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...
12 March 2006
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...
28 February 2006
i'm sorry the bliss of your existence...
was interrupted by poor quality coffee. whether or not your coffee is laced with blood should always be a secondary concern to consumer quality, not to mention your miserly power-hungry pursuit of near-extortionate market prices.
read the provocation
a) Vive Hugo! his country has a long history of being pushed around ("dictated to?") by the United States. he donated millions of dollars worth of oil to New Orleans poor in the wake of Katrina. And it's pronounced "Ooh-Go," by the way.
b) Adam Carman has now joined Jason Schambach on my list of Houghton people who strain out gnats while swallowing camels, pleased to play around as if they had big ideas and important causes while playing havoc in others' lives over inconsequential and oversimplified, overpompous pontification. There are more important things in life than chapel scanning and paying a few extra cents for gas. I am generally tolerant of childish idiots--until they begin running amok, frustrating others, destroying communities, and making life rougher for people for whom life is difficult and unbuffered already.
c) people at Houghton live such wealthy f*****g existences that they are completely removed from complicated things like earning honest bread, sustaining spiritual lives independent of a church-camp-like structure, or dealing with people and things who do not fit into neat little good guy/bad guy perfect-individualistic-capitalist black and white worlds.
d) speaking of people without the luxury of pompous moralizing and ideological faith in capitalism, what would the impact of a boycott on the Houghton gas station be on the local folk who work at that gas station? are you comfortable with causing them to, oh, lose their jobs or take pay cuts to add a notch to your ethical-ego-belt?
e) there's a bigger world out there, Adam. one where sixteen-year-olds OD on heroin (for the third time) and nasty corporations burn families off their lands and out of their houses and people are mainly occupied with finding a way to make it to tomorrow or next year. I don't care if you're rich and stupid--at least you contribute to the trickle-down. but when you start f*****g around with people's livelihoods and dismissing with self-congratulating laughter the hard work of people trying to make it easier for the economically poor to get just a few of the advantages you take for granted...
then you have a Jesus problem my friend, and you have a problem with me.
read the provocation
a) Vive Hugo! his country has a long history of being pushed around ("dictated to?") by the United States. he donated millions of dollars worth of oil to New Orleans poor in the wake of Katrina. And it's pronounced "Ooh-Go," by the way.
b) Adam Carman has now joined Jason Schambach on my list of Houghton people who strain out gnats while swallowing camels, pleased to play around as if they had big ideas and important causes while playing havoc in others' lives over inconsequential and oversimplified, overpompous pontification. There are more important things in life than chapel scanning and paying a few extra cents for gas. I am generally tolerant of childish idiots--until they begin running amok, frustrating others, destroying communities, and making life rougher for people for whom life is difficult and unbuffered already.
c) people at Houghton live such wealthy f*****g existences that they are completely removed from complicated things like earning honest bread, sustaining spiritual lives independent of a church-camp-like structure, or dealing with people and things who do not fit into neat little good guy/bad guy perfect-individualistic-capitalist black and white worlds.
d) speaking of people without the luxury of pompous moralizing and ideological faith in capitalism, what would the impact of a boycott on the Houghton gas station be on the local folk who work at that gas station? are you comfortable with causing them to, oh, lose their jobs or take pay cuts to add a notch to your ethical-ego-belt?
e) there's a bigger world out there, Adam. one where sixteen-year-olds OD on heroin (for the third time) and nasty corporations burn families off their lands and out of their houses and people are mainly occupied with finding a way to make it to tomorrow or next year. I don't care if you're rich and stupid--at least you contribute to the trickle-down. but when you start f*****g around with people's livelihoods and dismissing with self-congratulating laughter the hard work of people trying to make it easier for the economically poor to get just a few of the advantages you take for granted...
then you have a Jesus problem my friend, and you have a problem with me.
24 February 2006
lazy thursday
ahhhh...
funny how it takes a whole day off of complete sloth just to get around to being able to take the second day off and get something done. cleaned my bike and listened to all the stacked-up NPR podcasts I haven't listened to of late. which is wonderful because now I want to spend a lot of money on books and movies and music. those rags behind the bike? they started off perfectly white. good, quality downtime...
interesting stuff:
blogging, marriage, and the new electronic world
dreds + violin = awesome
brokeback...to the future
king kong: children and violence
in lucia's eyes (cassanova's lost, bitterness-inducing first love)
michael w. smith in a really interesting social justice film about faith and class?
