It's not life that I'm afraid of, I'm afraid I'm just not brave enough...

So work has been pretty easy of late. We have about twice as many employees as we need (/still/), so I sit around for a while generally every day. "Word on the street" is, Larry's getting ready to let some people go, and luckily it is rumored to be the lazy people. In the meanwhile, I continue to get paid $9 for barely doing any menial labor. Mostly just sleeping or reading Paradise Lost.

Speaking of sleeping: I have not been sleeping well this week. Monday night, I got to bed at 10PM, but didn't get to sleep until at least 11:15PM. Last night, I stayed up /way/ too late watching a movie with Reez (Fight Club), but I justified it by saying, "Well, I was tired going into this thing, so by midnight, I should be able to just fall asleep as my head hits the pillow." Unfortunately, this was not the case. I went to bed at 12AM, and just stayed wide awake, brain edging into the red, until about 1AM. So luckily, I got to take a bit of a nap at work today. But I get sick of not being able to sleep. I need a brain-off button. In fact, make that a Universal Remote for the heart too.

Why should I be lonely? The Living God makes His temple in my heart. Sometimes it is just vulnerability itself that hurts. Laying there, staring at the ceiling, thinking: "I could get hurt." It is at once both exciting and pretty darn painful in a pretty physical sense. I really don't fall that often, but when I do it is usually hard and fast. As for now, I am simply looking over the edge of the cliff, trying to convince myself that the rush of the jump isn't worth the pain of the abrupt stop. So far so good. Why should I be afraid of vulnerability? The Lord of Hosts is my Savior, and my future is in His merciful hands. I have been making it to daily Mass the past couple days, which is nice. Haven't had time to go to adoration afterwards, but it's a start. Almost done reading through Romans too.

I finally secured a copy of The Misters' LP (a band from my highschool, the CD was put out in 2002) and it is pretty awesome for a bunch of highschoolers. I am wowed and excited. Also: two road-trips shaping up! Canada is currently slated for July 22-23, tentatively. And I can definitely stay at Nate's place on the 29th, which should be good fun. It will be nice to hang down in the Bend, and hopefully I can see Millicious before he heads off to Austria next semester.

"But you think of life with me, the distant possibility. I could live for that."

-L

Mystery and wonder, messy hearts made of thunder

I have been thinking a lot, this past week. I have been meaning to write it for a while, but just haven't worked up the "oomph" until now. I have something still percolating on the back burner (not to mix metaphors or anything), but that has waited a week already, it can wait a day or two more.

So yeah, this past week at work was /really/ slow, so I usually spent at /least/ an hour a day just sitting around waiting for more parts to pack. Some days it was more like 3 hours, but hey: they're still paying, who's complaining? So on Wednesday or something, I finally remembered to bring a book to work, but (of course) I didn't remember until it was 5 minutes before I had to leave. I was quickly searching the whole house for my collexion of Chekov plays that I still have to finish, and I wasn't finding it. So my eye alighted on a thick book entitled "Paradise Lost and other Poetry" and I quickly snatched it. It was, of course, a collexion of John Milton's poetry.

Perhaps at this juncture, I should take a moment to expound on my history with M. Milton. You see, for someone who writes poetry, I read even less than most non-poets do. So whenever literary conversations get around to influences, I have to say that, aside from:
1) Mr. Shakespeare, who taught me a love for form and meter but didn't really influence the content
2) Lyricists like Aaron Weiss and Efrim Menuck, who definitely direct my ideas and metaphors without really influencing the form that they are presented in.
I don't think I really have any "influence" in my writing aside from my life. Now, I am coo with that. It makes me feel a little less avant-whatever, but hey: I'm only a beatnik in my head. The thing is: there are perhaps two poets whose few poems that I have read came at such a time that they were pretty influential on my initial poetry, and indeed my conception of what poetry even is. They are: John Donne (who, interestingly enough, is a large influence of Aaron Weiss') and John Milton. I encountered those two poems of Donne's in my Brit Lit class Junior year of highschool, which is about when I first started writing, and Milton even earlier, in middle-school.

