But do I really need to do those things? Batteries are pretty reliable, and I'm so often near a charger.  If I really need that extra battery life, I can buy a portable charging pack for $20 (the cost of a spare battery).  And with excellent wifi and 4G everywhere, won't cloud storage be sufficient to provide me whatever files I need at the moment?

It's tough, because these devices offer two different solutions to a problem, when I don't even know if I have that problem yet.  How am I supposed to decide?  I can maximize my utility in this particular area with the Galaxy S4, but at what cost?

Other Stuff

There are a few other things worth mentioning.  First, there's the fact that the Galaxy S4's screen is reportedly especially sensitive; you can use it wearing gloves, and it has support for apps that let you hover over the screen, without touching it, to control it.  That's kind of cool, but it's unlikely to be widely adopted in general apps; that means I would probably not even being able to use it if I installed a custom version of Android.  As for using it with gloves, that's what capacitivate gloves and noses are for!

The Galaxy S4 comes with a few other features, like eye-tracking technology to scroll the screen, that the HTC One doesn't have.  But are these any more than a gimmick?  They also don't seem to work outside of Samsung's built-in software, and I saw how great gimmicks can be with the 3D on my EVO 3D that I left permanently turned off.

Conclusion

These are both amazing phones from great companies.  I won't really be able to decide until I've held them each in my hand.  And writing all this down, unfortunately, hasn't given me any clues as to what I should do!  I'm not good at dealing with two competing choices, as you can probably tell; a strong part of me wishes I could just have them both.  Unfortunately, that isn't always possible.

Thanks for listening to my rambling to myself.  As a reward, here is a poem by Pablo Neruda:

Tonight I Can Write the Saddest Lines

Tonight I can write the saddest lines.

Write, for example,'The night is shattered
and the blue stars shiver in the distance.'

The night wind revolves in the sky and sings.

Tonight I can write the saddest lines.
I loved her, and sometimes she loved me too.

Through nights like this one I held her in my arms
I kissed her again and again under the endless sky.

She loved me sometimes, and I loved her too.
How could one not have loved her great still eyes.

Tonight I can write the saddest lines.
To think that I do not have her. To feel that I have lost her.

To hear the immense night, still more immense without her.
And the verse falls to the soul like dew to the pasture.

What does it matter that my love could not keep her.
The night is shattered and she is not with me.

This is all. In the distance someone is singing. In the distance.
My soul is not satisfied that it has lost her.

My sight searches for her as though to go to her.
My heart looks for her, and she is not with me.

The same night whitening the same trees.
We, of that time, are no longer the same.

I no longer love her, that's certain, but how I loved her.
My voice tried to find the wind to touch her hearing.

Another's. She will be another's. Like my kisses before.
Her voice. Her bright body. Her infinite eyes.

I no longer love her, that's certain, but maybe I love her. 
Love is so short, forgetting is so long.

Because through nights like this one I held her in my arms
my soul is not satisfied that it has lost her.

Though this be the last pain that she makes me suffer
and these the last verses that I write for her.

mike is amazing

Guys...guys!  Faithful readers, set yourselves down and here a story of a man so incredible, he absolutely overrules my better judgment for what to write in my blog post today.  This is the tale of my friend Mike D, the greatest inspiration in our lives.  (This is the same Mike who introduced me to Adventure Time).

I wish I could remember when I first met Mike.  Intellectually, I realize that it must have been some time in law school, because I don't have any real concrete memories of interacting with him before that.  Still, I can't quite remember the exact moment of our meeting; I only recall that it was as if the sky suddenly opened, a heavenly fanfare played, a single white dove flew overhead, and all suffering and conflict over the earth was momentarily halted by the immensity and majesty of his presence.  An experience like that, well, it reverberates through your history, influencing all memories of what had happened before (and coloring the future forever with its gravitas).  What this boils down to is that, whenever I try to think of a time in my life before I know we must have met, somehow Mike makes himself an important figure in those earlier memories, too.  That's simply how amazing he is.

