...there your heart will be also.

I love that we're forgiven.

Matt. 6:21
For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.

midnight disease...perhaps

it's 1:30am here in ohio. tonight is not normal, in that it happens often, but i'm also very familiar. tomorrow morning i'll be too groggy. right now i'm almost too pressed - pressed with thoughts that are too fast and without order. it's difficult to describe. there are too many words but i have such dulled senses. i'm tired. perhaps i can recall some of these things in the morning if i write a little.

i love some conversations that say very little. the kind where you needn't say much because these conversations are simply enjoying time being together. there's not many of them because so often we're "doing" things together. but sometimes we get past formalities and so enjoy familiarity. i enjoy listening to music in the car and not talking.

Joseph Conrad on writer's block

I sit down religiously every morning, I sit down for eight hours every day - and the sitting down is all. Innthe course of that working way of eight hours I write three sentences which I erase before leaving the table in despair. Sometimes it takes all my resolution and power of self-control to refrain from butting my head against the wall. I want to howl and foam at the mouth but I daren't do it for fear of waking the baby and alarming my wife. After such crises of despair I doze for hours, still held conscious that there is that story that I am unable to write. Then I wake up, try again, and at last go to bed completely done up. So the days pass and nothing is done. At night I sleep. In the morning I get up with that horror of that powerlessness I must face through a day of vain efforts....
I seem to have lost all sense of style and yet I am haunted by the necessity of style. And that stroy I can't write weaves itself into all I se, into all I speak, into all I think, into the lines of every book I try to read. ...I feel my brain. I am distinctly conscious of the contents of my head. My story is there in a fluid - in an evading shape. I can't get hold of it. It is all there - to bursting, yet I can't get hold of it any more than you can grasp a handful of water....
I never mean to be slow. The stuff comes out at its own rate. I am always ready to put it down...the trouble is that too often, alas, I've to wait for the sentence, for the word... The worst is that while I'm thus powerless to porduce, my imaginaation is extremely active; whole paragraphs, whole pagges, whole chapters pass through my mind. Everything is there: descriptions, dialogue, reflection, everything, everything but the bleief, the conviction, the lonly thing needed to make me put pen to paper. I've thought out a volume a day till I felt sick in mind and heart and gone to bed, completely done up, without havinng written a line. The effort I put out should give birth to a Masterpieces as big as mountains, and it brings forth a ridiculous mouse now and then.

It's still true today :)

what's better about writing? if that is, you're a writer. [why write?] is it possible to ask bad questions, questions that complicate good, generous simplicity? it seems to me that there are moments when everything is distilled, and you know not to chase after a dream, a dream that maybe is extravagant and certainly somewhat gratifying, to try and do something or become someone that maybe you're not. maybe the motive is somehow pride...and subtle discontent, a desire to feel more interesting. ["i've travelled there." "i did a PhD." or "i've won at black jack on the 9th hand.] the subtle difference then from striving to make a thing happen, and doing whatever 'it' is because life changes, things come our way...we don't determine everything; the difference is that we take too much pride in accomplishments. "i will do this. I will have that." ...we feel better when we're defining ourselves. then later, we want to do more, travel, move to a different city, edit the image...and discontent creeps back in. perhaps this is anything but living in the moment. perhaps some people are better at being and feeling content and enjoying themselves. that factor of enjoyment is critical. because while some strive and strive and strive, others attach themselves to every moment, as if the moment is why you live. so how does one live in the moment? with reasonable expectations...making plans, chasing dreams...relishing experience? how do you weigh the present? it's inescapable.

i know that living is no longer for me alone. ...to a degree, it's also not for others. i know that plans fall through and dreams are often never realized. I can see that the "rich and poor have this in common: the Lord is the Maker of them all." and that he sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. i know that the moment is experiencing a Maker through a veil dividing heaven and earth. and I know that there was a veil torn in the temple when Jesus died. Jesus said, "Trust in God; trust also in me." and then, "Because I live, you also will live." i know that dreaming and making goals and not worrying are all good and have their place in a God given life. ...and life is only for a moment and then for something more.

