are happening.
indeed.
-------------
[edit]
a) wow. a thousand impassioned cries for justice, equality, and the kingdom of heaven, and what does it take to get you all to talk to me? someone to drop the "msichana" bomb. blood in the water...
b) some of us have real jobs, and we can't log in every five minutes to keep up with the latest gossip.
c) yes. sure. my meaningless and pathetically miserable existence, hunched in a darkened upper room with only my books and the meagre light of candles to keep me warm, could only be brightened by the advent of civilizing femininity. How have I borne the awful cares and toils of this world without the tender hands of a woman to lift me up from my cares and sorrows and make me complete? O, John Eldredge, I am the man without woman, without captivating romance and adventures, without hope in the world! Deliver me from my boredom, my listlessness, the vanity of my existence, for the bane of the single man is to know nothing but sorrow and a chasing after the wind...
d) yah know, i must have been so eagerly awaiting the joys of miscommunication, excruciating sexual tension, a strained and broken budget, differing mores and expecations, clashing gender roles, mood swings, emotional firestorms, blind mistakes with horrifying consequences, polite-relationships-with-her-obnoxious-friends, failed expectations, more miscommunication, isolation from friends, agonizing weeks of breaking up and getting back together only to break up again, not to mention something to do with all of my overabundant spare time!
e) I must be longing to escape the hell of singleness, with its mild stresses, cordial relationships, time for reading and laughing and watching movies, casual wardrobe, open and flexible schedule, freedom of expression, freedom to go and do without fear of offending some arcane and twisted feminine logic...
ya'll are hilarious.
except.
y'all are kinda right...
but I really have to go to work now. it's a twenty minute bikeride and I have twenty minutes to get there and I don't have my boots on yet.
I shall write more...baadaye.
:)
27 March 2006
23 March 2006
yeeeah killing time so's i don't fall asleep
triads
books i just bought:
-Deep Survival by Laurence Gonzales
-Reading Lolita in Tehran by Azar Nafisi
-How Soccer Explains the World by Franklin Foer
groceries i just bought:
-fresh hummous
-hummous mix in boxes
-six pack of Pete's Wicked Wanderlust Cream Beer
books i just finished:
-Deep Survival by Laurence Gonzales
-Snow Leopard by Peter Mathiessen
-Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden
firsts this week:
-pub crawl on St. Patty's day
-buzzed by red-tailed hawk in cemetary on the way home from work yesterday morning in the middle of the city!
-got paid to watch a troupe from Mexico perform various ethnic (and awesomely rhythmic) regional dances.
books i'm halfway through:
-King Lear
-Bread and Wine by Plough Press
-A Season in Mecca by Abdellah Hammoudi
cool grown up accomplishments:
-clean, orderly room with visible floor for over a week now
-set up serious appointment to inspect/possibly buy a truck to live out of for a year
-planning schedule for summer w/multiple engagements BEFORE the first day of spring
excellent new tunes on miPod:
-Wayfaring Stranger by 16 horsepower
-Sunday Bloody Sunday covered by Pillar
-It's Too Late by The Streets
my wicked awesome drinking vessels
-handmade Paul Christensen awesomely-massive pottery drinking mug
-pink nalgene with flower and pink lid
-stolen cafeteria cup with "I was stolen by a sinner" written on it in black magic marker by the indescribably profound Ben Howard
ladies i thought were really cool but turned out to be elsewhere enamored:
-girl i never asked out, and it was way too late
-girl i finally made up my mind to ask out only to discover that i had made my mind up...too late
-girl i was just about to ask out, but discovered i was: just too late
films recently watched:
-Pulp Fiction
-Hero
-Blackhawk Down
excellent articles:
-living with constant wireless interaction: "Continuous Partial Attention"
-Zakaria on Iraq: "Apalling but not Hopeless"
-William Jennings Bryan: when a promising leftist Christian populist social movement was nipped in the bud in favor of the urbane secularists, setting the ground for today's culture wars...possibly.
great conversations this week:
-Elinor Ostrom-ish analysis of potential incentive programs for EMS workers and difficulties posed by current Computer Aided Dispatch system with new (my new) supervisor; also perverse corporate shareholder-driven cost-cutting incentives in the absence of market-driven quality control due to the nature of EMS work and public contracts in the urban/suburban economic divide
-Surprise reacquaintance with old Paramedic friend Geoff Boone from Houghton Volunteer Fire Department days, over patients at the ECMC of a random.