But it's not just the aura of a demigod, the winsome good looks, the hilarious repartee, or his keen insight into the struggles of the human condition that draw people to him.  It's also his infinite well of wisdom and basic human kindness.  Even if I didn't hang with rapt attention on every word he spoke simply because of his raw, irrepressible charisma, I'd still have no choice but to hear him hold forth on the important topics of the day.  Never was there a more ardent defender of the rights of the common man.  Never was there so zealous an advocate of the principles of social justice.  Never was there a man more dedicated to the pursuit of intellectual, emotional, and social excellence.

I am ashamed to say that I don't live in the same state as Mike anymore; the pull of destiny drew him to the center of the world, Washington, D.C., where his keen guidance could me more easily delivered to those who need it most.  As for me, I was left behind in the verdant woodlands of Pennsylvania; it is my home and I adore it, but without Mike nearby it feels like a deserted grassland, a place that time and hope have forgotten.

Is there a Mike in your life -- is there someone who you hold in such high regard that, even though thinking of him fills you to the brim with a burning, impassioned envy, you can't help but love and respect him?  Someone so wonderful, so perfect, that you feel embarrassed even to talk to him, because you know you'll never achieve that level of excellence?  With every word he graces you, your secret heart whispers:  how painful it must be for him, to speak to someone so lowly.  How good he is, to talk to me despite my faults.  And that just makes it all the worse.

Look, I'm not one given to hyperbole.  Mike is the real deal.  His excellence casts the flame of mankind in pathetic relief, but instead of lording it over us like a lesser man would, he steps aside and allows us a free reign.  He recognizes that, holding the light of destiny in his fingertips, he has no need to control we individual atoms who make up its fuel.  When I was younger, I imagined that the worst possible master would be an indifferent one.  Now that I understand how truly insignificant we are compared to Mike, I find that I was wrong -- the worst possible master would be any one but Mike, and we are so very, very blessed to be permitted to stand in his shadow.

where lie our faults, and where our future

I've been watching this documentary lately:

Learning about the space program is extremely emotional for me.  This series begins with the inception of the American space program, the Mercury missions, and just continues onward.  So far, I've only gotten through Apollo 11.  And I desperately want to keep watching, but I felt that the right thing to do was to take the time to write about what I'm feeling on here.  I need to capture these emotions while they're fresh.

The story of our space program is just awe-inspiring.  The unmatched feats of science and engineering that made every outlandish element of it possible boggle my mind.  When I watch this series, which brilliantly weaves in more recent interviews with archive footage, technical footage, and home movies of the people involved, it's almost like I'm transported into that time.  (In fact, the Apollo missions especially are very Mad Men-esque, and it makes me hugely excited for when Apollo 11 happens in this or the next season.  Come to think of it, it would make an excellent ending for the show...)

The most uplifting part of it all is the stark realization that none of the people involved were sure it was going to work.  At any moment, it was entirely possible that any of the gigantic rockets used in these programs would explode, killing everyone involved.  Listening to interviews of engineers involved with the first few Mercury missions, which had the goal just of getting a person into space (and then orbit), you get the sense that they were actually a little surprised when the rockets didn't just explode on the launchpad.

I'm old enough now to realize that everybody goes through life without really having any idea what he or she is doing; that we all just sort of muddle through, and in our own eyes, we're just faking understanding well enough to get by.  Even though most of us are definitely competent in many areas, we never really feel that way; we never stop being the nervous kid we started as.  We never leave our first day at work behind us, and experience just lets us temporarily quiet that voice of insecurity and do our jobs anyway.

Still, knowing all that and taking it to heart, I was absolutely floored to feel the exact same sentiment in these interviews with NASA engineers.  Every single mission involved inventing dozens, if not hundreds, of new techniques to deal with all of the various obstacles traveling to space presented.  And it turned out that they were incredibly lucky, because, even though nearly every solution they came up with worked, they had no idea whether it would or not until it was actually tested in space.  They were actually flying by the seat of their pants.

The series shows footage from the command centers during all the missions, and the tension and excitement in the faces of the engineers there is just infectious.  Even knowing in advance which missions succeeded and which failed, I was deeply moved by the relief that washes through every person there whenever some astronauts return to Earth alive.