russian vampire movie grosses more in two weeks than Lord of the Rings
and, finally, the two you should delve into:
mercy killing in new orleans
recently my medic and i sat down and watched the two great ambulance movie classics of all time: Mother, Jugs and Speed (with a young Bill Cosby) and, more importantly, Bringing Out the Dead (with an excellently chosen Nicolas Cage). (yes, Mr. McSteele, I finally watched it...freaky doesn't half describe it--scary was that nothing that happened really surprised me)
working nights on the street is a different experience--very different. there are no soft covers on sharp edges, no blurring and no buffering and no carefully constructed upbeat conclusions to anything. it's a revolving door of ugly, harsh realities that you cannot alter or make pretty enough for normal society, but you will experience again and again and again without any sense of closure until you find yourself laughing at a bad joke while doing CPR on some guy who fell over dead in front of his family, wondering if you'll get the call over quick enough to get lunch before the India Gate closes.
one of the most un-American things you have to do on the job is expressed, appropriately, by the borrowed French word "triage." it's when you step into a situation where you have to decide who you try to save and who you leave to die. then you make those decisions and there's absolutely no way you can even come close to knowing for sure whether you made the right decisions or not--it's not clear cut, there's no slow-motion replays, or clever omniscient narrators. just a lot of educated guesswork and three seconds to make a choice.
it's not American because it's neither victorious nor heroic--you admit defeat, and not just defeat, but defeat due to failed systems of infrastructure, supply, and support. the outcome has everything to do with institutional and situational factors that are insurmountable by individual actors, heroic or not.
on the seventh floor of New Orleans' Memorial Hospital, choices were made to inject critical patients with enough morphine to put them to sleep forever, in the face of dwindling supplies, rising heat and floodwaters, and the chaotic uncertainty and miscommunication surrounding possible evacuation. the doctors and nurses were in a triage situation--they made decisions based on the guesswork and information they had. it's something that makes perfect sense to me--but I do not know what it sounds like to people outside the emergency healthcare system.
watch Bringing Out the Dead: its slow descent into the absolute insanity of bureaucratically institutionalized emergency management is not pleasant--but it's accurate and ungarnished. and enlightening, in a nasty fashion. visit a few city nursing homes and take in the ever-present smells of human urine and decaying people. then you can talk about the ethics of mercy killing and assisted suicide.
dada
in that vein, the dada phenomenon has once more entered my consciousness. the "Christian" worldview tends to present upturned noses to dada art, at least in my experience. to put it briefly, without rant, dada is important. it began, during the bloodshed of World War I, as a response to the absolutely blood-chilling insanity of life in a world that was assumed to be advanced, logical and modern. it was a protest against the gruesome horror and lunacy of existence in the kind of world that could produce chemical and trench warfare, the mental reduction of people and their interrelations to the cold numbers of the mechanistic social sciences, and the inhumanely barbaric actions of "civilising" colonization.
there's definitely a place for dada today. people are waking to a terror about their existence--that our lives are embedded and ingrown with the ugly and the evil and the meaningless, our very society is dying under the weight of an illusory happiness. popping up from Fight Club to I [Heart] Huckabees is the idea that a true examination of our existence will be a horrifying nihilistic trip into cynically twisted ideals and empty significance.
i think that there is nothing more Christlike than the unveiling of emptiness, sickness and insanity of the society we live in and, to a large part, uphold and create with our actions. it's truth-telling to examine and reproduce the things we take for granted to be good in such a way that their vanity and depravity and insanity are plainly and inescapably obvious. to my limited understanding, that's what dada did in its time, and we are ripe for that self-examination, unpleasant and shocking as it may be, in times where it takes more and more effort to ignore or explain or drug away the absolute insanity of our lives.
go dada!
ps--podcasts aren't just for iPodders--you can download then to any computer and, with the appropriate media player, listen to them through your computer's speakers. NPR is an amazing treasure trove of fun things to listen to.
pps--for those of you in western new york--Nils the Norwegian paramedic introduced me to 970AM, where their overnight content is broadcasts by the good ol' British Broadcasting Corporation. if you're up late and want good international news and commentary--tune in!
funny how it takes a whole day off of complete sloth just to get around to being able to take the second day off and get something done. cleaned my bike and listened to all the stacked-up NPR podcasts I haven't listened to of late. which is wonderful because now I want to spend a lot of money on books and movies and music. those rags behind the bike? they started off perfectly white. good, quality downtime...
interesting stuff:
blogging, marriage, and the new electronic world
dreds + violin = awesome
brokeback...to the future
king kong: children and violence
in lucia's eyes (cassanova's lost, bitterness-inducing first love)
michael w. smith in a really interesting social justice film about faith and class?
