I suppose it's proper to start at the beginning

I figured "Improvisation" was an appropriate title for this little endeavor -- it's my act on a daily basis. I am a kid from the country in a big city, someone used to a formal education that's getting his hands dirty in environmental organization, and a soon-to-be "explorer" in remote places that few people have been fortunate enough to visit.

I am excited.

While I had intended to start this blog right when I arrived in San Francisco, things didn't exactly go as planned and after considering how little time I had to spend here, I figured there were more important things to do. However, even if no one reads this blog (though I'm hoping people will), it will be a great chronicle/journal of what should be an astounding year.

I've been reading "East of Eden," per my Dad's recommendation, and at the very least, it's an eye-opener. Steinbeck has a unique command of each of the reader's senses. So far, the novel has been about a few very well fleshed-out characters whose stories beautifully intertwine (and whose personalities clash and struggle), but there are also brief bits where Steinbeck seems to take a step back and simply think out loud, theorize a bit:

"Sometimes a kind of glory lights up the mind of a man. It happens to nearly everyone. You can feel it growing or preparing like a fuse burning towards dynamite. It is a feeling in the stomach, a delight of the nerves, of the forearms. The skin tastes the air, and every deep-drawn breath is sweet. Its beginning has the pleasure of a great stretching yawn; it flashes in the brain and the whole world glows outside your eyes. A man may have lived all his life in the gray, and the land and trees of him dark and somber. The events, even the important ones, may have trooped by faceless and pale. And then--the glory--so that a cricket song sweetens his ears, the smell of the earth rises chanting to his nose, and dappling light under a tree blesses his eyes. Then a man pours outward, a torrent of him, and yet he is not diminished ...

... I can understand why a system built on a pattern must try to destroy the free mind, for that is the one thing which can by inspection destroy such a system. Surely I can understand this, and I hate it and I will fight against it to preserve the one thing that separates us from the uncreative beasts. If the glory can be killed, we are lost."

Hopefully the year will be full of glories. But that is yet to be seen.

Anyways, back to the real story. I'm sure this blog will become some strange mix of the year and my opinions on certain things happening in the world, but for the time being, I'll stick to catching up.