a try

so i've got this small ambition. i'm going to attempt to write some sort of something every day.
and in case you want to know what i'm writing, you won't have to look any farther than right here.

of course, this try is going to fail, because i'm leaving for california next week, and won't have a computer unless the kindness of my already very kind host giannii extends to an offer of internet access.

i'm not sad, but i feel like expressing sadness. so, jumping into another perspective, i'll write.


how broken must i become before i can be made whole?
are my pieces numerous enough to be restored as a new creation?
how long must i endure this darkness and distance and despair?
if i am not low enough,
if i am not humble enough,
if i still resemble the life i asked for deliverance from
then drive me deeper
break me further
until You are all that is left of me and i am nothing.

make me, mold me,
shape me, forge me,
build me to be beautiful for You.
an image of your love, grace and peace

Lord i am Yours.
------------------------------------------

i'm unsatisfied with that for some reason. from a writing point of view at least. the message is there, i think, but i don't feel i presented it well enough. i guess if i force myself to write i'm not always going to love what comes out. heh.

if nothing else, at least i'll have tried.

just before bed.

i came across another quote from The Seven Storey Mountain that I wanted to share. Some of this book is boring. I'm pretty positive it's mostly an autobiography, but if there's little things like this scattered about in the book, then it's worth reading it all.

Merton is talking about his childhood. He has a younger brother. Merton and his friends are building a fort and not allowing the little brother to participate. They throw rocks at him when he tried to come close, so he's standing just out of range.

"And there he stands, not sobbing, not crying, but angry and unhappy and offended and tremendously sad. And yet he is fascinated by what we are doing, nailing shingles all over our new hut. And his tremendous desire to be with us and to do what we are doing will not permit him to go away. The law written in his nature says that he must be with his elder brother, and do what he is doing: and he cannot understand why this law of love is being so wildly and unjustly violated in this case.
Many times it was like that. And in a sense, this terrible situation is the pattern and prototype of all sin: the deliberate and formal will to reject disinterested love for us for the purely arbitrary reason that we simply do not want it. We will to separate ourselves from that love. We reject it entirely and absolutely, and will not acknowledge it, simply because it does not please us to be loved. Perhaps the inner motive is that the fact of being loved disinterestedly reminds us that we all need love from others, and depend upon the charity of others to carry on our own lives. And we refuse love, and reject society, in so far as it seems, in our own perverse imagination, to imply some obscure kind of humiliation."

-i still need to turn this over in my mind more to grasp what it totally means, but i think it's important. input on it would be cool if you feel like it.

now goodnight for reals.

writing. my brother's band is cool.

As wounds of past begin to fade
The scars of present within will pave
The path ahead but leave behind
The memory of bitter times

A melody of sweet release
Is strangled by uneasy peace
A dissonance among the chords
Of recklessness and future wars

Prepare yourself, by your request
For true and certain brokenness
A needed loss of self alive
For in His hand you’ll be revived

A phoenix risen from the flames
A battered soul renewed again
A heart prepared for life’s embrace
To take the world on face to face

Step into the light!

----------------------------------

i've got a little something planned for this. a short video. open a song with a poem like this
and then tear into the music at the end. i don't have music to "tear" into, but i can make
something. i like the 4 stanzas/4 lines each approach. it's got a certain rhythm to it in my head that i like.

i saw my little brother's band play at Battle of the Bands tonight. i had no idea they semi-broke up and reformed 3 weeks ago. They have most of the same people, but they are no longer called Basanotis. They are called Kenny and the Bear Snatchers. they are GOOD. i like them a lot. very entertaining, fun loving guys. my brother sings in the band. i love my brother. my whole family. and my friends. love love love. haha.

i wish to be sung to sleep. not going to happen. sleep has come slowly lately.

i need to do some reading and then sleep.

peace.

rice cakes

Morning to night:

Wake-Eggs-Key-Work-Groceries-Work-Party

i felt like it was awkward that at work i told some people that there was a "party" at my house tonight and i knew that at least a few of them assumed that meant alcohol. when you hear "party" in college, i feel that's what most people assume, drinking. haha, actually, i forgot that there was beer there.

very fun night, i do believe things went well.

i feel like this is going to be like surgery. careful incisions to cut out the right parts.
i like the feel of the image this line presents to me:

"the shrapnel remains in my skin from the explosion of your life into mine"

good material for a song, The Devil Wears Prada style. oh, "what is The Devil Wears Prada style?" you ask? glad you asked. here is one of their music videos with the lyrics beneath it. they're a Christian band, mind you.



