In Loving Memory of Spontaneity

So about 10 minutes ago, I finally had it with feeling overwhelmed by the amount of things I have to do in the looming days ahead, so I decided I would feel better if I mapped out my tomorrow to make sure I had enough time for it all. When I finished, the result was acutely disheartening. I know exactly what I'll be doing from the moment I wake up tomorrow until the moment I go to sleep, with literally no give. I realized my Wednesday was the same way. And I could've done Thursday and Friday, too. I'm finding that if important conversations with friends are going to be longer than 20 minutes or so, I have to schedule them in something like 4 days in advance. Even then, the odds of having more than an hour or two are pretty slim.

God, I love weekends. Even they're filling up fast, though, with all the things I can't fit in during the weeks. It's kind of ridiculous. And even more ridiculous is that I'm not an oddity. This isn't just my life. Why do we do this to ourselves? Who decided productivity and efficiency were such high priorities? And how come it feels like their decision to prioritize in such a way stripped me of my ability to prioritize differently?


On a non-pessimistic note, I got to go inside Eastern's planetarium for the first time during my astronomy lab today. So. Freaking. Cool.

The Best Part of Any Good Studying

Good distractions.

Today, I holed up in the back corner of Eastern's pathetic little media library to study with a friend, who made the pathetic room a lot less pathetic by unveiling to me a crazy jazz and classical record collection I didn't know Eastern was cool enough to have. The patheticness lessened even more when we threw a Tchaikovsky vinyl onto a retro wooden turntable and sat in the sun that streamed through a west-ish facing window made for receiving afternoon sunlight unlike all the rest of the windows in the building. Great studying conditions.

But my favorite part was being summoned to another window by my friend, who was watching a man and two little boys playing on a grassy hill. The little boys kept chasing around the man I can only assume was their father, and he kept egging them on, dramatically and animatedly responding to their every move. They loved it. Running around on a hill proved quite challenging for these small people; we watched them teeter around and fall with anything but grace, and laughed as they took it in stride, taking advantage of already being down and rolling the rest of the way down the hill, often with their already-rolling-father close behind. At one point, the two little crazies took down the big crazy and proceeded to bellyflop onto their downed victim's own belly over and over again. Still animated, and quite capable of snatching up the two little hooligans in one arm if he wanted to, the victim played his role well.

I love catching people, who don't know they're being watched, in the act of vivacious, authentic interactions. It certainly gives me more hope for the world than my sociology textbook, even if today's reading was accompanied by Tchaikovsky and infrared bliss soaking into my skin.

Peter and the Wolf

So I know I just added the score for this, but I watched the actual thing with my roommate tonight and nostalgia from being 4 just flooded my insides. It's well worth the 15 minutes.

More Things I Love

Old people dancing. Small people dancing. And basically any other time dancing is unashamedly simple and spontaneous and unadulterated. Oh. And car dancing.

Also, this.

And this:

The Peace of Wild Things

When despair for the world grows in me

and I wake in the night at the least sound

in fear of what my life and my children's lives may be,

I go and lie down where the wood drake

rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.

I come into the peace of wild things 

who do not tax their lives with forethought

of grief. I come into the presence of still water.

And I feel above me the day-blind stars

waiting with their light. For a time

I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

-Wendell Berry-

Kid

What I learned at college today: I love being called "kid" by happy old men.

Powers of Ten

Oh Gosh

So my job at school is to answer the phone that rings when people call the main university number. I try to help them figure out who they need to talk to and transfer them there and stuff.

Anyway, when I pick up the phone, I'm supposed to say "Eastern University, how can I help you?" and today I caught myself starting to say "Eastern University, how can I care for you?" I'm a mess. =P

On Being Baffled

Sometimes a concept is baffling 

not because it is profound 

but because it is wrong."

-E. O. Wilson

Imagination

"Imagination is more important than knowledge." -- Albert Einstein

Breathing Is a Good Method of Survival

Today I dropped from 19 credits to 16. It feels like I just reinserted breathing into the list of things I have time for in my life. And quite possibly enough time to enjoy some of the things I'm going to be learning this semester. The knot that's been building up in my stomach is gone. Happy day.

Jesus

"In dying helplessly, the Father shows us that our enmity will not provoke his enmity. The father will continue to love us, to look warmly on us, even to 'like' us -- because the Father knows that the 'real' us, hidden beneath the parts of us that battle constantly with one another, is beautiful, gentle and as deeply compassionate as the One who first created us." (Frank, Doug. A Gentler God, 267)

The Guest House

This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.

A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor.

Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they're a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still, treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.