But the thing that drove me to write all this wasn't the Mercury missions.  It was the Apollo missions -- that most ambitious of any human undertaking.  The realization of an ancient, unthinkable dream.  An escape from destiny.  The sense that the limits we had imagined do not exist.

Apollo 8 was the first that essentially brought me to tears.  The mission of Apollo 8 was to fly to the moon, orbit it ten times, and return to the Earth.  The exciting and scary part of the mission was that it involved flying around to the far side of the moon, which would mean losing all contact with the Earth for half of each orbit.  During that communications blackout, if anything went wrong, the command center would have no way of knowing.  If the command module crashed on the far side of the moon, it would just be lost.  There was an incredible amount of tension when they first lost contact, although we now have the advantage of being able to view the recordings the astronauts were making while they were on the far side, showing that they were having a pretty good time despite being cut off from all contact with the rest of humanity.  When the astronauts came out from behind the moon, re-establishing contact at exactly the moment that had been planned, there were cheers in the command center.  But that's not what moved me so.

On its fourth trip around the moon, Apollo 8's orbit carried it in such a way that the crew was treated to the first human-witnessed Earthrise:

Everyone should know this photo already.  But to know the story behind it, to see it being experienced for the first time, to feel the excitement and wonder that the astronauts and command center engineers shared (and the whole world) -- well, it elevated the experience for me beyond a simple appreciation of beauty.  It brought me to a moment of catharsis as I understood the true power of the human spirit as one of freedom; a rejection of all bonds, be they man-made or natural.

It didn't matter that some people said this would be impossible.

It didn't matter that some people said this would be pointless.

All that mattered in the end was that a large enough group of people came together, understood what humanity was truly capable of, and fought against every obstacle to bring it to life.

It made my heart cry out to be a part of that -- not the space program, but all human endeavor that denies the artificial limits we might imagine to be built-in to the human condition.  Whatever I do in my life, I want it to be in the service of expanding what humanity is capable of.  I want to find those naysayers, those people who sneer and ask "why bother," and rub their closed-minded faces in it.

Today, I had an epiphany.  Thank you, NASA.

the living past

I stumbled across a veritable treasure-trove of Scott lore yesterday.  I now present to you may ancient blog from days of yore, my Xanga!

I stopped updating it in March of 2007, just as I left to study abroad for four months in Japan.  I decided, at that point, to move my blogging to my own website, Sliced Water, so that I would have greater control over its appearance, and also so I could better integrate it with the photos of my trip.  Xanga was great in some ways, and not so great in others (you'll notice, if you page through, that most of the photos haven't survived the years).

I didn't keep up with the blog in Japan very well; I was too busy eating amazing Japanese food.  I did take tons of pictures there, though, so I might start rerunning some of the classics on this blog.

If you do take the time to look through my Xanga, you'll see that in some ways I haven't changed a bit, but in others I am completely different.  Reading through it was a pretty shocking experience, because I can barely remember that time in my life.  It sort of comes back to me to read it, but it's been a while, and the novelty of my trip to Japan (and romance; I got engaged there, after all!), and subsequent complete misery of my senior year of college and three years of law school, served quite well to wipe out my memory of much of that time.

I'm saying that I'm on a voyage of rediscovery here, people.  That's a special thing.

Some of what I'm reading from past-me is hilarious, some is moving, and some is cringe-inducing, alternately for my immaturity, rudeness, or self-conscious intellectualism.  I won't apologize for the irrepressible arrogance, though; that's a work of comic genius.

I often worry that what we, as individuals, experience as "life" is merely a series of independent consciousness connected by strands of memory, each wrongly thinking that it's a direct continuation of the last one.  If all that carries forward when I go to sleep is my memory, and I'm fundamentally changed (albeit only a little) when I wake up by my experiences from they day before, then isn't going to sleep a form of death?

These kinds of thoughts actually cause me a great deal of anxiety from time to time, pointless though that might be.  I can remember having some semblance of this fear from as early as first grade, the fear that I would change so much by the time I was a grown-up that I wouldn't really be me anymore, and thus, wouldn't be alive.  That first-grade me feared death, and so do I.  Ironically, that doesn't make me feel any better.