That must be why Solomon said, "What does the worker gain from his toil? I have seeen the burden God has laid on men. He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the hearts of men; yet they cannot fathom what God has done from beginning to end. I know that there is nothing better for men than to be happy and do good while they live. That everone may eat and drink, and find satisfaction in all his toil - this is the gift of God. I know that everything God does will endure forever; nothing can be added to it and nothing taken from it. God does it so that men will revere him."

today, that's why i write. :)

A story in English

I was thinking while showering how incredibly many thoughts I have. If I told them all to you, which is impossible, it might resemble a plater the size of New York and heaps and heaps of serpentine thoughts sauced and tasting of raw Italian parmesan. ...that's a bit of introspection to digest. So, I won't tell you what I think of Barack Obama, and I won't tell you about the differences in doing a job and believing in what you do. It doesn't matter. I will tell you one thing. Introspection is worth something, but thoughtfulness on true story is better, fiction or non-fiction. It doesn't matter. It's the moral of the story. Make it make sense, and it’s of far greater worth. If we delve into me..well that may be interesting, perhaps even upsetting. But if I take you with me to explore the world around me, and with imagination; you will probably know me better then if I had ever intended to describe myself to you over pasta. I am something true, but God's world...which I fit in, is even truer. "The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it?" (Jer.17:9)

I'm talking about variations on theme. "Even in literature or art, no man who bothers about originality will ever be original: whereas if you simply try to tell the truth (without caring twopence how often it has been told before) you will, nine times out of ten, become original without ever having noticed." ~C.S. Lewis-

i blog to be with you.

the blogosphere is a never ending bloom of information and personalities. sometimes i wonder why so many people want to "publish" something...no matter what that something is. it seems there are probably a few good reasons, whether or not the content is good. for some it's a catharsis, a tick or release, a nice vignette to punctuate the day. for others it's work. you can monetize a readership. maybe there is one more generalization, people who write for others, hoping it's beneficial, wanting excellent writing. maybe that's idealistic and fussy. maybe it's too difficult to see why people want to "publish", but at root, i do think good writing is more for others than for me. maybe i ought to capitalize. All this writing then, seems to be the menagerie of the gigantic blogosphere. you write because you think you have something worthwhile to tell. you write because you can't sit still. you write because someone will read it. it's worth the time. you hope it will benefit. write?

hang the @#$! in there

do you know what stymie means? it means you sit and feel numb. why is that? "why the numbness and the sitting?" you might say. maybe you wag your finger, indicating the disposition and whole picture before you. if i were writing this scene as if it were me sitting, let's say in a well worn rush seat chair, the kind you find in the attic. it's nostalgic and the rungs are loose and it doesn't fit with the kitchen table anymore. if it were me in that chair and for some reason you were looking for me and wagging your finger, i might say, "is string theory what some people suppose to be the common denominator for the apparent interconnectedness of the everything?" or more probably i will say, "what did you do today?"

.....you know. i'm stymied. can someone throw me a bone?

Thank you for the bone. I think I can go on. I can go on for many reasons. One is hope and hope doesn't come from solving string theory, which is not lame it is simply...2 dimensional, that is, it doesn't permit divine or supernatural explainations to exist with mathematical explainations....or how we can describe networks and physics. BUT it does inevitably provoke the baffling non-existence of explainations for the divine. this is what i love about science. in one form or another the trail leads to a precipice and belief. belief can't be completely scientific. ...i'm discovering that i love all inexact sciences. (that is for another blog.)

Now. The only other reason I might say, "is string theory what some people....blah blah yada yada" is because i want to dramatically divert your attention. in other words, i don't care about string theory. i care about feeling numb and sitting in the chair and not feeling numb and getting on with things. that's less convenient to talk about and i'll probably deter you. however...this doesn't mean don't wag your finger or indulge me. it also doesn't mean you can't ignore me all together and ask, "what did you do today?" because that's great, when we can get past what's said to who we are. ...i say all kinds of things. thanks for asking. thanks for loving me.

Now, today is a new day. and "joy comes in the morning", or rather "His mercies are new every morning. Great is His faithfulness," not mine. string theory, from the pathetically limited knowledge i have DOES NOT bring the morning, nor the sun or...wow, snow. perhaps it explains it a little bit...but now i'm in territory i know nothing about. the point is joy is eternal. i'm more than carbon. and strings are fun. okay, any more bones you have?? :) salud and cheerio.

adventing

There is such a thing as timed chess. i'm not very good at it. i think it is because i think slowly and deeply...similar to the ocean. please pretend that analogy makes perfect sense. i don't know why i can't be a clever poet or chairman of the Federal Reserve. I've written poems. but...not recently. I'm very good at self-editing. "but...not recently" is not even remotely a complete sentence or thought. It's a banal fragment and has nothing to do with the Federal Reserve. Regardless, I will write to think, and it is probable no one will read it because i see few do, but that is not the point. The point is that I might not ever be a great debater, though I am so enthralled with them. BECAUSE i get it. I think I bobble a bit when lots of eyes are on me...therefore I write, and what is written...can be read...afteritiswritten. The point is that I follow. I do get economics. I sense poetry, often and poorly. I know what words do.... Why? It's one thing to be smart. It's another thing to know how to apply it. That's a new maxim of mine. I'm somewhere in between. Between smart enough to follow and benefiting the world.