The dark thought, the shame, the malice,
meet them at the door laughing,
and invite them in.

Be grateful for whoever comes,
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.

-Rumi

The Help

Great movie. If you haven't already, you should watch it. Or read the book. Which is probably even better.

Blasted TV Shows

It is a rare occasion that I watch any show ever, let alone follow one religiously. I suppose since season 4 is airing on actual television and I'm just getting around to season 2 now, the average American wouldn't consider that a religious following, but dang. Fringe is just so good. I watched 5 episodes today.

Be There

“Beauty and grace are performed whether or not we will or sense them. The least we can do is try to be there.”

Carpe Diem

The question of what I want to be when I grow up -- I play with it, I speak about it, I plan for it, I have no idea about it, I sneeze at it, I cry over it. It's a big question and thinking about its answer makes me both intensely impassioned and profoundly afraid.

Tonight I watched The Dead Poets Society for the first time in a long time. Something about John Keating resonates with me so so fiercely. He's so close to what I want to be. But in real life, he'd have 6 classes and 180 students and curriculums mandated and enforced by law. He'd have heaps of papers to grade and so little time and energy to devote to building relationships with individual students -- the kind of relationships he had in the movie -- ones that speak to the heart of a person and call on their deepest, most creative and true and valuable self. Passionate as he may be about that part of his job, real life Mr. Keating would most likely only be able to make his passion a subordinate thing to his job.

I guess I say that because I fear that for myself. I know life isn't always romantic and I know doing things you would rather not is a big part of leading any kind of life as a human being, great or not. But I don't want to do anything that merely incorporates what I'm passionate about into it. I want what I'm passionate about to be the biggest part of whatever I do.

I'm impatient, yes. But I trust my future will be abnormal to the extent that I have a hard time sitting back and believing something will just come along. I think I'm going to have to find my life's work. Create it. And I just don't feel creative enough. Or maybe the problem is that the world is not currently catering to the creativity of people like me. The world's axioms are so strong and so greatly in opposition to mine that I can feel its disapproving gaze in the supposedly-but-not-so-private room where my ideas churn and even in the birth of those ideas I can already taste failure.

Still... the impassioned part of me won't be still. It's writhing around inside of me like a million woodland creatures just awakened from a long hibernation, full of new life and ambition and purpose that cannot be sequestered by any means.

 

O ME! O life!... of the questions of these recurring;
Of the endless trains of the faithless—of cities fill’d with the foolish;
Of myself forever reproaching myself, (for who more foolish than I, and who more faithless?)
Of eyes that vainly crave the light—of the objects mean—of the struggle ever renew’d;
Of the poor results of all—of the plodding and sordid crowds I see around me;
Of the empty and useless years of the rest—with the rest me intertwined;
The question, O me! so sad, recurring—What good amid these, O me, O life?
Answer. That you are here—that life exists, and identity;
That the powerful play goes on, and you will contribute a verse.

                              -Walt Whitman

Tone of Voice

It makes all the difference in the world.

Okay, maybe not all the difference. But a whole lot of it.

Tomato Juice (Cuz I Couldn't Think of a Better Title)

Not sure where this came from, but a friend shared this with me and I like it:

"Prayer is when your brain moves down and starts to live in your heart."

Mastadons

Fun fact of the day, courtesy of A Short History of Nearly Everything:

"Mastadon" means "nipple teeth." They're named that because they had nipple-like cone protrusions on their molars, well suited for chewing leaves.

Pissing on Dead Things

I've been reading this book that one of my Oregon professors wrote and it has been a really great experience so far. It's called A Gentler God: Breaking Free of the Almighty in the Company of the Human Jesus by Doug Frank and it talks about the story of the evangelical God -- a God of equal parts love and condemnation. He talks about where those conceptions come from, how evangelicals so readily see a theology that the rest of the world so obviously sees as anything but love, and how evangelicalism has embedded itself into our culture so much that it's hard to envision God any differently. I'm just getting into the second half of the book where he dismantles Protestantism's angry and punitive God and invites you to look at a much more welcoming God.

I've never had a book so perfectly timed and that so perfectly addresses exactly what I'm struggling with right now. It's been really great so far. I didn't really do it justice in the explanation I just gave, but if you have issues with God like I do, I highly recommend it.

There are a lot of parts I've wanted to pull out and quote, but I'm afraid without the context some of those parts would end up distorting what the author was trying to say and leave people feeling disgruntled and angry, or with pieces of something that just don't add up. Kind of like what can happen when you quote a bible verse.