russian vampire movie grosses more in two weeks than Lord of the Rings
and, finally, the two you should delve into:
mercy killing in new orleans
recently my medic and i sat down and watched the two great ambulance movie classics of all time: Mother, Jugs and Speed (with a young Bill Cosby) and, more importantly, Bringing Out the Dead (with an excellently chosen Nicolas Cage). (yes, Mr. McSteele, I finally watched it...freaky doesn't half describe it--scary was that nothing that happened really surprised me)
working nights on the street is a different experience--very different. there are no soft covers on sharp edges, no blurring and no buffering and no carefully constructed upbeat conclusions to anything. it's a revolving door of ugly, harsh realities that you cannot alter or make pretty enough for normal society, but you will experience again and again and again without any sense of closure until you find yourself laughing at a bad joke while doing CPR on some guy who fell over dead in front of his family, wondering if you'll get the call over quick enough to get lunch before the India Gate closes.
one of the most un-American things you have to do on the job is expressed, appropriately, by the borrowed French word "triage." it's when you step into a situation where you have to decide who you try to save and who you leave to die. then you make those decisions and there's absolutely no way you can even come close to knowing for sure whether you made the right decisions or not--it's not clear cut, there's no slow-motion replays, or clever omniscient narrators. just a lot of educated guesswork and three seconds to make a choice.
it's not American because it's neither victorious nor heroic--you admit defeat, and not just defeat, but defeat due to failed systems of infrastructure, supply, and support. the outcome has everything to do with institutional and situational factors that are insurmountable by individual actors, heroic or not.
on the seventh floor of New Orleans' Memorial Hospital, choices were made to inject critical patients with enough morphine to put them to sleep forever, in the face of dwindling supplies, rising heat and floodwaters, and the chaotic uncertainty and miscommunication surrounding possible evacuation. the doctors and nurses were in a triage situation--they made decisions based on the guesswork and information they had. it's something that makes perfect sense to me--but I do not know what it sounds like to people outside the emergency healthcare system.
watch Bringing Out the Dead: its slow descent into the absolute insanity of bureaucratically institutionalized emergency management is not pleasant--but it's accurate and ungarnished. and enlightening, in a nasty fashion. visit a few city nursing homes and take in the ever-present smells of human urine and decaying people. then you can talk about the ethics of mercy killing and assisted suicide.
dada
in that vein, the dada phenomenon has once more entered my consciousness. the "Christian" worldview tends to present upturned noses to dada art, at least in my experience. to put it briefly, without rant, dada is important. it began, during the bloodshed of World War I, as a response to the absolutely blood-chilling insanity of life in a world that was assumed to be advanced, logical and modern. it was a protest against the gruesome horror and lunacy of existence in the kind of world that could produce chemical and trench warfare, the mental reduction of people and their interrelations to the cold numbers of the mechanistic social sciences, and the inhumanely barbaric actions of "civilising" colonization.
there's definitely a place for dada today. people are waking to a terror about their existence--that our lives are embedded and ingrown with the ugly and the evil and the meaningless, our very society is dying under the weight of an illusory happiness. popping up from Fight Club to I [Heart] Huckabees is the idea that a true examination of our existence will be a horrifying nihilistic trip into cynically twisted ideals and empty significance.
i think that there is nothing more Christlike than the unveiling of emptiness, sickness and insanity of the society we live in and, to a large part, uphold and create with our actions. it's truth-telling to examine and reproduce the things we take for granted to be good in such a way that their vanity and depravity and insanity are plainly and inescapably obvious. to my limited understanding, that's what dada did in its time, and we are ripe for that self-examination, unpleasant and shocking as it may be, in times where it takes more and more effort to ignore or explain or drug away the absolute insanity of our lives.
go dada!
ps--podcasts aren't just for iPodders--you can download then to any computer and, with the appropriate media player, listen to them through your computer's speakers. NPR is an amazing treasure trove of fun things to listen to.
pps--for those of you in western new york--Nils the Norwegian paramedic introduced me to 970AM, where their overnight content is broadcasts by the good ol' British Broadcasting Corporation. if you're up late and want good international news and commentary--tune in!
20 February 2006
heroin
i think we create panic and feed on it. we want to fear, and there is a little masochist inside each of us that wants to feel pain. bored old ladies make up a different ailment every day so they can go to the hospital and break the routine. young mothers fake seizures on the way to the hospital for the same reason their young daughters fake being raped--significance. pity. attention. tragic posturing. importance.
basically the same reason, on a night like tonight, i'm tempted to binge in a little "i'm lonely in the big city" blogging, or perhaps some "my tragic history" indulgence, or mainline some "let me tell you about my childhood" misery. i didn't realize until putting on my uniform that Powers was planning on covering for me tonight so that I can take his Friday night shift and he can enjoy a night out with a beautiful lady. so sit here long enough and the ennui sets in and off runs the heart to the public pity medium to try to convert excess boredom into cheap significance via emotional gluttony. you aren't bored while in the sick throes of angst and over-worn-out personal tragedy.
