lyric places

"And the sun will set for you,
Sometimes goodbye is the only way
The sun will set for you.

And the shadow of the day,
Will embrace the world in grey,
And the sun will set for you.
And the sun will set for you."

Sitting in the evening gray last night, I listened to this song. It's a new one for me, by Linkin Park; really beautiful. It seems like it's been a while since I've heard new music to fall in love with, but it's about time, maybe. :) The whole lyrics can be found here, or other lyric places, but better to go hear it; the music is as beautiful as the words.

Today

The day has a bright, washed-clean feeling. Cool air, bright sunshine off fuzzy-edged trees. The bright, high green of pine. Shadows and sunshine running side-by-side in crazy up-along-and-down-again designs, like sherbert in ice cream.

I love this weather.

Feature Fun

I was very glad to see this new feature when I logged into Blogger today. I have been wanting a way to keep up with comment conversations for a while and this saves me trying to figure out some alternative to paste into my template, as I had toyed with doing, but would have to have more time to find. Yay for technology. :)

Fun With Word Verification

I have been toying with the idea of setting up a post for a game with word verifications, so I'll leave a link to this post in the sidebar and see if either two of you are entertained by it as much as I am.

Basically, when you go to post a comment, put whatever word mumbo jumbo comes up in your post and make up a definition for it. Full points for not having to change the spelling of the word to fit your definition. ...Actually, I think new spellings should probably have a special category for creativity and running with an idea. But like they say on Whose Line, the points don't matter anyway; they're like powerful geese in the park that can break a man's arm with one of their wings...being chased by a four-year-old girl..

Not Paranoid

I talk to myself out loud. In Spanish. 'Cos these walls have ears, but they don't speak Spanish.

So now we've ended.

Sometimes you think a particular battle or struggle will never end. This is no transitional period, you're here for the rest of your life, time to get over it. When you've been in that mode for a long time, it can be hard to look around enough to see it doesn't have to be that way.

All of my adolescence and young-adulthood I have wanted very bad to grow up, to take responsibility for my life, to become what I was meant to be--I guess even to be an honor to my parents and God. But most of the time, I both wanted too much too fast, and wasn't willing to take charge of making those things happen. Not a great combination. So the last two years have been about doing what I can and (oddly enough) lowering some of my expectations. Plus, I've been forcing myself to look around and realize a lot of things I've looked at emotionally about myself and my life aren't nearly as bad as I thought they were. I still stumble on things that are, once in a while. But there's a lot that isn't.

This past spring and summer I'd been visiting with a counselor, to have someone's help as I continue to go through this process, and, about a week ago, we decided it was a good place to stop. This is probably the first time I've done that where I actually felt like something was accomplished and that it was right to end it now.

Not all my problems (or maybe goals is a better way to look at it?) are solved, of course--is there any time in our lives when they are? Sounds to me suspiciously like a stagnant state. Most things in nature are growing and changing, that I know of. To be changeless is often to be dead, sick, or an inanimate object. As uncomfortable as it is sometimes to be changing, to be "in process" or striving between two extremes for the balance that I see as part of nature's fight in everything, it seems to be the way things are done in this world. Why waste my time fighting it when I could spend my time fighting for it, which seems to be what we all have to do anyway, whether we like it or not?

Everything's Bigger in Texas Africa

You know, I've got to say, I think this trumps us.

Via Possumblog, who has a brilliant solution to the problem.

Reaching the Fourth Level

I am working on moving an old project to a new medium in my spare time.

About the time I got out of high school and we all started seeing a lot less of each other, my sisters and I (with the judicious, or judicial, help of our brother) started The Chain Story, a ridiculous-or-deep and profoundly wacky tale we've spun from our own inspirations and the relentless urge to parody or allude to everything we love, hate, or happen to have pop into our heads at any given moment. We've often done silly projects together growing up; something I've always loved because, simply put, we crack me up and, as I keep telling people, endorphins are good for you.

So...yeah. It's pretty wacky or dry humor (not sure how those two go together) and not everybody likes it. Be forewarned if you venture over.

And now our little chain story, the definitive commentary on the human race (what I call it in my more judicial humble legal spin-doctor executive legislative Court of Appeals ..moments), is graduating to its fourth level (it's like the Matrix!)--from Word document to email to MSN and now to Blogger.

I don't know if Blogger or a standard website or some other format will end up being most useful, so any suggestions on that front are welcome (no matter how you feel about our humor). We'll see how things go.