My history with Milton begins at my grandparents' cottage "Up North", with weeks spent there in the summer. The house and cottage are since sold, but one summer, with nothing better to do, I picked up an old edition of Paradise Lost and started to read. I believe I only got as far as Book 6 before I lost steam and stopped, but I can't have read that much of something without it influencing me, however subtly. So fast forward perhaps as many as 6 years to this week, when by chance I happened to pick up a collexion of Milton's poetry on my way out the door, thinking to myself: "Well, at the least, it's long!" So I cracked this book open at work, and read the first half (his non-Paradise Lost work) first. It pretty much blew my socks off! I was amazed by how much I connected with his material, and his take on life, whether it was written in archaic English or not. I also got about 4 books through Paradise Lost, and it has some /very/ striking parts in it as well (though I'm sure some of the carefully detailed descriptions are wasted on me).

Now, the point of this whole post is that reading Milton's work again, and reading the wordy introduction that preceeded it, really got me wondering: Why on Earth do I write? John Milton wrote because he believed that God gave him an extraordinary gift, and destined him for literary fame. I, on the other hand, would not be at all surprised if I never published a poem in my life. Part of the problem is that society today does not appreciate writing enough for a man to devote his entire life to writing, like Milton did. The other issue is that I have simply never felt called to dedicate my life to writing, it has always been more of a side-thing. So why do I write? The typical answer these days would be "self-expression", but I think that that very vague, subjective-worth-only mentality has led to more tripe than good writing. Besides, my main reason for writing is not expressing /myself/ as much as it is expressing a state of affairs, or a metaphor that I think gives insight into humanity. I do not write for myself to read it. Whether or not I will ever be published, I write to communicate to others, rather than simply to present myself with a mirror. I am interested in all things "tremendously human", whether they are ordered or disordered, happy or sad, so long as it is a part of "the human experience", it intrigues me.

Part of the issue, I guess, is that I've come to the conclusion that I'm not very good at writing. Now, I'm not talking about the finished product. I am generally at least satisfied with what I write, and I know that at least a couple of people find them authentic, which is all that I ask for. No, what I mean is the actual act of writing. Generally, if there is anything that I could do /other/ that writing, 9 times out of 10 I will choose distraction over creativity. So why do I write? I'm not really sure. An attempt to communicate humanity to human-kind, perhaps in the vain idea that I will have original thoughts... I just know that it is nothing nearly as "vocational" as Milton's reasons for writing. I don't really feel a Diving Calling to write, but sometimes I wonder if, if perhaps I /can/ write, that somehow indicates a responsibility to do so to advance the kingdom of God as best I can. I'm not sure. Is a gift ever given without a responsibility to use it for the Kingdom? I don't even know. I only got six hours of sleep last night, and I do believe I'm rambling, and have been writing this for so long that I have pretty much lost track of where I started, and where I was going. Oh well. So I guess I'll end it here then.

God is so nuts and, like Dntel says: "Life is Full of Possibilities". I'll try to get that more "creative" writing done sometime soon and post it up. We see. I also have yet to write that post about music... but this post was supposed to be a setup for it anyways. I think I am addicted to Mr. Menuck's music, no matter how awful his singing voice may be.

"TOGETHER, TOGETHER, TOGETHER, TOGETHER... never to retreat."
-L

"We've been at the bottom, we've soared to the sun; Just to see how beautiful and painful it could be"

So yeah. I have been having the most social weekend I've had all summer. Last night I got together with Tina, Mike, Emma, Aaron and a few other kids and watched "The Machinist" (which is an excellent psychological thriller starring a 120lb Christian Bale). Around midnight, after hanging out for a while, we all slowly filed out. Aaron and I were still standing around talking by the car, and I mentioned that the night was beautiful and I didn't feel like going to bed yet. So we stopped by my house to get some cigarillos, then went over to his apartment. It is a pretty nice place, actually. Bobis and Aaron and I sat outside and smoked and talked, covering a variety of topics ranging from God to girls to Mariology to "Revival". Then Ed came home and we went inside and hung out. We ended up watching a decent (if poorly written) student sci-fi film that was about 20 minutes long. By that point, it was 2:30AM and I was about to shuffle off home. Then Ed said, "So... do you play Halo?" and I was like, "Do I?" so for the next hour and a half we fragged it up. It was fun to play again, seeing as I haven't taken up the rocket launcher since last semester. So I got to bed about 4:30AM. It was a great night. I have been somewhat socially starved this summer, all of us have been really busy with our jobs.