Yes, that is a shifting paradigm.

I don't know when arrival is? I don't think it looks the way i thought. It may have nothing to do with notoriety or money. That's something i discerned. The smartest ones are the ones helping the most because. Their motives are the smartest. I think i'm defining words differently then is normal, for example "smartness". Maybe I'm spelling "wisdom" or "godliness". I have this inkling that's where I'm going. I know everyone will benefit. hmmmmmmmmm. I need a lot of help along the way.

pensamientos sobre

"There is time," I remember her saying. "Time for everything."
I remember thinking, 'Why does she say that? Where does this confidence come from? Do I participate in this?' Maybe she sees something I haven't tried to communicate. I'll bet that's true. That is true. So I know...there is one thing she loves in me, but how she'll say it I don't know. Maybe that's the marvel of genuine relationship, the things known or loved or forgiven that aren't mentioned. Then one day one is discovered. One is mentioned. "Why do you eat standing there looking out the window everyday? I'm going to stand next to you every day and look out the window while eating." Maybe you laugh. Maybe you stop speaking. Nothing changed. But two half selves conjoined and matched, meld again and again. How many lines make a Celtic cross? One? Two? That's the way you tell me about me and I about you. That one thing I know...has not been identified correctly. Only it's attributes, which are so striking. And now I sit here and think with the biggest grin on my face, 'There is time, time for everything.'

Do you ever meet someone and sense 'this person can take me.' Mr. X can listen. He can take me all the way in and wrestle with me. Only after, do you think about it. Did my feelings deceive me? ...No one has ever looked at me that way before. ...that doesn't make sense. That's odd. And he made me mad! What a shocking connection. I hope we meet again. I hope we can know each other again.

I was thinking that as I stared at Ms. X, that we connected, but only for a minute. Chance intimacy is probably not intimacy. That was the past. And as I watched you I somehow watched the future. I was mad about you. Your high brow and watchful eye. The poise and thoughtful ensemble. Everything in its place. I was mad about you. The whole knowing how events might unfold. It's possible, who's surprised? But then you smile. I see it and it always stirs me. Because you smile I know you, and no mirror can ever tell you what these eyes of mine can see. I think I'm probably mad about you.

I don't know how much time has passed. I suppose that it's still passing. And I don't know if you know I'm here, or if you want to see me staring. There are only two things to do if you know a man who's staring. 1) Get up. Walk away. Don't believe what your heart is feeling. Or 2) look back. Take a minute and trust the one you're seeing. You can only jump in. There is only faith and reason. So dispel your fear, root that imagination. Some day I think I will talk to you. Because there was one time you came near me. That was the past.

The meantime is now, and now, ironically I can sit and watch all day. The dreamer's eye, not speaking. Was I? ...Maybe I was. Mad about you.

In good books.

The writer says to his readers, "Do you know why you listen to me? Why you read my books and say, 'Astounding'? It is because I am like you. You can identify with me. You can read these written words and say, 'Oh! I have felt that. It makes sense! People - silly, smart, foolish, self-absorbed people do that. That very thing! ...these things you write about. I see it."

"And do you know reader why we read good books? One very obvious reason is to learn. But have you ever asked yourself, 'What exactly am I learning?' Can you summarize it in the three points? Some very gifted people can. But I think very often we are absorbing so many thoughts and implications that it may be a challenge to say succinctly what."

This is how I feel when I read the Bible and this is how I think many people do or do not understand God's person. The Bible contains some of the richest description of relationship I have ever read. Because the Bible's Author is the consummation of story through time in history and epithets - God's names. We are in relationship and he wants us to know him. Why is he good? How does he work? What kind of people are we? Can we know him? How? How is it possible to understand?

The longer I am a Christian, the more I am conscious of my sin and what I know is truth. It's a weighty place, an unsettling place, a pivoting plain...as wide as your eyes can see. I am a wide-eyed child...still learning how to talk...coherently.

"When a man is getting better, he understands more and more clearly the evil that is still left in him. When a man is getting worse, he understand his own badness less and less. A moderately bad man knows he is not very good: a thoroughly bad man thinks he is all right."
-C.S. Lewis Mere Christianity

This is what I read in my Bible this morning.