The End is in Sight

It's the last week of school, I just had my final final today, and I am increasingly experiencing the pleasant sensation of not having anything pressing to do at the moment. I still have stuff to do (the biggest fish on my list is a summer job), but gradually the spaces between "must-do-this-right-now!" things are widening. It's really nice.

Plus, my parents are coming in tonight around midnight for graduation so tomorrow I get to see them, too. It's been a very (insanely) busy semester--I've had frequent fifteen hour days (no joke)--but, trust me, I mean it when I say I feel like I've learned a lot about hard work, time management, but most of all, how not to stress out over projects. I just turn it off. It's like flipping a switch and turning off all the power in the house. Kinda eerie.

I have since decided that total lack of emotion is also boring, and what with things easing up it will be easier to both not stress and get my work done reasonably (and hey! enjoy some of this stuff!). It's been good and I think I can respect myself more for the lessons I've learned (though I still have more to learn in the time management and hard work departments). Most of all, though, I get a break now! I will, with any luck, soon be working eight hour days! For which I am very excited. (money! and not that much work!)

Okay, too many exclamation points. I'm making myself tired. Well, I've got stuff to do. :]

That reminds me,

I heard two art jokes last night and I wanted to share. If you don't get them, just look really thoughtful and distant for a long time and then smile knowingly.


How many Dadaists does it take to change a lightbulb?
fish

Now the other is even more fun (to me), so you have to guess.
How many Surrealists does it take to change a lightbulb?

[edit:]
The answer - Three. Two to screw in the lightbulb and one to put out the flaming giraffe.

So it's random, but I thought it was funny. (Maybe I like flaming giraffes.) Thanks for humoring me.

If you don't care about art history, stop reading now. To respond to what you said, Susan (assuming you're still reading), one theory on the name "dada" is that it is a (French?) word for little toy, a stuffed dog or something. There are many theories, though. The point of the movement (and name, I believe) was largely to be nonsensical and attack the war (wwI, I think), which became attack anything establishmentarian. It's funny because I just read all of this last night while I was working on my art history. Strange movement.

knowing stuff

"We learn that, on the one hand, we cannot trust ourselves even in our best moments, and, on the other hand, that we need not despair even in our worst, for our failures are forgiven." ~ C. S. Lewis


Found this through Sarah, down in the comments section of this post. You know, there was a while there when I got the silly notion that when you grow up, you've "arrived" and now are Competent and Know Stuff. Turns out, you still wander around figuring stuff out and going, "Heeey, I didn't know that..." This quote makes a lot more sense to me now than it would have even a few months--weeks!--ago. It's still a wonder to me, though, to understand it.

I hope he's right.

For those of you who haven't heard,

about the shooting today in Virginia, I wanted to let you know. I only found out through my housemates.

I've heard these aren't actually as common as they might seem. All the same, these people need prayers. Hopefully we can come up with some ideas on how to help.

New Entities and Corn

I originally started blogging as a sort of anonymous experiment, some place I could vent where my name and face weren't known. Since then, though, my ideas have changed--and lately, I keep running into the blogs of old friends and it's just weird for them to all use their real names and me to use an alias. So, to make this as cornily dramatic as possible, the mask is off! No, this blog has not been taken over by some new entity. I just put my own name on here. Ta-da!

Speaking of corn, the other day in painting class a girl and I were trying to decide on new objects for our still life. There's a fake cob of corn in the still life closet made of green cloth, with yellow string and such for the corn inside trailing out. So here is my (according to her) joke: Hold out the fake corn cob to a friend and with a serious expression ask, "You don't think this is too corny, do you?"

I am just hilarious, what can I say? Now that I think about it, the title of this reminds me of crop circles and extraterrestriel activity. Couldn't be not-silly if I tried, could I? This stuff is just too deep in me.

Success Rounded Down

My cousin pointed me to this link the other day. Don't know anything else about the site, but I thought this was funny.

Incidentally (this won't make sense if you haven't read it yet), I think the T Rex is right--being human is all about not being perfect; making our own approximations. We're not meant to be transcendental. That's God's place. Only, while failure may be success rounded down, I think the whole idea of grace is that God rounds us up. Yes, I am being "deep" with a comic strip; what of it?

The Way of the Force

The way me and my sis have it figured is this: in the first movie, Luke's whiny; in the second, he's just about right; in the third, he's stuffy. Kinda like the three bears. Huh.