Tonight was also a hangout night at Aaron's apartment. We got together at 9PM and watched "Rat Race", which had some /hilarious/ parts, but overall was a dud, and featured probably the worst ending I've ever seen in a movie. It was one of those endings where you just roll your eyes and groan, except that it went on for (I kid you not) 10-15 minutes. After that, we just hung around joking and laughing until we were red in the face, and played a few rounds of Halo. Ed is pretty good, but I am usually second place by a respectable margin. Anyways, so that was really fun too.

Reez and I baked a pie today. She is going camping for a few days starting tomorrow, so we decided to do the whole "Father's Day Dinner" tonight instead. We had steak fajitas, which were /the-fishes/, then our strawberry-rhubarb pie for desert. So I guess this is my second foray into pie-making (ask me about the first Great Pie Disaster sometime). Yeah, but that went pretty smoothly, and I can pretty confidently pie it up now at a moment's notice. Speaking of food, I don't know what's up with me, but I love guacomole all of a sudden. Ever since I had it at Reez's Party. I mean, I never /hated/ it, I just never had an opinion really. But it is pretty awesome on most things!

Sorry to just give a "facts-only" update. I always feel kind of weaksauce when I do these, but I figure it's better than writing nothing at all, and hopefully I can get the "oomph" to post something of substance later. I mean, seriously... guacomole?

"Wings that were ours! Broken from trying! Wings that were ours! Melted while flying!"
-L

P.S. Reez is on Facebook now. Friend her. :)

"She wore that phony smile on her face, I guess like a bandage on a wounded place..."

Deep calls to deep. And sometimes I forget that there's a deep out there. Sometimes, when I spend more time talking about God than I do talking /to/ Him, I make Him smaller than He is. I make Him manageable, understandable, comprehensible. He becomes a facet, albeit still the most important facet, of my life. And, oh the pride, I imagine Him to be a facet that I have already figured out. But deep calls to deep, and my soul is just an echo of the call that I hear. I try to sound the bottom of this ocean floor, but my soul cannot cry out except in diminishing echo of Your "FIAT". My spirit is just a rustle of the wind that was breathed into me. And I am more a part of this rolling thunder than I am a part of any of you. I am more closely related to this swelling wave than I am to any of you.

Yet, I know that I try to love any one of you more than I try to love that Deep. I am always trying to love the other soft echos of that clarion call that has gone on from Time's beginning. And so I become distracted, and I seek approval, looking for the wind in the rustle that it leaves, and trying to fill my soul with that pure note by listening to its reverberations. And I know that I need to seek only God. Because I am /one/ with that Deep, I am drawn from those depths... and not from any of you.

And far too often, I think that I need to look outside of myself for that ocean, but the living water has a wellspring reaching deep into my own heart! I let things pile up over the opening of that well and I forget that it swells up, deep underneath my dead and worldly concerns. It is so easy to think that our spiritual life, that our relationship with God exists externally: in the people that we serve, in the prayers and praises that we offer, in His voice that seems to come from Heaven. But it comes from our heart. Our soul was awakened at our conception by that alarum and called into action! And that call to arms still exists within our hearts. The waters of grace do not reach us by a tributary and then sit stagnant in our hearts! Rather: the unfathomable depths of the ocean of Love froths in our very soul, always renewing and breaking forth into life! The Spirit cries out: "ABBA" from the most intimate center of our being, and we know that we are His children. Allelulia.

I'm afraid that I'm not being very clear: GOD IS LOVE, AND WHOEVER REMAINS IN LOVE REMAINS IN GOD AND GOD IN HIM.

"While I kept the keys to every old lock just in case..."
-L

Everyone that loved me more than I could tell, I'm sorry...

So, I updated my website again. Three more songs that I found in my old notebooks, and two new poems. There is one in the God section and one in the Life section. I am actually somewhat pleased with both of them, but feel free to give me any criticism/impressions you have. I will post them right below the signature, in case you don't want to go to the website. The only thing that's different there is that you can read my little comments before the thingie. I know some people would never read them if I didn't put them here though. :) You can go to the site for the lyrics.

There is some excitement going on at work! It is kind of turning into "Survivor: TRW Factory", because we have more workers than we probably need and as a result we will probably cut from about 10 workers to 4-5 this week. We'll see. There is a group of really lazy guys who have somehow escaped the cuts so far, but the boss is aware of them so I am pretty confidant in my job. Until then, it is mostly sitting around getting paid to wait for more work to do.