Isaiah 54:4-8
You will forget the shame of your youth and remember no more the reproach of your widowhood. For your Maker is your Husband - the Lord Almighty is his name - the Holy One of Israel is your Redeemer; he is called the God of all the earth. The Lord will call you back as if you were a wife deserted and distressed in spirit - a wife who married young, only to be rejected," says your God. For a brief moment I abandoned you, but with deep compassion I will bring you back. In a surge of anger I hid my face from you for a moment, but with everlasting kindness I will have compassion on you," says the Lord your Redeemer.

55:6-9
Seek the Lord while he may be found; call on him while he is near. Let the wicked forsake his way and the evil man his thoughts. Let him turn to the Lord, and he will have mercy on him, and to our God, for he will freely pardon. "For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways," declares the Lord. "As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.

You: scribbles for someone

you

I know what I say when I see that you have no heart. You are heartless. What did you do with it? Did you not want it? I loved it before you stopped up your ears and with tears shot holes in your beautiful heart. I love you now, but you look deathly ill and your words spell despair. There is never bright light in your eyes. You don't bring me joy. I feel sorrow because I see you.

I know what I say when I see…because I hear you have brilliance. You speak lots of things and comprehend lots of expression…of knowledge…in different mediums, but you have no emotion. Everything is jade. Everything is permissible and there is little difference in meaning.

Or maybe I see you are only emotion, and not one principle. You bleed derision or conceit or blatant hatred. You scream confusion, but when have you stood still? When have you asked why and expected an answer? And listened. I know you know lots of things. And think lots of things and feel lots of things. Stop dreaming what you want. Ask me what you have. Nightmares happen at night and are bad. Don't say, "I'm fine. I'm fine as fuck." You're not. Don't live a nightmare because you want to. It's bad for you. Don't call it good. It's not. Don't let in a lie.

I looked up to heaven and beheld a great light. It cast me in brilliance and heat. I didn't know I was so complicated or impressible, nor that I was blind and never discerned color. I had only ever contemplated me. I didn't know why blood stirred me to waking? I didn't know I was heartless. Because I didn't know the heart is a matter of perspective. Someone told me. That is why I see you.

Transcendentgivedness

I know why i haven't written my book yet. It's because I have a lazy writer's mind. I do not have a lazy mind. It's also because I'm so critical of what i write, but who isn't. i'll tell you, the people making loads blogging. is it all beneficial? up to the minute? pertinent beyond pertinent? no. but plenty of it is informative, simply not knee jerking, head snapping, steam heat the cranium-profound. but this is. the only other reason i have not written my book yet, which in addition (but not, because it is more a function of f(x)=??) IS why i have a lazy writer's mind, IS i have no time. everyone says that, "I don't have time to blah blah blah." that's fine, but i don't have to time develop this skill, writing. not everyone says that about development, normally it's about time to talk to so and so, or finding time to get the groceries, or for those slightly more concerned with growth, time to garden. garden is both a noun and a verb. i will say that my writer's mind is generally more insane at night. insane because everything is working at extremely fast speeds and i can't put it down fast enough. i can barely keep up. so i flit from one perfect complete thought to the next and it's all worth the time, but very little is inexorably explored. so...i still go to bed on a small bed, all alone and bereft of female companionship. and i converse for two somewhere in the frontal lobe i think. i must say i do love writing. i love how it feels.

on the subject of time, which is interwoven with nearly every subject i can think of because i'm interminably confined within it. it is now 1:20AM. i know that i've not written half the wonderful thoughts i had tonight, all whilst eating a breed of apple i have never in my life heard of, but which apparently exists and is made available to me because i live in America and Whole Foods has every named apple ever named.

5 minutes later.

yes, 5. it seems i'm lossing steam and speed and memory. i wanted to say something about how i'm thinking as though i'm a CEO. thinking. i'm not a CEO yet, but i imagine thinking does precede it. agree.

i had an untold plethora of silver lined clouds raining down little confirmations of how or why "to whom much is given, much will be expected." that's from the Bible. the most brilliant book every written. and so, written through Job to Revelation and 40 different men. men God inspired, not men inspired. and God is not described in time. He does go into it, like plunging in the ocean, or Jesus to be more exact. and I'm reading a book about him called Fifty Reasons Why Jesus Came to Die.