huh. i'm a funny-lookin' person in the mirror.
so, Plan A down the drain, it's time to work on Plan B. I have decided that I am altogether too serious and dour. the Kingdom of Heaven is no place for the mopey/self-obsessed. it is an all-out party replete with wine, women, and song (and, hopefully, hibachis and steak...) and party poopers are frowned upon. I have discovered, to my dismay, a certain weakness in the celebration-side of life. Put me in a room with angst-ridden-sense-of-importance junkies and I will passionately be bitter about all the evil and bad isms that keep people frowning and shuffling along. But call up the dance and light the candles and pour out the alcohol of choice and I am stiff and looking for my bitter coffee. Declare a feast and I sit awkwardly and try to make polite conversation or introduce some subject that I can frown and feel important and sophisticated while discussing.
And there's Jesus over there whoopin' and hollerin' and making more wine when it's obvious everyone's had enough and pulling grouchy old Aunt Edna out on the dance floor for a cha-cha and I am at a loss for what to do because being important is not important while celebrating. rejoicing and laughing and playing games and other childlike traits--they are important.
So I need to get a lot better at celebration, which generally involves a deflated ego and a good bit of unsober gleefulness and laughter and--hah! Nickleback just started playing on my pretty little iPod. Case in point. Nickleback is a popular band that makes its living making sad-tough-guy music about how my girlfriend broke up with me and my family wasn't perfect and I'll never be allright and I'm angry and I'm sad and--dim shadows, empty whiskey bottles, browns and grays and dust always fading to black. Couldn't make a dancing tune to save their lives. God save us from seductive preprocessed canned some-one-else's-misery to titillate our carefully safe, carefully cultivated, carefully bored, carefully cool lives, and somehow empty selves. God save us from people who's favorite words (followed, of course with weighty and important sighs) are "God save us..."
Well. I'm going to try to find some way to redeem this evening that involves
a. laughter
b. absolutely nothing "serious", "important", "weighty", or "tragic."
c. unless the "tragic" could also be categorized under "schadenfreude".
d. because as the merriest of monks and ascetics knows, weightiness, dourness, seriousness and other forms of self-importance are bad.
e. and rejoicing is good.
p.s.--check out the hilarious Mormon guy's faux pas on Jeopardy
basically the same reason, on a night like tonight, i'm tempted to binge in a little "i'm lonely in the big city" blogging, or perhaps some "my tragic history" indulgence, or mainline some "let me tell you about my childhood" misery. i didn't realize until putting on my uniform that Powers was planning on covering for me tonight so that I can take his Friday night shift and he can enjoy a night out with a beautiful lady. so sit here long enough and the ennui sets in and off runs the heart to the public pity medium to try to convert excess boredom into cheap significance via emotional gluttony. you aren't bored while in the sick throes of angst and over-worn-out personal tragedy.
huh. i'm a funny-lookin' person in the mirror.
so, Plan A down the drain, it's time to work on Plan B. I have decided that I am altogether too serious and dour. the Kingdom of Heaven is no place for the mopey/self-obsessed. it is an all-out party replete with wine, women, and song (and, hopefully, hibachis and steak...) and party poopers are frowned upon. I have discovered, to my dismay, a certain weakness in the celebration-side of life. Put me in a room with angst-ridden-sense-of-importance junkies and I will passionately be bitter about all the evil and bad isms that keep people frowning and shuffling along. But call up the dance and light the candles and pour out the alcohol of choice and I am stiff and looking for my bitter coffee. Declare a feast and I sit awkwardly and try to make polite conversation or introduce some subject that I can frown and feel important and sophisticated while discussing.
And there's Jesus over there whoopin' and hollerin' and making more wine when it's obvious everyone's had enough and pulling grouchy old Aunt Edna out on the dance floor for a cha-cha and I am at a loss for what to do because being important is not important while celebrating. rejoicing and laughing and playing games and other childlike traits--they are important.
So I need to get a lot better at celebration, which generally involves a deflated ego and a good bit of unsober gleefulness and laughter and--hah! Nickleback just started playing on my pretty little iPod. Case in point. Nickleback is a popular band that makes its living making sad-tough-guy music about how my girlfriend broke up with me and my family wasn't perfect and I'll never be allright and I'm angry and I'm sad and--dim shadows, empty whiskey bottles, browns and grays and dust always fading to black. Couldn't make a dancing tune to save their lives. God save us from seductive preprocessed canned some-one-else's-misery to titillate our carefully safe, carefully cultivated, carefully bored, carefully cool lives, and somehow empty selves. God save us from people who's favorite words (followed, of course with weighty and important sighs) are "God save us..."