I did like this one story, though, and I feel like it wouldn't hurt the content to post it. It's a story an old Oregon Extension student told Doug one time about the way he noticed the falseness present in American evangelicals:

My parents were respected lay leaders in an evangelical church. They showed up at church every Sunday morning, and my three younger brothers and I had to go with them.

My older brother and I had usually been out carousing until the wee hours of the morning, so we were in a foul mood when our parents came to wake us up. Actually, all four of us hated getting up for church. Mom and Dad had to nag us out of bed, badger us into wearing something 'presentable,' and plead with us to wolf down some breakfast. They'd almost physically push us out of the house and into the car.

All the way to church, we'd sit in the back bitching and moaning and scrapping with one another while our parents yelled at us to straighten up. We always got to church a couple minutes late. Mom would herd us up the front steps, still grousing at each other. But the minute we stepped inside the door, we turned into perfect angels. The only pews still empty were usually at the front of the sanctuary. Everybody's eyes would follow us. I knew exactly what they were thinking, because I'd hear them saying it to our folks after church: 'What a fine family you have! Such good Christian boys!'

I would sit there in the pew and look around me. Here were all these fine Christian families, all decked out in their Sunday best, smiling their Sunday smiles, just like us. I knew a lot of those kinds. They had been out all night, too -- drugs, sex, alcohol, general mischief. I knew their families were as messed up as my family was. But there we sat, singing our hymns and praying and looking or all the world like perfect little Christian families.

I remember one Sunday having this sudden urge to do something really crazy. I wanted to get up and walk to the front and stand there on the platform and open my pants and piss on the carpet. And then I wanted to look around at the whole bunch of them and say: 'See this? This is me. This down here on the carpet? This is real.'

I never did it, of course. But sometimes I wish I had.
(Australia: Albatross Books, 2010), 177

Cheers for Rounded Numbers

I just noticed that in 2011 I posted no more and no less than 50 blogs completely unintentionally. The meticulous, obsessive compulsive part of me is feeling very proud.

Portlandia

So I went to Portland for my Mission Year teammate Matt's wedding. (It's so weird when your friends start to get married.) Flying back to the west coast for a week was like what I imagine chewing nicotine gum a few days after quitting smoking to be. Except probably better for my health. And worse for my bank account. Either way, I'm really glad I went. Figured I'd share a few lessons I learned along the way in case you ever find your way to Portland.

Discovery #1: Maple bacon donuts are better than they sound.

I visited the imfamous Portland donut shop, Voodoo Donut, and waited in a line that ran outside and around the building in the rain for about 40 minutes. Totally worth it. They have the craziest menu. Oh. And people get married there. I love Portland.

Discovery #2: The best places in the world are free. 
(For the record, I already knew this. My experiences in Portland just added fuel to the fire.)
My friend and I paid $4 at The Grotto to take an elevator up to a lookout for this view:

Two days later, I hiked through Forest Park, one of the largest urban forest reserves in the country, and found myself at the Pittock Mansion (a guy that really traveled the Oregon Trail! And he didn't die of cholera!) with this view for free:

That's Mt. Hood, by the way. 4th tallest peak in the Cascades.

Discovery #3: The excitement of finding seesaws lasts longer when you have someone to ride them with.

Eight! Eight seesaws and no one around. Fastest high to low ever.

Discovery #4: Everybody Digs a Swingin' Cat
Saw the Mel Brown Septet play at Jimmy Mak's -- a pretty well known jazz club downtown. So freakin' great. Every city needs a good jazz club. C'mon, Philly.

Discovery #5: Film junkies really do know what they're talking about.
I stayed for a few days with a friend of a friend of a friend who turned out to be a super hospitable and beautiful person who expanded my film and musical horizons in a matter of two days. He's really into film projects and shared one of his favorites with me. It's called Koyaanisqatsi, which means "life out of balance" in the Hopi Indian language. It doesn't have a conventional plot or spoken language, but is a bunch of images and music synchronized magically to compare and contrast natural environments with nature as impressed upon by man. For being released in '82, the shots are pretty freakin' amazing. It's worth watching all the way through. The middle is my favorite, I think.

 

Discovery #6: The extent to which you feel like you might die and the coolness of an old elevator share a direct relationship.

The same friend of a friend of a friend had the oldest, craziest elevator in his apartment building. You opened an actual door and then a wrought iron gate to go inside it. And it was just... old and awesome. I tried to take a picture, but it didn't work out so well.

Discovery #7: Airplanes will never not be magical. 

Seriously. Riding over a brilliantly lit city at night? Watching all of the other planes float around in the dark like alien spacecrafts below you after you've taken off? Flying through mountain passes and over deserts in the same hour? So crazy.