Reez is going down to Steubenville to do the whole "Registration Day" thing this Thursday/Friday. That means she gets a school email, which means she gets on Facebook, which kind of excites me for some reason. :D I hope that she has a great time down there!

Ed stopped by to return Reez's watch today during dinner and got roped into eating some food. That was fun, I had a very good time. I am feeling pretty peaceful about life in general. God works all things for the good of those who love Him, even if it seems senseless sometimes to us. Love the questions, like locked rooms, and someday live your way into the answer. Yadda, yadda. You all have heard it before. These are the thoughts that are dominating my mind these late-nights.

Man, sometimes life just seems to have so many possibilities that it paralyzes you. It is like I wrote in my first LJ entry ever: I probably have enough money to hop on an airplane to pretty much anywhere. I am almost 20 years old. I could live any life that I wanted to! But ultimately, no matter what I desire (I know what I /want/: the will of God), no matter the approval or disapproval of others, the only person who can give permission or denial is God, who loves us so much that, while we were still sinners, Christ died for us!

Father, I adore You, lay my heart before You. How I love You.
Jesus, I adore You, lay my heart before You. How I love You.
Spirit, I adore You, lay my heart before You. How I love You.

"There's a private Hell, for those who only live to love themselves..."
-L

Desperados -6/14/06

Yeah, love's the last refuge of sinners and saints
Cuz we've all grown up so beat down and afraid
It takes us so long just to see that we're made
For something better than this

Still that revelation does not satiate
Not sure what we are, we just know what we hate
From 10,000 lessons we learned the hard way
Our 10,001 lonely mistakes

Thus failures beat lessons, just one step ahead
Lit fire in our hearts and cried salt in our beds
A passion to live in a way where we'll thrive
So strong it comes down to just "do or we'll die"!

We stand at the ready with one last brave cry:
"You'll
NEVER
Take us
Alive."


The Way I've Made You (Not the Way You've Grown) -6/14/06

We've had our share of darknesses
That seemed to leave us in despair
But from the frigid nights we lived
Our eyes have learned to search the air
And seek the sun while it is day.

We've had our share of pesticide
That hurt so much, we thought we'd die
But ev'ry time it was applied
It killed the things that drained us dry
And to this day, we still have thrived.

We've had our share of prunings since
We knelt and wept and loudly cried
Laid bare, we saw the blossoms fall
"Good God, all my accomplishments!"
To which He said,
"My precious Bride."

"We'd burn like the morning, then break like your heart "

So, I finally got up the pictures from Reez's graduation party. Those are all up on Facebook. You can go check them out if you like. Nothing spectacular, but I got a picture of most of the people who I knew that attended the party.

The party itself was quite a success. Probably over 100 people showed up over the course of about 4PM-10/11PM. Highlights of the evening included: walking around with Steve Metz taking random pictures, seeing kids that I haven't seen much of this summer, the cake (also pictured) which was /de-fishes/! and the tacos, which were also excellent. It was really good to see Steve for the first time since Christmas break. We talked a bit about the old days, and he is going to see if his boss can do anything about making my guitar sound alright again. In which case, I may attempt to pick it up again. Also: Mrs. Graff and Ms. Vail, two of my favorite English teachers ever (I once called Mrs. Graff "mom" by accident. That is how it went down.) showed up at the party! So I talked to them for a while. I hadn't seen them in at least a year, so that was awesome.

Yeah. So last night, I was chatting with Joe online, and he suggested that we hang out. So we went to "the Liquor Keep" (Smorkeys was closed :( ) and bought a couple of cigars. We then retired to my back porch and spent a couple of hours smorking in the nighttime air. Our conversation covered the usual: God, girls, guitars, philosophy, psychology and... pheromones? I swear. It was an excellent time, and just what I needed that night. It left me feeling even more at peace, though the smorking could have contributed to that. I went to bed happy and pretty buzzed, but had no trouble at all falling asleep. All in all: a fabulous hangout.

One of our topics of conversation was "disordered life-views in music", and how much we ought to listen to the music, or at least how much we ought to "glory in it", which I'm not sure I do (at least not anymore). That is a very interesting topic that perhaps I shall write about when it is less past-my-bedtime. Feel free to weigh in below, however. In preparation for the post, I have been listening to "[A->B] Life" by mewithoutYou, a very interesting case-in-point. Aaron Weiss is also probably one of/my favorite lyricist/s ever! Also on my "to-do list" is digging out those lost lyrics and posting them.
Good night, fair readers. May sweet dreams fill your nights, and peaceable times your days.