Well. I'm going to try to find some way to redeem this evening that involves
a. laughter
b. absolutely nothing "serious", "important", "weighty", or "tragic."
c. unless the "tragic" could also be categorized under "schadenfreude".
d. because as the merriest of monks and ascetics knows, weightiness, dourness, seriousness and other forms of self-importance are bad.
e. and rejoicing is good.
p.s.--check out the hilarious Mormon guy's faux pas on Jeopardy
a little after the fact
yup. one more valentines day spent alone. or, in this case, working, with a decidedly unattractive male medic, so that Powers could go watch Cirque de Soleil from a corporate suite and hit on wealthy lawyers. oh well. Happy St. V's and to all good luck and good night!
05 February 2006
goodbye vocabulary
so yesterday morning i couldn't sleep even though i knew i would pay for it later. so instead of sleeping the morning away in preparation for work, i curled up in my sleeping bag in my not-so-comfy comfy chair next to the big windows in my room and pulled back the curtains a little (the room is cold enough as it is) and drank cider and listened to Christmas music and watched the rain fall. i love rain, especially watching it fall as all the typically inconsiderate aspects of life tiptoe around selfconsciously because "ssssshhh--the rain is talking!" and I love Christmas music because it is, and i didn't get to listen to any at all except for a few snatches on the radio about how grandma's drunken stupor led her into the path of an inconsiderate grass-guzzling all-brawn no-finesse H3 of a reindeer.
except that it was actually yesterday afternoon, cause there i was trying to sleep days again and i screwed up my sleep schedule again so that now i want nothing more than to wake up around ten a.m. and go to sleep around three p.m.--the former being four hours into my off-time and the latter being just about when it's time to get up and get ready for work. but spending yesterday afternoon watching the-rain-fall-with-a-cup-of-hot-cider just doesn't quite cut the mustard. you're missing half of the great experience that i had, and i wouldn't want to rob you of that.
well. and now i'm sitting here wondering if i can type another five hours until bedtime, because i have to stay awake until about six or seven so that i can sleep and get up at six (that's a.m., as in the actual morning) for my eight to midnight overtime. yeah overtime. that should be me into bona fide overtime for this pay period, and then everything else extra that i tack on is time and a half!
and i used to get excited for christmas break. i warn you all: be ready for the ensuing gosh-darn-i-feel-old-what-do-they-teach-children-in-schools-these-days posts, because i'm sure i shall age all of my characteristic grace, and i seriously think my arthritis in my right hand is flaring up. booh-yah--anyone want to talk about the price of perscription drugs?
in other news, the "email me" is fixed. so you can email me now if you don't know my address. and i got to drive to Pennsylvania and back last night, lights and sirens the whole way! made a two-hour trip in an hour-fourty, in the pouring rain! yeah backroads! picked up a little newborn Am-let (that's little Amish lad) and drove him back, just as fast, and now he breathes a lot easier. hoo-ray for me!
except that it was actually yesterday afternoon, cause there i was trying to sleep days again and i screwed up my sleep schedule again so that now i want nothing more than to wake up around ten a.m. and go to sleep around three p.m.--the former being four hours into my off-time and the latter being just about when it's time to get up and get ready for work. but spending yesterday afternoon watching the-rain-fall-with-a-cup-of-hot-cider just doesn't quite cut the mustard. you're missing half of the great experience that i had, and i wouldn't want to rob you of that.
well. and now i'm sitting here wondering if i can type another five hours until bedtime, because i have to stay awake until about six or seven so that i can sleep and get up at six (that's a.m., as in the actual morning) for my eight to midnight overtime. yeah overtime. that should be me into bona fide overtime for this pay period, and then everything else extra that i tack on is time and a half!
and i used to get excited for christmas break. i warn you all: be ready for the ensuing gosh-darn-i-feel-old-what-do-they-teach-children-in-schools-these-days posts, because i'm sure i shall age all of my characteristic grace, and i seriously think my arthritis in my right hand is flaring up. booh-yah--anyone want to talk about the price of perscription drugs?
in other news, the "email me" is fixed. so you can email me now if you don't know my address. and i got to drive to Pennsylvania and back last night, lights and sirens the whole way! made a two-hour trip in an hour-fourty, in the pouring rain! yeah backroads! picked up a little newborn Am-let (that's little Amish lad) and drove him back, just as fast, and now he breathes a lot easier. hoo-ray for me!