-Inanely cheerful banter and rediscovery of The Streets with friend who only last week was sailing (metaphorically) through rough waters under iron skies.
quotes:
-Voltaire:
-Stephen Levy:
-The Streets:
notes to self:
-there is an infinite supply of irresistably great deals on tantalizingly clever books, cds, and dvds, which are capable, if not carefully monitored, of making swiss cheese of drastically finite budgetary resources.
-ask out the next encountered "fly bird" without the customary four or eighty weeks of introspection, uncertainty, tentative get-to-know-you-first thing. absolutely no mandatory 40-day waiting periods, homeschool inexperience be darned!
-eat cheese! and hummous! listen to crazy apocalyptic gothic folk music while chatting aimlessly with friends! listen to backlogged NPR podcasts while doing nothing really productive! and do it more often! life is bueno!
places i would still rather be right now
-Tanzania with my brother
-Tanzania with my sister-in-law
-Tanzania with my darling neices
pictures that keep me happy in my exile
-neices playing in the Indian Ocean
-yeah, it really does get that green and beautiful and warm, and good people actually sit outside for the fun of it and don't get frostbite. and birds sing too.
-just look at those crazy people!
enjoy!
books i just bought:
-Deep Survival by Laurence Gonzales
-Reading Lolita in Tehran by Azar Nafisi
-How Soccer Explains the World by Franklin Foer
groceries i just bought:
-fresh hummous
-hummous mix in boxes
-six pack of Pete's Wicked Wanderlust Cream Beer
books i just finished:
-Deep Survival by Laurence Gonzales
-Snow Leopard by Peter Mathiessen
-Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden
firsts this week:
-pub crawl on St. Patty's day
-buzzed by red-tailed hawk in cemetary on the way home from work yesterday morning in the middle of the city!
-got paid to watch a troupe from Mexico perform various ethnic (and awesomely rhythmic) regional dances.
books i'm halfway through:
-King Lear
-Bread and Wine by Plough Press
-A Season in Mecca by Abdellah Hammoudi
cool grown up accomplishments:
-clean, orderly room with visible floor for over a week now
-set up serious appointment to inspect/possibly buy a truck to live out of for a year
-planning schedule for summer w/multiple engagements BEFORE the first day of spring
excellent new tunes on miPod:
-Wayfaring Stranger by 16 horsepower
-Sunday Bloody Sunday covered by Pillar
-It's Too Late by The Streets
my wicked awesome drinking vessels
-handmade Paul Christensen awesomely-massive pottery drinking mug
-pink nalgene with flower and pink lid
-stolen cafeteria cup with "I was stolen by a sinner" written on it in black magic marker by the indescribably profound Ben Howard
ladies i thought were really cool but turned out to be elsewhere enamored:
-girl i never asked out, and it was way too late
-girl i finally made up my mind to ask out only to discover that i had made my mind up...too late
-girl i was just about to ask out, but discovered i was: just too late
films recently watched:
-Pulp Fiction
-Hero
-Blackhawk Down
excellent articles:
-living with constant wireless interaction: "Continuous Partial Attention"
-Zakaria on Iraq: "Apalling but not Hopeless"
-William Jennings Bryan: when a promising leftist Christian populist social movement was nipped in the bud in favor of the urbane secularists, setting the ground for today's culture wars...possibly.
great conversations this week:
-Elinor Ostrom-ish analysis of potential incentive programs for EMS workers and difficulties posed by current Computer Aided Dispatch system with new (my new) supervisor; also perverse corporate shareholder-driven cost-cutting incentives in the absence of market-driven quality control due to the nature of EMS work and public contracts in the urban/suburban economic divide
-Surprise reacquaintance with old Paramedic friend Geoff Boone from Houghton Volunteer Fire Department days, over patients at the ECMC of a random.
-Inanely cheerful banter and rediscovery of The Streets with friend who only last week was sailing (metaphorically) through rough waters under iron skies.
quotes:
-Voltaire:
"Doubt is not a pleasant condition, but certainty is absurd."
-Stephen Levy:
"A live BlackBerry or even a switched-on mobile phone is an admission that your commitment to your current activity is as fickle as Renée Zellweger's wedding vows. Your world turns into a never-ending cocktail party where you're always looking over your virtual shoulder for a better conversation partner. The anxiety is contagious: anyone who winds up talking to a person infected with CPA feels like he or she is accepting an Oscar, and at any moment the music might stop the speech."