"Fall in love without warning, just to fall back apart..."
-L

We are giving birth to our own future! We will learn, we will love we will work to change each other!

I have recently been listening to a lot of Conor Obherst's bands (other than Bright Eyes). I downloaded some songs of Commander Venus, his first band, and spent some time enthralled by what "emo" was before it sold out. I have been enjoying quite a bit of the music that he did with Desaparecidos' album called "Read Music/Speak Spanish" (the band name is Spanish for "The Dissapeared"), a vitriolic socio-political punk-rock on the decay of marriages and the comercialization/development of the country (Omaha in particular). I like it quite a bit. It appeals to my small-government, pseudo-anarchist, "A Silver Mt. Zion"ist leanings, plus it is just so good to hear frantic low-fi riffing with Conor singing softly, cracking his voice and shouting loudly over it. That may not sound appealing to many of my readers, but it's pretty magical.
I also downloaded some songs by Sorry About Dresden, a band on Saddle Creek including Conor Obherst's brother. So yeah. There was a theme to my musical downloading. Their music is awesome indie-rock.

In other news, I updated my webpage again today. I have not really written anything recently, or at least nothing complete. I sat down for about a half hour last night and tried to force it, but nothing /good/ came. Then, when I woke up this morning, some excellent stuff just flowed, and I had to quickly write it down while stressing out about getting ready for work. It is as of yet incomplete, but I have enough to pick up where I left off, I think.

Anyways, I updated the site to include my scripts that I wrote for Playwriting and the lyrics that I wrote for "The Berlin Trio" (which was comprised of Steve Metz and I). My website, once again, is linked in my profile. Yeah, upon rereading many of those things, I was struck by how much I still like some of them. The songs especially, are pretty okay, considering what I was like when I wrote them and I do like at least one of the scripts that I wrote. But yeah, if you have thoughts or reactions, feel free to comment/otherwise relay them!

There is a good bit of practical stuff to get through, musings and such. Nothing really deep or theoretical, at least not yet. I might leave that stuff until later. Either tonight or tomorrow, because hopefully I'll have Reez' graduation party picture up on Facebook by then. Joe is coming over soon and we are going to smoke cigars and hang out. That should be good, I have not seen much of my friends since I got back. So, for now: I am signing off. Catch you kids later.

"We will spread, we will cover the earth like air and water!"-L

"A man is just a man, filled with faults and weakness..."

So, I just wanted to take some time to expound on some of my recent thoughts. Mostly taking the form of replies to several of the comments that I received to however-many-posts-ago-it-was. I am feeling pretty tired, so hopefully any lapses in logic or grammar will be forgiven.

1) Ross:
I have had similar experiences as well: times of surrender to God. You are right, it certainly does bring God's order to life. The problem there is that the surrender to God is not a one-time act so much as it is a state of being. And one of Satan's most proven strategies is simply to distract us from God enough that we lose that surrender and the peace that comes from it. It is rarely something big, either. Just a gradual drift that one day you wake up from and realize: "Hey... What happened to the promises that I believed in?" So, thanks for the reminder, bro. I can always use those. ;)
2) Erin:
Ditto what I said to Ross for the first part. Thanks for the reminder. :)
Also: on the issue of high-standards, I know some people who would say that I have very high standards for requiring that the girl be a practicing Catholic, but I see that as a pretty basic compatibility issue. So the question of how /high/ standards are is largely subjective. I also have yet to be successful in making random, I guess what you would call "platonic attractions hiding a constant desire to find 'the one' ", conform to any sort of standard. All that I can do is submit those attractions to God and do my best to act as the Spirit leads. Which can be very confusing when emotions are involved.
I would agree that cynicism does seem to be "the mind's coping mechanism in matters of the heart". Certainly not the soul's response, but the rational mind's, yeah. It is generally a basic-instinct level survival response that delays pain in the moment but ultimately does nothing helpful. The relationship to stoicism interests me. I guess it all depends on whether or not you give the word "stoic" a positive or negative definition. With a positive definition (such as "bearing peacefully with your passions by confronting them and realizing their fleeting nature"), stoicism becomes the exact opposite of cynicism, which is a form of cowardice that seeks to create a fiction that will avoid pain. With a negative definition (such as "seeking to eliminate all forms of passion in an attempt to eliminate the pain that they cause"), stoicism would seem to be the next step in severity after cynicism in the continuum of "measures taken to avoid pain". If that makes any sense. I was assuming that you were using one of the several more slangish meanings of "stoic" rather than actually referring to the Greek philosophy, though perhaps that is not a safe thing to assume about /you/. :)
3) So yeah. The Father has me in the palm of His hand. Through His mercy, He works all things for the good of His children. I am just going through a period of resurrender, which is a pretty regular occurrence. Every so often, we get so distracted from God's glory by the world that we need to refocus on those promises. Yeah. I'm not sure what else to say. We can make as many plans as we want, but they all become completely irrelevant in the face of Divine Grace. Ultimately, no matter who approves or disapproves, God made us for His plan and only He can give us permission or denial.