...And I'm remembering why all the little epiphanies. "to whom much is given, much will be expected," we think of that as money, time, something i can offer. i'm a pobre (en espanol) a poor person, not the CEO. BUT i've been given eternal life. there's nothing greater i've been give. it's the greatest thing i can tell you. so, i have some lovely perspective on the present poverty. mine isn't poverty of spirit or "why? why? why? why me, God?" this is how things are. but i have something. you want it? i have a river of life flowing out of me. makes the lame to walk and the blind to see. opens prison doors. sets the captives free. i've got a river of life flowing out of me.

...and so i flit to this: "For in this hope we are saved. But hope that is seen is no hope at all. Who hopes for what he already has?" Romans 8:24

Who hopes for what he already has? I have it all. What are you hoping for? tell me. I'm curious and I bet I can think of how to get it.

Currently reading : A Tour of the Calculus By David Berlinski Release date: By 28 January, 1997

Heartfelt sentimental sap with a teaspoon of truth.

The problem with wanting to write is…a million. But the compulsion to write is always there. I read that Dostoevsky suffered from epilepsy and that he went to the military academy for civil engineering. He also was penniless more than once and yet literally moved Russia with his first novel Notes from the Underground. I'm honestly a bit baffled and don't have any concept of the political or socioeconomic mental of that day, but it happened. I imagine he didn't expect the impact. I think he was insufferably critical of himself, and yet, he wrote profusely, I think with an indifference, a determination. There's an introspection and detachment from what is so subtle and everyday, what is often "unsaid" but what cudgels the brain into an inability to "make sense", let alone express feeling or longing or despair, or maybe a blinding euphoria or maybe the deepest, waiting gladness. Do you feel it? that passing emotion? was it there? Did you pay it attention? No, it's almost imperceptible. It's nothing. Why express what you don't understand? why tell someone? But it was there. "Where is he today? Will he write his book? Why can't we know what we don't know? why am I my own worst critic, sitting here, whisky in hand, and knowing i've known more than this. i'm not exactly the train wreck in Notes, deliberately elaborating on why 2+2 makes 4 and why there is nothing for it but to do nothing, because to move, is to get trampled or expend engery you don't have or slam into a glass wall you can't avoid if you take one step the inevitable wrong direction. i can't be that, an irrefutable math problem. i don't have only one answer, and i've been loved."

This candor of heart and mind, with some intuition of what is good writing and a talent for description, held as a winter globe in the left hand—the story, and the relentless pen in the right hand, this is makes the story in the mind's eye, a book, a complete piece. This is when the detached and disinterested public opens one eye and blinks. "What's that? This is a window into a mind. What kind of mind is this, that shamelessly exhales…and in print, let alone before the little people who see him in his little world? This character isn't afraid of living…."

You have to have nerve to write. You have to have an ego to be willing to tell the public "not only is this worth reading, it's good." And you have to believe it is good. It's putting your neck on the line for a car to run over your head. Why write to merely attempt? Why write to merely impress? Then you've stopped before you began. You're conforming to a book, the image of you for everyone to see, and everyone thinks you're a great novelist and eagerly awaits your next piece, when you think "that book", that epitomised tale, should provoke and fascinate fickle minds. It must teach and empathize and give voice to things we hardly speak. It can't be a work to merely pass the time or the motive of fame, an exaggerated view of oneself. It has to be an extension of oneself, a reflection of something seen or internalized. That's better writing, intentional writing, worthwhile writing. That must be art, living art. And the right hand diligently writes. The hand that holds your left and leads you down a shaded path. That hand that grips you when you don't speak, except with bright, curious eyes. You must move that pen if you're going to write.

I don't know how many times I've stared at the ground in the plaza. Do you ever have the sensation that moments of your day are the middle of a fish eye camera lens? That the commotion of the plaza, the clouds and blue sky and street lamps and looming plaza statue and periphery trees and the whole assortment of people milling and sitting about have always been there and for this moment you're walking between them? "Is that the same chubby face inserting that same fat hand into that same orfice of a mouth? What on God's green earth compels a child to do that? Who is his attractive mother and is she aware that her son has handled everything brown and green and small and rubbished? Does she see her son's new fascination and strange profile? I think I've seen her before? All these ambling, well-dressed, shapely women and high maintenance children are looking the same. ...I want to be a dad. How is it to have awife? What planet am I on?"