What does make me feel better is looking back at this Xanga blog, and finding that some of the ideas I expressed in it, even the ones I don't remember, still resonate with me greatly.  Past-me is effectively reaching across time and activating my emotions, but I don't mind that -- if he still has the power to do it, that means he truly is a part of me.  He's more than a collection of my memories, and these are more than just memories of emotions.  It reassures me that sleep is not death.

What sturdy vehicles our hearts must be, to carry such feelings to us from across the oceans of time, unchanged.

time's inexorable stride

What did you do today?  I designed the prototype cover for my book:

Thanks go out to Harry for Photoshop advice, and to Carol Guillaume
for taking the picture of the sky I used for the background.

This thing is really coming together.  I'm starting to get feedback from my first-line readers trickling in (in fact, I have a lunch meeting with one of them planned for next week to talk about it!), and I'm very excited about sitting down with it again and hammering out the second draft.  I've never done this before; otherwise, I'd probably be much less excited.

In other news, I got a floor lamp for my office at work.  This news will especially titillate the bargain-hunters among you; at first I looked in our office products supplier's catalog, but the cheapest lamp in there was $175!  I decided that I wouldn't be able to live with myself if I bought a lamp like that, even on Villanova's dime, so instead I went to Target and picked up this beauty for only $12:

Don't ask how I got these colors - just lucky, I guess.

I'm not a very good photographer, it seems, because that lamp is not turned on.  It doesn't even have a bulb in it yet.

The downside of spending $12 on a lamp at Target (for which I will have work reimburse me, never fear) is that, in the process of finding it, my wife managed to spend $300 on throw pillows and drapery sets, as she was seized by the sudden and unexpected need to redecorate our place.  You may see me post some updates to her project in the near future, as she works like a dervish when she's properly motivated (in this case, by the desire to make something look pretty).  It's OK, though; that just frees me up to spend time doing things to improve myself.

So let's have a Scott Self-Improvement Status Update!

WRITING POETRY:  ✓

WORKING ON BOOK:  ✓

PRACTICING AN INSTRUMENT (GUITAR):  ✓

BEING NICE TO WIFE:  ✓

BLOGGING:  ✓

WORKING OUT:  ✓

EATING RIGHT:  ✓

FEELING GOOD MENTALLY:   ✓

FEELING GOOD PHYSICALLY:  X

I got sick over the weekend.  Nothing too bad; a light fever or something, possibly food poisoning.  I got through the weekend anyway, but it was pretty uncomfortable.  A hearty "thank you" to all those who helped to distract me from my misery!  It turned out to be a fun weekend, after all.

To thank you for slogging through all this boring personal junk, an impromptu work of mine own:

I fear these--
The sundering beats of ancient wings,
     The shadow stretched across the ground,
         The cost of lost and spoiled things,
               That harsh and shreaking sound.

muses on muses

As I write more poetry, I'm developing a notebook of unfinished poems.  Many of them, I'm sure, will one day find a way into being full poems, once I can figure out what to do with them, but others -- well, others are just going to be cannibalized at best, torn line from line until all that was useful is gone and the rest is fit only to be discarded.

There are some people, I've found, to whom I want to do the same thing; I want to take out their few useful parts and use them to create something that's truly valuable, instead of letting them be wasted in a larger, inferior husk.  That's a pretty bleak image, I know, but what else can you do with something that's no good? Its greatest value, if left intact, is as a warning to others, and nobody wants to live as a warning.

There's a project I'm working on that's too much in its early stages to reveal that much here.  Suffice to say that it's the most ambitious thing I've ever undertaken, it's tremendously long-term, and I feel incredibly lucky to even have the opportunity to pursue it.  I'm sorry that I have to be so vague; it's the nature of the beast.  I just hope you understand that, when I say something without much context, or act a little mysterious, it's in relation to this project, and I'm sorry that I can't always help myself from mentioning it.  It's just got me really excited, so it's on my mind all the time.

In addition to writing, I've decided to start practicing the guitar seriously.  I am deeply in love with the idea of creating music, but its truly good execution has always been outside the possibilities permitted by the limited time and attention I've devoted to practicing.  I think, at this point in my life, I'm tired of merely imagining myself doing things.  The upshot is that you'll probably be getting updates on my progress in that, too, as well as my poetry!  Lucky, lucky you!