-The Streets:
"We first met through a shared view/she loved me and i did too."
notes to self:
-there is an infinite supply of irresistably great deals on tantalizingly clever books, cds, and dvds, which are capable, if not carefully monitored, of making swiss cheese of drastically finite budgetary resources.
-ask out the next encountered "fly bird" without the customary four or eighty weeks of introspection, uncertainty, tentative get-to-know-you-first thing. absolutely no mandatory 40-day waiting periods, homeschool inexperience be darned!
-eat cheese! and hummous! listen to crazy apocalyptic gothic folk music while chatting aimlessly with friends! listen to backlogged NPR podcasts while doing nothing really productive! and do it more often! life is bueno!
places i would still rather be right now
-Tanzania with my brother
-Tanzania with my sister-in-law
-Tanzania with my darling neices
pictures that keep me happy in my exile
-neices playing in the Indian Ocean
-yeah, it really does get that green and beautiful and warm, and good people actually sit outside for the fun of it and don't get frostbite. and birds sing too.
-just look at those crazy people!
enjoy!
12 March 2006
my day!
it must have been my day!
a) i like drizzling rain
b) it was gospel choir day at the Catholic church down the street
c) the ladies in front of me at Tops were foreign so I politely asked them if they were speaking Kiswahili (in Kiswahili) and we had a pleasant conversation. in Kiswahili. and they were impressed. so was I. still decently functional...
a) i like drizzling rain
b) it was gospel choir day at the Catholic church down the street
c) the ladies in front of me at Tops were foreign so I politely asked them if they were speaking Kiswahili (in Kiswahili) and we had a pleasant conversation. in Kiswahili. and they were impressed. so was I. still decently functional...
11 March 2006
ooofff
there are so many forces arrayed against human happiness--I wonder if I will leave this place alive. so many people are crumpling. the light in their eyes dies and they are just flesh walking around. the harsh winter bores right through their souls and consumes them--heartless they tread the earth neither seeing nor knowing until their bodies stop.
it's like we are in a fight with great violence for the survival of ourselves, our souls, and we are reeling and blinded and if that is not enough, all around us those who have succumbed to the disaster have become agents of its brutality. they reach out with cold eyes and decaying limbs and teach cruelty to the next generation.
it's a good thing I have a balcony. I think I'm renaming naming my (relatively) new room from the Stronghold of Solitude to the Stronghold of Refuge. it has an attached balcony (half of which is something of a bog) which has recently become the place to sit, drink beer, bundle up against the cold and hurt communally. disappointment, loneliness, emptiness, the silence of God, the cruelty of people--strike right at the will to live. you feel yourself getting bitter, harsh, apathetic, like the very people who wound you and use you and look you in the face afterwards and expect nothing from life but cynical laughter and whatever can be had by manipulation, trickery and power.
so, we've been taking refuge on the balcony, hunched against the frigid wee hours of the morning, waiting for the sunrise. it's a sacred place, set aside with no other purpose than communing. symbolically, it gives us a place in the harsh elements but removed above them--a safe place but not a hiding place, a strategic vantage point but not a retreat. gather, regroup, commit, tend to the wounded, never give up. without committment, without community, we will not make it out of here alive.
yeah, i like my balcony.
it's like we are in a fight with great violence for the survival of ourselves, our souls, and we are reeling and blinded and if that is not enough, all around us those who have succumbed to the disaster have become agents of its brutality. they reach out with cold eyes and decaying limbs and teach cruelty to the next generation.
it's a good thing I have a balcony. I think I'm renaming naming my (relatively) new room from the Stronghold of Solitude to the Stronghold of Refuge. it has an attached balcony (half of which is something of a bog) which has recently become the place to sit, drink beer, bundle up against the cold and hurt communally. disappointment, loneliness, emptiness, the silence of God, the cruelty of people--strike right at the will to live. you feel yourself getting bitter, harsh, apathetic, like the very people who wound you and use you and look you in the face afterwards and expect nothing from life but cynical laughter and whatever can be had by manipulation, trickery and power.
so, we've been taking refuge on the balcony, hunched against the frigid wee hours of the morning, waiting for the sunrise. it's a sacred place, set aside with no other purpose than communing. symbolically, it gives us a place in the harsh elements but removed above them--a safe place but not a hiding place, a strategic vantage point but not a retreat. gather, regroup, commit, tend to the wounded, never give up. without committment, without community, we will not make it out of here alive.
yeah, i like my balcony.