You've seen it all before but today you feel old and disproportionate, kind of oblong and bigheaded, a Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade blimp, or as if you're an ant peering up at your own inflated, slow motion body. You put one foot in front of the other and are aware that people see you, moving across the plaza, but you can't pay any more attention. "They'll be here tomorrow. I'll think they're interesting tomorrow. I'll sit there and stare again tomorrow. But last night…that was yesterday. That's why I'm irritable and so introverted. Who thinks it's ok to get completely drunk off his mind and then robbed at the front door? Why have I been woken on 2 hour intervals to unlock the door for five different people? What kind of wife loves and forgives that kind of idiocy? I need to eat something."

community college chronicled

I’ve decided to write all through one of my classes to pass the time. It's the kind of class I've decided do as little as humanly possible and get an A. So, rather than blog every class period, I'm simply going to add to this one. fyi.

1/23/06
In my terrific boredom I have noticed in this classroom the curvature of two female bodies, considered the most unperverted description of the intimacy of two people in love (and how hard it is to portray the volume of wholesomeness in one kind of expression). I have heard everything this bland professor has said (without offering any break in his long, painfully thorough class) concerning sight and how I detect the hue of that one girl’s stomach when she persistently stretches because she too is bored and apparently very stiff. And I’ve listened inattentively to the vibration of his monosyllabic voice seemingly communicating his great interest in exactly what ‘it is’ I’m hearing due to his emanating sound waves. And I’m seated with my attention diverted, feeling as though his thick, slow sound waves are determined to interrupt to all my own extremely important thoughts and preoccupations. I’m getting up and leaving in 15 minutes.

1/30/06
“There Are Beautiful Women Everywhere”

I need to change my oil. I was late for class because parking is a nightmare. Since when did everyone move to Dayton to go to Sinclair? I learned something in class today…and some day the professor is going to stop class and ask me what I’m writing. I’ll tell him, “I’m writing about beautiful women everywhere.” But I won’t point to any, although, I do like the general demeanor of two girls here. I like there their faces and belly skin will always be a known stimulus. But it’s interesting because unless I can differentiate what I find physically attractive, most eligible women begin to look the same, particularly at the University. It’s not to say they are unattractive, but I’m also not giving it much thought. It doesn’t help sex appeal either when social mores suggest humping like rabbits. …I’ll look the other way. The probability is tragic. Here at this school if a beautiful woman is spied, she’s like a sun traversing our very dark universe. At other schools the fields are on fire because rich people are sending all their children. (It is a fact that wealth and beauty attract each other.) Their kids are lighting up and scattering in pairs over rural utopia like germinating beauty.
It seems most of the time beautiful women are nicer from a distance. They are either more alluring because I know nothing else about them, or if they get close (sitting next to me in class, a real person) they’re potentially alarming and I’m inadvertently more critical. I think we all do that…. In the event this “attractive woman” does get close because I want it and she wants it and the latent feelings of deep ‘I like you’ well up (like a million ton submarine coalescing from oceanic layers. Are you getting the imagery? I am like an ocean with a feeling inside called submarine. I don’t think submarines coalesce, but feelings do.)…then we run the whole gamut of why we’re interested and what we’ll invest. And so, trust is born, a small, baby bud.

2/1/06
I’m getting a head start on prewriting in my class, which has nothing to do with what I’m writing…because I’m doing it to distract myself. On the subject of writing, people identifying with shapes. If I say that I patiently walked behind a girl shaped like an obelisk…I’m saying she’s extremely tall, four sided, and tapers, which is not exactly what I mean. That’s the next subject, keywords. But first, the obelisk girl was more pear shaped, with long thin legs that fit like pegs under her pear bottom. This is good imagery. This description of shape is what a reader needs to picture me predictably going from class to class and getting slowed down behind three loudly chattering girls, one being pear shaped.
I think shape also relates mood. For instance, if I describe how indescribably good looking I am today, I’d suggest I’m not quite so arrogant and mention my low cut Converse, my average beige cords and only plaid shirt, and my conspicuous pea coat. The pea coat is probably the only thing worth mentioning because of its wide lapels, Tall and fitted cut, split coattail, and very tight weave. It is a navy pea coat (42L), and anyone who knows anything about such things knows “my shape” looks like a mariner in white converse. The mood I suppose is mild mannered and…swabbie. …color is obviously mood setting.
Keywords are…elemental and key, critical and also imperative. Basically without vocabulary I’m not humorous because you don’t understand me, nor am I sarcastic because I can’t communicate. All because I can’t articulate what’s inside me. Do you get it dear reader? Why not, damn it?!
I don’t understand why the gay man in my class never sits facing forward. He always looks like gravity is smashing himself into himself, like a ball…which is round and has no front to face forward. But he does have a face. I’ve seen it notice me. Last time a gay classmate hit on me I wasted no time and told him, “I write about beautiful women everywhere”. …A somewhat deflated ball that refuses to sit up straight.
I asked the girl who stretches in the front row if her husband was in the military. It’s the only thing I said to her today. I think I surprised her. It was rather out of the blue…. She said she wasn’t married. She was engaged and he was in the navy. I said, “oh”. It wasn’t that awkward, but almost. I’m extremely disarming.

