some late night thoughts

first off: I'm listening to shakira's waka waka right now. just downloaded it today. what a mood elevator. I'm toe-tapping as I type. in this buoyancy it occurred to me that I should write a blog.

studying german right now. well I should be. test tomorrow. I don't care for this stress. depression (or should I say unhappiness) is better than this. and then soul-sucking work tomorrow. god made me for leisure and wealth. he made me this way and I think the government, the church, and all civilization really, needs to accommodate my true self. well, I will persevere--the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward self-satisfaction.

broke up with a friend yesterday. friend wanted to squeeze blood from a turnip. well the turnip, yours truly, had nothing left to cede and I decided that even I (a proponent of a little penitential hair-shirting and self-flagellation) liked myself too much to put myself through that. in the midst of the confabulating, I thought "there are at least 7 people (friends of mine) who would never put me through this and they're still going to be around after tonight." so I ended it with, "maybe one day we'll be people who can be friends again." --a line I used once with an ex-girlfriend. if you need it, it's yours. public domain. happy breakin' up.

it's become clearer recently that I'll be working about another year to year and a half and then "starting my life." this means either nazarene mission corps or grad school. now I say 'either' like those are sure-things. who knows. everything is tentative, contingent. but 26 will not see me working at the XXXX XXXX.

books! glorious books! i need to read the ones I already have and I need to read more than one every couple months if I ever hope to crease a majority of those pristine spines before I move far away from these book cases.

gute nacht!

german syntax is a little different

English: I cannot bring it to you today.

German: Ich kann es Ihnen nicht heute bringen.

Word for word literal translation of the above German: I can it to you not today bring.

und scheiße.

hmmm

"Nobody is easier to expose to public obloquy than your parents; unless they desert you, you are likely to know a lot about them, some of it unflattering. Most of the human race considers it ungracious to take advantage of them." -Joseph Sobran

lifehacking (and 50th post!)

I'm going to read 40 pages a day, everyday. I'm also going to practice and study German for one hour everyday.

Also, I'm going to submit my life to Christ, make friends, make peace with enemies, get a six-pack, straighten out that one tooth, and regrow some hair around my temples.

Well, maybe I'll just try for the first two for now.

So yea, I'm taking German now at a community college. It's been in the back of my mind for a while and it makes sense for a certain life avenue I'd like to pursue...and, ahem, I have some more free time.

So, basically, when God closes a window, he opens a classroom door to room full of pimply late teens.

yes, please

I'd share this on facebook, but I'm friends with my mother there.

broken up

since I've last blogged (well anything original that is), I trained for and ran a marathon. I also started dating someone. that person broke up with me. so hey, life events happened.

life happened--many cherished memories forged. gratitude.

pivoting now. uncertain. friends of 14 months now out of my life and now I'm left to figure out what to make of the near future--I feel like I got pushed into another world, one I don't like as much.

older and ever-there lights shine. europe looms--perhaps january 2012? maybe I'll learn german in the meantime.

psychically, I'm sound as ever, which, as I've thought, is indicated by my not feeling much need to write here--too busy living for time to think about living. I've learned things, things I need to know for the future.

will engage old friends and try to make new ones.

some break up songs:

soul, interrupted

a letter I wrote to a cherished friend some two years ago in the middle of the night:

XXX,

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

I think a hug would be the most appropriate transmitter of my gratitude and love from my heart to you. But, ahem, that damn ocean...

I'm touched that you would write such valuable letter to me. And, and, and, I feel like I don't have the right words to write back.

XXX, I'm just low and so wrong and I can't even be a person that interacts truthfully or in goodness. I don't know what to say or write that isn't a selfish, internal, discordant dialog of all the heavy thoughts in my head. I wish I could claim any corner of truth...but all I know is that tomorrow I will get up and go to school, see a friend, drink some soda and come home. And that's all I seem to be sure of!

I could critique my emotionalism, my neurosis, my dependencies and my sin, my all that isn't right and still be the same person as before.

I just want to be saved. But nothing brings that. God doesn't (well at least not when I ask him earnestly and repeatedly--though maybe it just need to be steady and faithfully ratcheted up [goodness knows I haven't tried those]). Paul doesn't. theology won't. professors, wikipedia articles, friends, chapel don't do anything lastingly.

Of course, Christ's death and resurrection save me but I can't believe that with my all. In truth, it pretty much just fits into my systematic theology--I have to believe it because it's a beam in this ideology.

It's like psychology and theology have neutered me of any of those human capacities that make for faith. I don't trust my psyche and certain writings make it so I have no trust in what I am pursuing. Did I start in the middle without a suitable grounding. do I need to go back to the beginning? where's that? (rhetorical questions all)

I still can't negotiate it. It's like there's a theory that eludes me, a resonating idea that will patch my weakened will so I can be like the others who write good words they mean and live lives of God. Again, I'm devoting my energies not to being good but to explaining why I'm not.

It's not vanity...but it is. I don't want people to think that I'm weak because I like it...but I do like it. The encouragements and the denunciations, I take them and don't reform.

XXX, I don't even know what my future looks like but I really can't imagine the fixed one...nor can I imagine the one lived with abandon, striving in the opposite direction--just as my sinning past infects the striving now, I would hope that holiness is just as an infecting contagion were I to strive in the opposite direction!] small hope!

what's step one? do I just go through the church-y motions? fake it 'til I make it? damn my individualistic sensibilities that make "matthew" believe he has a self that he is sovereign over? (I'm trying to imagine a philosophic answer!)

XXX, as one person who thinks and writes to another, I just want to thank you for reading this. The tangible, readable love of my friends is one of the few things that remind me of goodness and light and hope. Dynamic and real love in the faces and words of living people heartens me, warms the heart of the co-opted and masked sleepwalker on the road to hell I usually am. I want to be weak and vulnerable but people don't trust that--and they're mostly right not to do so.

XXX, sorry and thank you. thank you for being a light. These are all thank yous and nothing obligates you to me. I don't expect that and almost don't want to waste your time. There is certainly a different language I could have written to you in but I chose this. It's not easy but that person who writes that way doesn't need fixing (he doesn't stay fixed); this one does.

If there is love that a broken person may muster, I send it to you,
Matthew

hitting send button with hesitation...me tomorrow (separation of self into multiple parts is false, huh?) will not be happy...