03 March 2006
huh...
I'm losing Lent this year. I can't think of anything I can really fast--I need my meagre strength and focus for work, so I can't do anything that jeopardizes food and sleep. I guess I could give up beer--but I think it plays a really important part of my social life right now, and my social life is more than a luxury--it's part of my duty, my calling. I want to give up my bike--the discipline of walking everywhere would be phenomenally awesome. It would slow me down, I'd discipline myself to plan more, and I'd experience so much more of the world around me instead of just flying by. I'd also walk through a lot of shady neighborhoods after dark, and I wouldn't be able to get to the classes I kind of need to take in order to keep my EMT certification. So, scratch that.
I can't think of anything else that could be profitably fasted--anything that is unbalanced or unhealthy or in need of perspective and discipline. Except, maybe, my solitude--I spend too much time alone, too much time on the nocturnal schedule (it's been four months now) by myself. I need to fast being alone--I must be the only person in America who doesn't have a deficit of quiet solitude and reflection.
What I really am sad about, though, is missing Ash Wednesday. I just finished six twelve-hour overnights in a row, went to an employee meeting on my night off, and today I'll start another five straight. The whole entrance to the season just got lost. I wanted to go to St. Joes, I wanted the priest to take the ashes of last Palm Sunday's branches and mark with the sign of execution. I wanted to know, wanted to remember and kneel and ponder in stillness, that "dust you are, and to dust you shall return."
I can say it and write it a thousand times and still not know it. The death is in me; I am decaying, and today or tomorrow or another tomorrow I will finish decaying and return to the earth and be forgotten. It is certain, and when I knell in that quiet place and hear those words, I know that certainty and it is a part of my life, and I will keep somber celebration of my mortality until ignoring my impending death is no longer a part of the pattern of my day to day life.
This is why I love prayer and ritual. Ignoring my place in the world--my smallness and my impending death--is a frantic and sickeningly empty way. On Ash Wednesday I bear that truth on my forehead and for a moment, in the quiet of that cathedral, in my life. And with luck and repetition, I will begin to laugh at myself and my self-importance later when I catch myself living out some myth of my own importance and significance of business for impressing others, or ignoring some person's humanity because it feels inconvenient. And maybe some day the grace of a thousand Ash Wednesdays will transform my life until I carry that certain truth about myself around with me every day as a part of me.
Yeah. I missed Ash Wednesday. I guess I'll have to celebrate it on a Friday instead...
I can't think of anything else that could be profitably fasted--anything that is unbalanced or unhealthy or in need of perspective and discipline. Except, maybe, my solitude--I spend too much time alone, too much time on the nocturnal schedule (it's been four months now) by myself. I need to fast being alone--I must be the only person in America who doesn't have a deficit of quiet solitude and reflection.
What I really am sad about, though, is missing Ash Wednesday. I just finished six twelve-hour overnights in a row, went to an employee meeting on my night off, and today I'll start another five straight. The whole entrance to the season just got lost. I wanted to go to St. Joes, I wanted the priest to take the ashes of last Palm Sunday's branches and mark with the sign of execution. I wanted to know, wanted to remember and kneel and ponder in stillness, that "dust you are, and to dust you shall return."
I can say it and write it a thousand times and still not know it. The death is in me; I am decaying, and today or tomorrow or another tomorrow I will finish decaying and return to the earth and be forgotten. It is certain, and when I knell in that quiet place and hear those words, I know that certainty and it is a part of my life, and I will keep somber celebration of my mortality until ignoring my impending death is no longer a part of the pattern of my day to day life.
This is why I love prayer and ritual. Ignoring my place in the world--my smallness and my impending death--is a frantic and sickeningly empty way. On Ash Wednesday I bear that truth on my forehead and for a moment, in the quiet of that cathedral, in my life. And with luck and repetition, I will begin to laugh at myself and my self-importance later when I catch myself living out some myth of my own importance and significance of business for impressing others, or ignoring some person's humanity because it feels inconvenient. And maybe some day the grace of a thousand Ash Wednesdays will transform my life until I carry that certain truth about myself around with me every day as a part of me.
Yeah. I missed Ash Wednesday. I guess I'll have to celebrate it on a Friday instead...
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