03 February 2006
things that must be said
upon a quick review, I have decided this is important for re-mention:
the process is cloudy, but Dr. Bradley Beach of Houghton College, originally on the tenure track, has been told he will not recieve tenure if he so applies. The college stands to lose a professor both popular among the student body and his fellow academics.
for reading:
see'>http://www.xanga.com/Houghton_Dialogue">see especially Dr. Benedict's statemtents--three cheers for Dr. B
the'>http://www.xanga.com/PopeCharming/391517743/item.html">the pope
save the Beach
lobby. please. lobby. emails and letters from alumni much appreciated. more later.
the process is cloudy, but Dr. Bradley Beach of Houghton College, originally on the tenure track, has been told he will not recieve tenure if he so applies. The college stands to lose a professor both popular among the student body and his fellow academics.
for reading:
see'>http://www.xanga.com/Houghton_Dialogue">see especially Dr. Benedict's statemtents--three cheers for Dr. B
the'>http://www.xanga.com/PopeCharming/391517743/item.html">the pope
save the Beach
lobby. please. lobby. emails and letters from alumni much appreciated. more later.
having not written in a while...
it behooves me to say that trips to Houghton can be rather strenuous. you'd be amazed to discover what wonderful things simply leaving can do for your popularity. but popularity aside, i must work, and work, and work, and work (and then pick up a little overtime) so i must off rather quickly. for your enjoyment, my little neice, who is well known in the marketplace for her vociferous "Shikomo"-ing of the elders. My neice is a little shiki-bird!
grand kudos and thanks to another dan for his kindness in making a Houghton visit possible by ferrying me back and forth from the land of my exile.
and, who are these wierd people? yeah, they would be my friends, wouldn't they?
more to follow, at another time. peace be with you all!
grand kudos and thanks to another dan for his kindness in making a Houghton visit possible by ferrying me back and forth from the land of my exile.
and, who are these wierd people? yeah, they would be my friends, wouldn't they?
more to follow, at another time. peace be with you all!
27 January 2006
bouncing off Mr. Stowell...
[reflecting on Ethan's most recent post]
i think that love is an inevitable response to recognizing humanity in another person. when the static of our imperfect communication and communion is mercifully broken, for a rare moment, one person gains a momentary glimpse of the quite literally glorious, glory-filled truecreated eternal self of another.
what response can there be to such beauty but worship to god upon viewing the creator's art, and what response but horror and sorrow at every mar and wound laid upon than creation and every noisome wrack and noxious fume that obscures it from perception?
i follow the creed that love is first and most important, and all faith and morality follow. remembering the concealed glory bourne by every human individual, it's difficult to want to be one of the ones burning the library of Alexandria, chiselling the fingers off of Michaelangelo's "David" and spraypainting the Sistene Chapel. remembering each other's all-too-obscured and confused humanity becomes the hard work of love, and self-sacrifice an act of nurturing and restoring that which is truly important: the work of a master artist, the rebirth and life of dead souls.
maybe this is why Paul spoke of heaven as a place where none marry or are given in marriage: when the kingdom of heaven comes, and we no longer see through a glass darkly, maybe we will have no preference. the veils will be pulled back and the Sons and Daughters of God revealed in full glory, for which all creation holds its breath. each and every one of us will finally be able to see and hear each other's true self beyond the misunderstanding, pain and hatred that alienates us in this world.
we will love all of us with the depth of knowledge that blows away even the intimacy grown with eighty years married progress peeling away the loneliness and miscommunication of our present condition and drawing near to each other.
we will no longer need to continually remind ourselves of the hidden glory in our neighbors because we will be too busy drooling and reeling at the revealed beauty that was present and unfinished all along in tax collectors and good friends and annoying co-workers and great-aunt martha. and we will spend all eternity not being able to get enough of each other.
i think that love is an inevitable response to recognizing humanity in another person. when the static of our imperfect communication and communion is mercifully broken, for a rare moment, one person gains a momentary glimpse of the quite literally glorious, glory-filled truecreated eternal self of another.
what response can there be to such beauty but worship to god upon viewing the creator's art, and what response but horror and sorrow at every mar and wound laid upon than creation and every noisome wrack and noxious fume that obscures it from perception?
i follow the creed that love is first and most important, and all faith and morality follow. remembering the concealed glory bourne by every human individual, it's difficult to want to be one of the ones burning the library of Alexandria, chiselling the fingers off of Michaelangelo's "David" and spraypainting the Sistene Chapel. remembering each other's all-too-obscured and confused humanity becomes the hard work of love, and self-sacrifice an act of nurturing and restoring that which is truly important: the work of a master artist, the rebirth and life of dead souls.
maybe this is why Paul spoke of heaven as a place where none marry or are given in marriage: when the kingdom of heaven comes, and we no longer see through a glass darkly, maybe we will have no preference. the veils will be pulled back and the Sons and Daughters of God revealed in full glory, for which all creation holds its breath. each and every one of us will finally be able to see and hear each other's true self beyond the misunderstanding, pain and hatred that alienates us in this world.
we will love all of us with the depth of knowledge that blows away even the intimacy grown with eighty years married progress peeling away the loneliness and miscommunication of our present condition and drawing near to each other.
we will no longer need to continually remind ourselves of the hidden glory in our neighbors because we will be too busy drooling and reeling at the revealed beauty that was present and unfinished all along in tax collectors and good friends and annoying co-workers and great-aunt martha. and we will spend all eternity not being able to get enough of each other.