"Nightime, nobody's home, roam the streets in darkness..."
-L

This all seems so easy (There's choices to make)...

So yeah. I realized that I keep forgetting to explain that I was only ever unemployed for the Tuesday after Memorial Day. That night, I called up Manpower (the temp agency that I am registered with) and got employment. I am working in a factory from 7AM-3:30PM every weekday. It will last until mid-July. It is repetitive, but not overly strenuous. The work environment is relaxed and not stressed.

The job gives me a lot of time to just kind of let my mind wander. As I have been musing about life and the future, I have been getting more and more excited for the future. I know that I may never make money writing poetry, but I will deal with the very /stuff/ of poetry: the human mind and experience. The whole military possibility is starting to sound more and more appealing as well. I really think that it could be a good career, or at least a good thing to do to pay for graduate school, then see the world for a few years. I have no idea if I will be married or have children by that point, but God will bring them in His good time.

Anyways, there was more that I was going to write, but it slipped my mind. I shouldn't write these so close to bedtime...

My grandmother and her friend John are here until Reez's graduation party on Sunday. That should be fun. But it means I'm sleeping in the basement. Which is actually not so bad, and will be fun once Reez joins me later in the week (we are expecting more relatives).

Oh yes! I remember what I was going to write: a response to some of the comments that I got on the last post. It would end up being long enough to merit its own post. Tonight, however, is not the night. I need to wake up in 7.5 hours for work. Another exciting week more than half over!

"These words, with no replies (Stopping we's, starting I's)"
-L

P.S. You pray for me, and I'll pray for you.

You have to, you just have to trust me!

I had another one of those dreams last night. This one was different though, better. I was over it only an hour or so into work. Perhaps while the monotony of the job is conducive to simply letting my mind wander, I can lose myself in it sufficiently to stop any recursive trainwrecks of thought.

It is my dad's birthday today. We had a really good dinner, then played Scrabble as a family. Reez won by oodles, with Mom in second, me in third and Dad coming in last. It was fun though, the first time that I can remember us playing Scrabble. We are usually a card-game family.

On a different topic: I was thinking at work today, what is the best way to get rid of misplaced attractions? I know the most effective way: douse it in cynicism. That is the method that I used all the way through well... through that magical evening a few years back when I started to believe in love again. Because that is the problem with using cynicism as a cure to crushes: it is like using arsenic to cure a fever. Your blood will cool very quickly, but you are left dead. Perhaps some blessed portion of you, "my readers", don't know the technique I'm talking about. It involves developing a hopeless/senseless attraction/crush and immediately killing it with one of three options, depending on why "it would never work out":
1) If she doesn't seem open: She's not in my league. She would never be interested in me.
2) If she seems immature: She's just another insecure girl looking to use me for her ego. She wants attention more than love.
3) If it's more to do with me: I'm sure it's just my loneliness looking for anything to fill itself. It's more about me wanting attention than anything to do with her as a person. I am "damaged goods". (Go to option one)

As you can see, if these thought-patterns are used on pretty much every attraction you have (based on a childhood assumption, carried into adolescence, that every attraction that you have is hopeless) it kills the belief that true mutual love exists, or at least that it will ever happen to you. These are the conditions that I lived under until I was almost eighteen years old. I realize that there must be a better way, a way to believe in the real possibility of love while dealing with attractions that, for whatever reason, have no future. That is what I learned on that night in January, that there is something better than hopelessness, and I have been looking for it in every situation since. I just haven't found it yet in this case.