You know, I'm terrified of the concept of luck.  Any hint that I don't have control over my fate upsets me.  I know that I should be more laid-back about it, but fear of failure is a major consequence of ambition.  It's getting over that fear that sets you apart.  I'm going to fail many, many times.  And perhaps, in a few months, I'll have developed a little notebook of guitar songs that I'll never finish, in addition to my notebook of unfinished poems.  But for all of those little dissatisfactions, I'll have a few real accomplishments, and I think that'll be enough.

Oh, and before I forgot -- a huge shout-out to one of my closest friends Mike, the genius who got me interested in Adventure Time at the cost of his own blood, sweat, and tears.  Thanks, Mike!

lines in the umbra

No poetry today, folks.  Sorry.  But it is about poetry, obliquely.

I had been feeling a certain lack of something in my poetry...that may have been an ability to write poems on subjects other than myself and my own experiences.  In order to break free of that limitation, I knew that I would have to do something I am usually very wary of:

I WOULD HAVE TO EXPERIENCE THE ACTUAL WORLD.

The one with other people in it, especially people I don't know already.  To achieve that goal, I hit on a straightforward plan:  start going for daily walks in a crowded area, people-watching.

Luckily for me, I work at a university, so there are always crowds (for certain sparser definitions of crowd).  So, today at lunchtime, I hit the bricks, glancing peripherally at everybody I passed, searching for some mote of inspiration.

It was a complete bust (or so I thought).  I saw some interesting people, and overheard some interesting things, but I had trouble giving them my attention; you see, they were competing with the fantastically amazing stuff going on in my own head!  Of course, in retrospect, my head doesn't come up with nearly such fantastic things when it hasn't gone for a walk recently, so there's that positive to dwell on.

I can't even touch on the wonder and majesty of what I saw.  As I walked, admiring the architecture and natural beauty of campus (there weren't that many people to look at, since it was raining), I was shocked to see a glowing line extending ahead of me, marking out my walking path.  Looking ahead down that line, I realized it represented not feet, but years; I turned and saw similar lines, fainter, on walking paths I might have chosen.  I understood then that I was looking at more than just a bunch of walking paths; I was looking at paths of future possibility.  These were the manifold paths of my destiny.

I was a little discomfited by the sight, because so many of them were just going in circles in the same place.  I could tell that these meant, if I so chose, I could become a fixture at Villanova; I could ingrain myself into this place so fully that I would never leave, nor would I even want to.  There's nothing inherently wrong with those paths, either; there is honor there, and respect, and comfort, and happiness.  But precious little excitement.

So I shook my head and continued along, taking a few dark turns and winding up next to the train tracks.  There is no attempt to beautify that part of campus, merely rows of parked cars sidled up against some enormous, jealously immobile machines of unknown purpose that belch out steam and noise all day and night.  Dirt, gravel, and metal worked together to help me forget what I had seen in the prettier parts of campus.  I soon grew bored with the view, and looked up into the sky, and stopped in my tracks.

There were more paths, tracing blazing arcs across the grey sky, majestic lines in the umbra that unveiled the greatest of my potential futures.  The mightiest of these revealed that, if I want, if I choose, I have it in me to become the unquestioned King of the World, to rule over all of it.  But it also showed me the cost of this cup of glory:  any world which called me its King would surely be a miserable place, and I would be miserable ruling it.  I'm not sure if my rule would make the world awful, or if the world would have to be awful before I could rule it; all I know is that I do not desire that future.

I tore my eyes away from those lines in the sky, afraid of what other temptations might await me there.  I quickened my pace, head down, and noticed a thin, pale line curving away along the ground.  I looked along it, and saw the life it could carry me to -- a difficult life, a hungry life, but a life so sweet and joyous that I could never have imagined it before today.

I knew that weak and winding path would have to be followed very closely; it would be so easy to lose sight of it.  I knew that it would lead me far away from most of what I've known before.  But I also knew that it would lead me to a greater happiness than I could ever know from being comfortable.

That path is faint, it is strange, and it is very, very long.  But nothing worth having comes easy, and I no longer feel the need to look for other roads to travel.