22 January 2006
new toy
see, this is my new buddy--
and it goes pretty much everywhere with me.
but i need a little help.
first of all--it needs a name.
secondly--it needs music.
thirdly--it needs more pictures.
fourthly--it's got a crapload of options that i have no idea about. know something cool i can do with my ipod? tell me...
fifthly--it has absolutely no recorded messages/goofy greetings/amusing anecdotes from my friends to spice up the "shuffle" option.
donations enthusiastically accepted. especially pictures of you. because then i can carry them around with me, and if they're silly pictures, so much the better.
[where i have been lately - a pictoral journey]
grandpa's house for christmas
playing Pirates of the Barbary Coast, with my awesome little brother (who just scored a full-ride to MSU with free lodging tossed in to boot...)
florida
with these guys
a wedding with these guys (hey, that's And James!)
and working eighty hours last week
playing Pirates of the Barbary Coast, with my awesome little brother (who just scored a full-ride to MSU with free lodging tossed in to boot...)
florida
with these guys
a wedding with these guys (hey, that's And James!)
and working eighty hours last week
my excellent afternoon of fine reading, tucked away in my sleeping bag
i think perhaps that this book could be the most important book of the next twenty years. the only comparison i can make is with Jean-Jacques Rousseau's succint, conversational, and devastatingly intelligent Social Contract--but entirely different. Quinn is telling us what is painfully sinful, unhealthy, wrong, silly, deadly, or unsustainable--chose your adjective--about our way of life. and he is calling for change.
Despite all the indicators of misery we live with--the ever-growing incidence of social disintegration, drug addiction, crime, suicde, mental illness, child and spousal abuse and abandonement, racism, violence against women, and so on--most people in our culture are thoroughly convinced that our way of life smply cannot be bettered by any means whatsoever. Adopting anything different would therefore have to be a comedown, an act of sacrifce.
"Very typcally, when people question me about the future, they ask if I really believe people wll be willing to "give up" the wonderful things we have for the mere privlege of avoiding extinction. When I speak, as I did in Ishmael, of "another story to be in," they seem to imagine I'm touting a sort of miserable half-life of voluntary poverty, donning sackcloth and ashes to do penance for our environmental sins. They're sure that living in a sustainable way must be about "giving up" things. It doesn't occur to them that living in an UNsustainable way is also about giving up things, very precious things like security, hope, lightheartedness, and freedom from anxiety, fear and guilt."
"When in doubt, think about the circus. [the circus has been touted as an example of an non-hierarchical organization where people belong rather than work, and where all the members of the organization identify with and take personal responsiblity for the business.] People never run off to join the circus to give up something. They run off to the circus to get something."
--Daniel Quinn, The End of Civilization
which, oddly enough, is about spot on how i think about (i) monasticism, and (ii) redemption. what we give up, we do not really want. what we get--is worth giving up one's life for.
19 January 2006
fullness
i feel there is too much going on for me to take in. literally. there are so many letters i feel a pressing need to write that i write none of them at all. there are so many phone calls to make and bloggy blogs to write and movies to watch and ideas to mull over and amazing books to read and bills to pay and tickets to settle and applications to write and decisions to make and...
and too much working my tookis off and fending off the restlessness long enough to put in the kind of hours that make money. i'll be sitting on top of an 80 hour work week saturday morning. three days off and i'll hit the grind again and probably start picking up overtime again...so the promised pictures and news are going to wait. my resolution to write a journal entry every day, inspired by the author of Snow Leopard, is going to wait. riding to the post office to get a stamp for that speeding ticket is going to wait. and everything else too. i need sleep. but at least i need sleep in a good way. good night...err...morning. something...
and too much working my tookis off and fending off the restlessness long enough to put in the kind of hours that make money. i'll be sitting on top of an 80 hour work week saturday morning. three days off and i'll hit the grind again and probably start picking up overtime again...so the promised pictures and news are going to wait. my resolution to write a journal entry every day, inspired by the author of Snow Leopard, is going to wait. riding to the post office to get a stamp for that speeding ticket is going to wait. and everything else too. i need sleep. but at least i need sleep in a good way. good night...err...morning. something...