Lyrics to song Hey John, What's Your Name Again?

The concept of fashion is the one to blame: painting the portrait of
conviction-less existence. well, it must be difficult being so gorgeous.
claiming to be the kings and queens but it's all of nothing
this shall pass. megalomania. congratulations on mutiliation for a life
i'm going to hope for you, i'm going to pray for you
amongst the wreckless and the black
salvation lies within.
my time is your's my friend. we all find ourselves so horribly weak
(Oh God,) here's an offering
-------------------------------------------------------------------
so maybe you don't like the music, but maybe you can handle the message of the words. i like that band.


ah, surgery.
the shrapnel of you left in me from the combustion of two lives colliding.
piece by piece, removing the shards embedded within
until the bits are broken on the floor
only the deepest remnants remain, for time undetermined.
You are the surgeon Lord, operate as you see fit
though it bleeds and it burns
sometimes to cauterize is to heal best.


-wow, i do believe i like what i've just written. a poem. maybe someday a song.
don't get any ideas about misery. i'm happy. i feel better writing, it's good.
catharsis, haha.

goodnight to you.

A brilliant discovery

I just discovered the majesty of the iGoogle homepage. I'm lovin' it.

Also, I posted my portfolio video reel to youtube!
Check it out right here!



I also have a very full cup of very hot, hot chocolate. It was a long, slow walk downstairs and back to the classroom after that vending machine trip.

Cheers!

This is going to be good

I just picked up Thomas Merton's book The Seven Storey Mountain. In case you hadn't seen the previous post, he was a man with a pretty good life and he dropped it all to become a Trappist monk. I didn't know what a Trappist was so I looked it up. Trappists are monks of the Roman Catholic religious order, and they live a life of contemplation and prayer. They are usually silent, forsaking idle talk and speaking only when necessary. That's probably as much as you need to know, but in case you want to know more: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trappist

I got the book from the school library and I was surprised by it. It was a small black book with no art or words anywhere on the cover. The title had been taped on the spine by the library. There was no quick little introduction in the front, so I flipped to the back and read the last page and a half. What I read amazed me. This is what it said:

"For I knew that it was only by leaving them that I could come to You: and that is why I have been so unhappy when You seemed to be condemning me to remain in them. Now my sorrow is over, and my joy is about to begin: the joy that rejoices in the deepest sorrows. For I am beginning to understand. You have taught me, and have consoled me, and I have begun again to hope and learn.
I hear You saying to me:
"I will give you what you desire. I will lead you into solitude. I will lead you by the way that you cannot possibly understand, because I want it to be the quickest way.
Therefore all the things around you will be armed against you, to deny you, to hurt you, to give you pain, and therefore to reduce you, to solitude.
Because of their enmity, you will soon be left alone. They will cast you out and forsake you and reject you and you will be alone.
Everything that touches you shall burn you, and you will draw your hand away in pain, until you have withdrawn yourself from all things. Then you will be all alone.
Everything that can be desired will sear you, and brand you with a cautery, and you will fly from it in pain, to be alone. Every created joy will only come to you as pain, and you will die to all joy and be left alone. All the good things that other people love and desire and seek will come to you, but only as murderers to cut you off from the world and its occupations.
You will be praised, and it will be like burning at the stake. You will be loved, and it will murder your heart and drive you into the desert.
You will have gifts, and they will break you with their burden. You will have pleasures of prayer, and they will sicken you and you will fly from them.
And when you have been praised a little and loved a little, I will take away all your gifts and all your love and all your praise and you will be utterly forgotten and abandoned and you will be nothing, a dead thing, a rejection. And in that day you shall begin to possess the solitude you have so long desired. And your solitude will bear immense fruit in the souls of men you will never see on earth.
Do not ask when it will be or where it will be or how it will be: On a mountain or in a prison, in a desert or in a concentration camp or in a hospital or in Gethsemani. It does not matter. So do not as me, because I am not going to tell you. You will not know until you are in it.
"But you shall taste the true solitude of my anguish and my poverty and I shall lead you into the high places of my joy and you shall die in Me and find all things in My mercy which has created for you this end and brought you from Prades to Bermuda to St. Antonin to Oakham to London to Cambridge to Rome to New York to Columbia to Corpus Christi to St. Bonaventure to the Cistercian Abbey of the poor men who labor in Gethsemani:
That you may become the brother of God and learn to know the Christ of the burnt men."