So in the meantime I have been trying to use a watered down version ("I just broke up with someone last Feb, I can't be sure that any relationship I get into will be more than a rebound"), but every use still leaves you a little more dead on the inside. Maybe the way is just to live with the difficulty of hopeless attractions and keep your eyes on the hope that is in Christ? I have that hope; I know what I am waiting for and I will wait until it is the right time, even if it is years from now. I have no interest in the temporary. My problem is not the future, it is the right-now.

For now I am, as I have said at various points, "chilling in neutral" or "rockin' it single-style" and I am comfortable with that. It is just that, every time I meet or get to know a girl and that attraction starts, I start thinking: "Is this the right person? Is this the right time?" and I generally have to conclude that at the /least/, it is not the right time. Which leaves me unable to either take or leave the attraction, unsure of whether when the right time comes, a month from now or three years from now, the problems will vanish and this will end up being the right person at the right time. And so I pray, and I wait for my Savior to come through for me. Perhaps that is the solution that I am looking for after all.

Rainer Maria Rilke's take on the situation:
"People have (with the help of conventions) oriented all their solutions toward the easy and toward the easiest side of the easy; but it is clear that we must hold to what is difficult; everything alive holds to it, everything in Nature grows and defends itself in its own way and is characteristically and spontaneously itself, seeks at all costs to be so and against all opposition. We know little, but that we must hold to what is difficult is a certainty that will not forsake us; it is good to be solitary, for solitude is difficult; that something is difficult must be a reason the more for us to do it.
To love is good, too: love being difficult. For one human being to love another: that is perhaps the most difficult of all our tasks, the ultimate, the last test and proof, the work for which all other work is but preparation."

"Whoever I was then, I can't ever be again."
-L

We can't go back, can't go back, can't go back, we can't...

I am very tired, but I /finally/ did my massive update on my webpage!
I added every single poem that I wrote Sophomore year, plus two from Freshman year that I had apparently forgotten to put up? Anyways, it's a monstrous update. There is one new poem (which is one of my favorites of this update) in the Life section, one new poem in the Potentiality cycle (probably my favorite of that cycle, which isn't saying much) and six poems in the Girl Three section. As I said, two of the poems in the Girl Three section are older, but were never put up (which is a shame, because one of them is a pretty okay one). They are "Measured in Degrees (No Distance Has Been Traveled)" and "Aeternal Longing (Harvest is at Hand)", if you are looking for them. Other than that, the latest poems at all at the end of their respective sections.

Now that that's off of my back, hopefully I can write some more. Feel free to leave comments here, if you like.

"There's been an accident..."
-L

I saw the end once before, you were there with your heart in your hand outstretched...

So I just got back from the all new "Thursday Night Prayermeetings"! (Whether they're calling it the "Summer College Fellowship" or whatever, it /will/ be dubbed the "Thursday Night" simply because of the precedence of the "Tuesday Night")

It was awesome. I almost didn't go just because I was worn out and didn't feel like getting up. It was super. I got there just in time for the worship, but intend on coming for the fellowship in the future. As I walked in, Bisk was explaining how the show would be run. He said, "Alright, we'll start off with an Our Father, then just launch into praising God vocally and finally segue into a song when the time is right. Because you all are mature enough to worship and praise God without needing a song." And I was like, "Amen! Finally, I'm back in Ann Arbor!" And not being in the whole "Teens = can't /really/ pray so distract them with games or they'll do drugs, quick!" thing helps too, I guess.

Anyways, it was great to break out of my daily work-centered routine and just praise God. Mark Gizczak lead worship, and he is pretty awesome. He knows all of the great, old songs that have probably never been recorded by Matt Maher or Third Day (imagine that...). Anyways, before this post takes a tangental turn: it was great. Praising God in community with some of the guys who I hadn't barely seen so far this summer was awesome.

Also: for the ride there and back, I pulled out "Conceived in Fire" by Living Sacrifice, which hadn't seen the light of day in a while. It is, as ever, an excellent album to get me pumped. Praise the Lord. Now: I have to go to bed, to get up at 6AM. I am really stoked about the Pentecost Weekend Confrence that my parish is putting on. Maybe it'll be great in a way that is compatible with LJ-posting, maybe its greatness will remain only in my mind. Its greatness-potential is not open for argument.

"Shedding this darkness, with every glance to the sky..."
-L