13 January 2006
well...
i'm here-ish. in my new room. but fear not--it's the same address. i moved across the hall to my sweet new room: same rent, twice as big, two windows AND a door out to...a balcony! i'm (almost) moved in completely, so naturally it's a mess. but instead of vertical, cramped mess, i have horizontally slouching American suburban sprawl mess. and a walk-in, bang-your-head-on-the-pole closet. a place to put my boots!
and i'm off to work again--i've got to pay for those holiday adventures which have kept me hoppin'. pictures to follow.
and i'm off to work again--i've got to pay for those holiday adventures which have kept me hoppin'. pictures to follow.
31 December 2005
i have little to say...
but if you're interested in someone who's positively just a pleasure to read, you should check out the Pope's latest. words worth reading just for the quality with which they were placed.
and for something completely different, a must for lovers of CS Lewis and 80's rap everywhere. thank you thankyou thankyouthankyou o thankyou sooooo much for making my morning Dan
and for something completely different, a must for lovers of CS Lewis and 80's rap everywhere. thank you thankyou thankyouthankyou o thankyou sooooo much for making my morning Dan
29 December 2005
22 December 2005
and, while quoting...
(and depriving myself of much-needed sleep)
from the Economist, 10/15, during what the British authors might call "that bloody Harriet Miers cock-up": (emphasis added)
from the Economist, 10/15, during what the British authors might call "that bloody Harriet Miers cock-up": (emphasis added)
There are few things quite as hypocritical as American politicians hurling accusations of cronyism. The Democrats are lambasting George Bush about his weakness for promoting people such as Michael Brown, the horseman turned emergency agency chief. But does anybod seriously believe that a Democratic president wouldn't appoint cronies of his or her own?...
"All countries have their cronies. That much-cited model of moral rectitude, Tony Blair, is so surrounded by them that they are called "Tony's Cronies" (he made his old roommate, Charlie Falconer, Lord Chancellor). Edith Cresson, a European commissioner, appointed her dentist to an advisory position. But you expect that sort of thing in Brussels. America's problem is the contrast between high-minded idealism and low practice.
"America regards itself as the world's purest mertiocracy--a country based on talent, not patronage and toadyism. A quick glace at history shows this is rubbish. Most presidents surround themselves with a regional mafia: look at Carter's Georgians or Reagan's Californians or Clinton's Arkansans. These mafias produce some rum appointments: Jimmy Carter made his one-time campaign driver, Jody Powell, his press secretary; Bill Clinton made his chum from Miss Marie's kindergarten in Hope, Thomas McLarty, his chief of staff. Scandals are endemic. harry Truman's missouri cronies had a weakness for gifts of mink coats and freezers (an issue in the 1952 election). As for the antics of Mr Clinton's Arkansas buddies, the less said the better.
"That does not mean every close ally is a "crony": that term inplies incompetence as well as promiximity. Condoleezza Rice is no Michael Brown, for example, just as Robert Reich was no Webb Hubbell...In deed, the trick of ruing a successful administration--as both FDR and JFK demonstrated--is to balance the competing claims of personal loyalty and individual merit. Mr Bush, as the candidate of the Republican establishment rather than a regional insurrection, brought in plenty of bruisers. Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld are guilty of many things, but being mere creatures of the president is not one of them.
"Still, if the presidential branch doesn't run on cronyism alone, it cannot run without it. A presidential campaign is a large gamble. Presidents acquire obligations to people who spend years toiling for them in the wilderness. Not all these people will be from the first division. Presidents also form a peculiar bond of trust with people who served in the campaign trenches with them. When they are in the White House, the only people they meet are supplicants. So naturally they turn to their old buddies for comfort and advice. Presidents need cronies just as cronies need patrons.
"From this perspective the real question about Mr Bush's appointment of Ms Miers is not whether it is cronyism, but whether he has stepped over the line that separates business-as-usual from offensive favoritism."
in more Timely cheer...
"This is, I say, the time for all good men not to go to the aid of their party, but to come to the aid of their country."
i'd never heard of Eugene McCarthy before last month. i'm starting to like him more and more. i think it's time to add him to my people-to-look-into-list, with a nod of appreciation to the Charmer with his penchant for intriguing conversations that first sparked my interest.
and, props to the Lao for recommending Time in the first place. yeah.
i'd never heard of Eugene McCarthy before last month. i'm starting to like him more and more. i think it's time to add him to my people-to-look-into-list, with a nod of appreciation to the Charmer with his penchant for intriguing conversations that first sparked my interest.
and, props to the Lao for recommending Time in the first place. yeah.
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