3/17/06 The last week of classes.
I skipped my final exam in anatomy and physiology. I shouldn’t have done that…but I hadn’t been to class since the previous exam (six lectures). I hated lecture and think I’m smart enough to skip (if I read the book). Regardless, I missed the last exam and deserved to fail. I’ve never failed a class. I didn’t fail. I wandered aimlessly for 15 minutes trying to decide what I should do, and if I’m even responsible enough to shell out the money to register for pharmacology. (Fortunately it’s a distance learning class, so I can study however I want, and it’s about drugs.) After 10 minutes of consternation and contemplation of defenestration (all of those things), I happened upon a girl in my class in the foyer (vestibule is a good synonym for foyer) and I asked her, “Is the exam today?” Keep in mind I hadn’t been to class and my classmates may have noticed. I felt slightly self-conscious. She said, “No, it was Wednesday.” I said softly, “Oh…I haven’t been to class since the last test.” She looked at me and said, “Oh…my…goodness…” Then we didn’t say anything for two seconds. She was studying the material for our final and told me she was taking the test in a half hour in our professor’s office. I sort of sheepishly smiled and said, “She’s not going to like this,” and went looking for our dear professor. In my mind, I deserved to fail and I was going to be beggar, expecting a righteous finger to point me out the door. …I walked in her office door and she handed me the exam and said, “I was wondering when you were going to contact me.” I was dumbfounded. I took the test and got an 80. That’s because I stayed up most of the night “studying”…for the exam I didn’t know I skipped. As it happens, I had cumulative grades of three B minuses, one D, and one C in lab. (I’m not proud.) AND THEN I was given a 25 point extra credit exam over any material in all three A&P classes. I didn’t know about this exam. I scored 20 of 25 and that means (I somehow retained information from the other two A&P classes I took in 2000 and) 20 points were added to my 80 test score. I got a 100 on the final exam that I skipped. …all this means that my final class grade was 4 points short of a B, and my professor said, “You’re my lowest B. I’ll give it to you.” I was dumbfounded. This means a few things and I feel I’ve experienced grace….

On Wednesday, the day I didn’t know I was skipping my A&P final to prepare for my other final, I had a long conversation with my psyche teacher after the test. We’ve never talked. We only have impressions of each other. I told him where I am in life…because I needed to tell someone who’d comprehend…and didn’t know me. And this is more or less what he told me, “I’m convinced you have the brain to go all the way.” Wednesday was a monumental day for me. I’m going to move.

dark night of the soul

Imagine a plain wooden chair and a boy seated in the dark. The air is oppressive but not so much that it belies a vast emptiness. The space has no determinable size, at least in height, and from somewhere above light exposes the boy, then dissipates in the gloom, distorting the spectral walls. They seem to move in the murk. In his mind's eye, he sits upright, though this Brobdingnagian place may not be, and not even the light filtering down seems to have a beginning. He stares vacantly. Beyond the glow every dimension seems a patchwork of gray, as if in an impressionist's painting. He gropes for the walls through this colloidal dark but finds no door. And oddly, the walls seem to be fabricated of books. There are no shelves. Most of them appear to be Bibles, Bibles of all sizes, languages, and translations. Among them are other literary works but most are Bibles. They protrude from stacks and rows in no particular order, and the boy begins to climb them.