Sitting on the floor of the library, right in the aisle, I couldn't stop myself from just saying aloud "wow." I think this book is going to be good.

One more thing. In my philosophy class today we talked about the roles of individuals and fulfilling your potentials. Notice that the word "potential" is plural, we have more than one potential. I think that education today is focused on producing good workers, not good people. It's all about specializing and focusing on a specific job in a specific field. The training provided created a person who is good at a job, and not necessarily a person who is well rounded enough to do multiple jobs. This can make it really hard to change your course of education in college. Focusing on school with one job in mind can almost ruin you if you discover that you're not happy with what you've been training for, you would have to be re-educated in a new specialty.

People aren't puzzle pieces created by society to fit into one specific role for the betterment of society. People are individuals with their own unique talents, interests and potentials. To live a satisfying life then, in my opinion, is to explore your potentials and grow in your talents. God saw fit to give you your aptitudes for a reason. Why not develop them to see what is right for you?

New Beginning

So I've decided to start using this blog. I don't know how long this new resolve will last, but I'm going to try. I'll probably just post small little updates most of the time, things I find interesting or some of my thoughts. I would'nt expect amazing things, but check back here now and then okay?

Thanks.

For now, there's a few quotes that I've come across lately that I'd like to share.

First is from Thomas Merton, a man who left normal life to become a Trappist monk in Kentucky and evidently wrote some pretty cool stuff. I want to pick up one or two of his books soon if possible.

"As long as you have to defend the imaginary self that you think is important, you will lose your peace of heart. As soon as you compare that shadow with the shadows of other people, you lose all joy, because you have begun to trade in unrealities, and there is no joy in things that do not exist."

This grabbed my attention because I think it points out something that I find myself doing too often. I think I have a sort of imaginary self that I think people see me as being, and sometimes if that image is in danger of being broken or altered in a way that I don't like, I get really defensive about it. But that image isn't really me, it's just what I want people to see. I'm realizing that there are very few times when I've felt like I've exposed myself as I truly am, without trying to uphold any false image of myself.

Here's another one from Thomas Merton:

"Many poets are not artists for the same reason that many religious men are not saints: they never succeed in being the particular poet or the particular monk they are intended to be by God. They never become the man or the artist who is called for by the circumstances of their individual lives.
They waste their years in vain effort to be some other poet, some other saint. For many absurd reasons, they are convinced that they are obliged to become somebody else who died two hundred years ago and who lived in circumstances utterly alien to their own.
They wear out their minds and bodies in a hopeless endeavor to have somebody else's experiences or write somebody else's poems or express somebody else's spirituality."

So yeah, this guy seems pretty cool to me.

I close this one with a short comment on today.

This morning, when I got out of the shower and had dressed in everything but my shirt, I saw myself in the mirror. To my surprise, I saw my heart beating in my chest. It was just there, pumping away beneath the skin. I just had to praise God because I'm alive. No matter how good or bad anything else is, I'm alive.