But Han's just "eh" in the first movie and in the second, downright--well, basically, if I were Leia I'd take a blaster to him. And then in the third--well, the end of the second and on--he gets some sense and is even kind of sweet. So yeah, I guess if you take it like the righteous man who ends bad vs the bad man who ends righteous, Han's (marginally) better.

Wait, no he's not. He's only sort of sweet for brief moments in the third, and you have to be a bit more grown-up than I am was in high school--when I most loved Star Wars--to appreciate that, and anyway, that's not enough to make up for a lifetime of cocky "I-really-want-you-to-shoot-me"-ness.

Anyway, R2 still wins.

Snow in the Spring

Would you believe me if I told you it snowed today? It did, though. All the trees have been in bloom since Spring Break. Today I walked out to the parking lot behind one of our buildings and all around me tiny white petals were drifting to the ground. The trees were just showering them along the sidewalk and the pavement, like snow. It was amazing.

The Smell of Home

Late Friday night (about 2 am) we pulled into the driveway after a long day on the road. It feels lovely to be on Spring Break, and home. It especially feels lovely to have this warm, humid weather and hear the frogs and the bugs and just the smells and sounds and feel of this place. I've been noticing recently how much smell is a part of my sense of a place--I can't name and can barely identify most of the smells I associate with home and don't think about it much when I'm not here, but when I come back they all come back to greet me like a hundred quietspoken little friends--the smell of the walls and wood and lights and indoors in general, the smell of dust and water and our winds and grasses, and all the others things I can't identify but recognize when I meet them.

Winter back at school had its good points--it was kind of neat to come outside after hours of the internal buzz in my mind and the external buzz of radio, people, whatnot, and hear that crystalline silence. Just the cold air and such a complete silence--practically no cars or people and no breezes so if you shut your mind up and listened it was amazing to hear how complete that silence was and how far it stretched. But I am glad again for the noises of spring and summer--frogs, crickets, night breezes, grass blowing--I even heard an owl a few weeks ago.

Saturday morning, after our long road trip, I even got a welcoming committee--my niece and nephews came and woke me up. I am very impressed with the service around here. From the sound of them before they came in the room it sounded like my niece was giving her brothers a guided tour. "This is where Auntie is."

It's good to be home.

Stuck In the Revolving Door of Your Head..

It's been on my mind to update for a while, so I thought I finally would. I've been doing a lot more thinking and a lot less talking than usual (well...a lot less talking) and it's really not a good combination. I read on someone's profile somewhere online that he spent a lot of time thinking when he was a kid and that consequently he was a disturbed child.

Well, I can agree and relate. There is such a thing, I think, as mental inbreeding. There's a verse in the Bible I've always liked that says, "As iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another." When we share and talk out our ideas we allow ourselves to see them with a better, bigger-picture perspective and we give others the opportunity to go through them and point out their weaknesses, plus offer their own ideas, possibilities, insights. When you think things round and around in your head like a misguided person stuck in a revolving door, you wear the door out and beat down the poor person, too, till he's battered and bruised and can't work well anymore. (In case that confused you, the person is the thoughts, the revolving door your mind. I know that is a hilarious metaphor, but work with me here).

One thing I have been trying to do this year is get myself around the kind of people who are concerned and interested and indeed already possess the things I want to possess. There's a group of guys and girls who meet during the week (separately and then together) to talk about missions, but most of all just to encourage each other, so I've been trying to go to that. Last night we had a retreat and it gave me a chance to see some of the girls there in a different light--people I'd known were what I wanted to be, but I'd held myself back from getting to know. So it was really good last night to talk about struggles and hear what some of them had to say, be encouraged and try to encourage and offer insights to each other.

The best part is, the girls have started a more personal accountability group (the boys already have one) where we get to sit and talk like we did last night...every week! I've missed the first couple of meetings because classwork has been so crazy, but now that that's kind of in a calm, I'm looking forward to going. I can't wait.

And Now For Something Really Random

Hey, guess what?
If they say it's not microwaveable,



...turns out, they mean it.

This bowl was round.

This has been a public service announcement by the Explosives-and-Microwaves Committee.

It won't blow up your microwave.

But it will turn a round bowl triangular and smash it up against the plastic cover you placed over it in a kind of melted-plastic kiss of death.

If only I'd gotten a picture of that.

Thank you.