gatugala

Tonight I had a tiff with my cat. It went like this: “I see you love me and don’t want to stop kneading my lap.” “Meow, yes, I am very content right now. I’m rarely this content. Ppffffpmuuuur. mew. ” (My cat is probably the most vocal domesticated animal I have ever met, “Ppfffmuur” for instance and “mmMA”—with short “a” and more stress on the “M”.) “I can’t understand what you’re saying,” I think. The cat doesn’t say anything. As I email, etc., cat, “Gatugala”, whimsically decides to exchange my lap for the bed. That’s fine. I don’t care. I’m absorbed in my email. Then I turn around to see Gatugala, which means “giant cat”, licking her long languid leg held above her head as she intermittently glances at the ceiling and some unknown distraction. …I don’t appreciate body washing on my bed. I never have. It’s where I sleep and alone, no cats. I’ve been told this was the former bedroom of Gatugala’s owner, whereupon Gatugala took up residency and peed on the bed. Knowing this, I am not about to let this cat urinate in my room on my bed. I enjoy Gatugala and politely tapped her butt and rubbed her ears. “Giant cat…please get off my bed.” No reply, more washing of the underarm. …Sometimes indifference amuses me to no end. I enjoy zero responses and wonder in my brain, “what does it take to be the absolute center of their attention…only for a moment?” I rarely think this way about cats. Seeing as Gatugala is indifferent to where I sleep and what I say and how I feel, I screamed shrilly, “get off the bed!” …no I didn’t, but being much larger, I did press her body into the bed and she thought it unpleasant and didn’t want to lick herself any longer. “Did you hear what I said?” “…why am I talking to a cat?” She didn’t move. I think…she thought…she was entitled. “…why does it matter? why am I watching this animal watch me?” She swatted me. She did. Then to my astonishment, Gatugala, the cat I am in fact fond of, hissed at me. …Cats hiss. Don’t be alarmed. It’s no surprise. They’ve been hissing since they boarded Noah’s ark. It may mean general irritation at the sight of the floor or the water bowl or the fact that you are bigger and it must walk on four feet or maybe it’s a gloomy day, or it can mean stark raving madness. Gatagula is in love with me and has never hissed or tried to bite me. “…I have a relationship with a schizophrenic cat.”

Next day:
Today I got tired of the mewing and constant noise for…who knows why the cat sits in the middle of the room and thinks you understand it. If I move to acknowledge the drama and show attention to the demanding cat meowing it’s head off and looking only at me, if I say, “for crying out loud, what is the problem,” it shows me its butt and walks away. It never runs, but always walks aimlessly into all the furniture, rubbing its head and butt along the way. Today I was tired and chased the cat, watching its surprise, then desperate, sliding escape over the lovely wooden floors. We started in the bedroom doorway, skidded (and I loudly followed) through the endless foyer—passing the retiring sofa and watchful table lamp. The coat rack stood silent, the shoes motionless. She barely missed the dining room exit, lost control in the dining room, and plowed into the giant armchair before seeing deliverance flooding through the big, huge, divinely sent open window. I rather enjoyed the whole episode and turned and went back to my room. This evening when I came home from teaching, Gatugala greeted me with all the unconditional love in her schizophrenic heart, as if I had never been a monster. Maybe she is an amnesiac.

Anytown USA

These two stood in the rain. They stood close but did not touch and appeared to be soaking in the scene. The sun had set and the street lamps cast a dreamlike haze on the vacant street. I wasn't sure if they had spoken to each other, but it seemed they were in a strange silent way, as if they might as well have been fixtures of the street scene themselves. The whole image to me was surreal, as ordinary as any other rainy, isolated street in any other lively city, but momentarily inexplicable all the same. She was dressed in a knee length light blue colored raincoat. Her hood didn't quite hide her face and her big brown eyes looked imploringly from the mesmerizing stillness to the boy's serene expression. He was smiling at her but not as if to respond to her, but more a deep content. I think these two had no concept of the passing time and the rain puddled at their feet. Then, as eternal as this peculiar picture seemed, the boy clasped her hand and they walked out of my sight.

Eudaemonic

I learned a new word, eudaemonic. Before you go to dictionary.com and look it up, as is your obsessive habit, or mine, I will put eudaemonic in a few sentences for you to extricate it's meaning. (Then you will feel erudite.) For example, the coffee I'm drinking now makes me feel grand. Eudaemonic coffee is grand. ...ok maybe I need to work on this usage. Eudaemonic is an adjective. Now look it up. The music I'm listening to now about dancing in the rain with the wife I don't have and making love like ballroom dancing is eudaemonic...or it should be. Robi Draco Rosa is eudaemonic to look at, particularly if your a woman...even if you're a man. He's very handsome. I'm eudaemonic to myself when I make myself laugh. I was looking at pictures of my sisters wedding last night and noticing people's shapes. I notice that two newly weds had very oval shaped heads. They had oval faces, but their entire heads seemed shaped like ovals too, on the end of stick necks. I suppose I was being imaginative or artistic. It was eudaemonic. I need to be refreshed on the parts of speech...objects of prepositions, adjectives, nouns. You know you learn those things in 4th grade. I feel sheepish.