Marshmallow Hands

I forget about the mountains.

When I live in Bakersfield, or in Riverside, or in Bloomington, I forget that there's a place in the world that is not crisscrossed by streets and studded by cookie cutter houses or buildings that were cool in the seventies. I forget that it is possible to be surrounded by trees. There is a place where the sky is blue, not a gray to blue gradient.

I know that the mountains aren't a simple solution to all my problems, but they defintely feel that way. After maybe a week living here I realize that life is still just as complicated, there are still just as many choices to make, that there is still just as much drama, that people still exist, and that I am not alone. But the first day or two, hmm, those days are magic. For a minute I begin to feel like God really is into beauty, that He really does care about the world, that taking care of the earth and its inhabitants is actually very, very important to Him. For some reason it is harder to feel that those things are true while living in a city (or town, whatever). These big trees are strokes in God's visual manifesto, the river is a wash of color. The sky, whether dark gray or brilliant blue, is a part of His declaration to me, to us: "This matters. The world, the people I've created. It all matters. It matters to Me." I feel this way because the world could not be this beautiful for any other reason. I guess it could all be chance. I suppose that could be a reasonable explanation. But what gets me is that it is not a magical explanation, and personally, I like a good unexplainable mystery. But I don't want to get into science or evolution or anything like that.

The world is "going green." Or, at least, certain individuals are going green and some random companies are pretending that they're green. I think that this is a very interesting and exciting phenomenon. I wish it were more about God and less about us though. Let's handle this world more carefully because God made it and we love Him, rather than Let's handle this world more carefully because we have to live here until who knows when and it'd be nice if it weren't a pile of crap. I mean, the latter way is still good, but I do naively wish that people would get their priorities straight. But I won't complain all too much.

I want to live simply. I've been holding this idea inside of me for a long time because I don't want to explain to people why I want to do it. It's not because our cities are gross and we're eating nasty things and washing ourselves in chemicals. It's because...it's because it's not convenient to live simply. Which is an ironic statement. haha. That brings me to a hard question: Should living be convenient? Should living this life be easy? Think whatever you want, and after some time I might change my mind, but currently I don't think living life should be easy. All sources and signs point to life being hard. Nature points to life being hard, God and His Word point to life being hard, most of the third world points to life being hard. It isn't easy. And yet we, as first world citizens, have all discovered that it is much more comforting to pretend life is easy and to surround ourselves with conveniences that deceive us into believing that life is easy. I know life isn't easy, but I don't believe that life isn't easy.

Do I detest the easy life? No, but I think I might need to learn to. Because I'm pretty sure that the easy life is also a very easy path to hell. It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven. Well that sucks, and I'm screwed. Want to know why it's so hard to evangelize your comfortable American neighbors and friends? Because it's too easy for them to believe that life isn't hard. And if they believe that life isn't hard then they won't believe that they need someone to help them get through it. And if they don't believed that they need someone to help them get through it then they'll never even think that they'll ever need Jesus to satisfy them.

When the economy started to fall and everyone started to make predictions about horrible things and when the media started to make things worse than they really were....when all of those things happened I secretly hoped that everything would fall apart. In the depths of my heart, I still hope for this.

That's not the total reason why I'd like to live simply. Living simply involves less stuff, and I've been thinking lately about all the junk I have in the rafters of our attic. Childhood memories have been sitting in boxes for three years, untouched, unusuable; memory aids for a memory that doesn't need any help. So why keep it? I don't know, it's just so ridiculously hard to get rid of things that have sentimental value. In the end it's all meaningless anyway. In the end it will be burned with fire and will be forgotten. I'll never even miss it. I don't miss it now. But then I think, maybe I don't miss it because I know it's sitting up there in the rafters, in case I need it. But why would I ever need it? Ugh, that's such a pestering thought process and I really, really hate it. I want that stuff and I don't know why. I want it and it's mine and I want to keep it. And then I think again about living simply and I then I get upset again about keeping it all.

I can't win in my head, because there's always one side that is right and the other side that is wrong. So I'm always wrong no matter what. I guess I could flip that around and say that I'm always right, but I'm usually rooting for the side that ends up being wrong.

I can't win in this post either, so I'm just going to stop torturing myself and go to bed...er, couch. Maybe it'll all work out in my sleep and life will be better tomorrow.

My Dinner: Medicated Chest Rub

Ewww, gross.

Don't judge, it's how I feel.

Anywho, I don't have to go to school tomorrow! Jealous? Don't be, I still have to complete two essays and create a portfolio, all of which are due on Thursday. So it's not like I get a break or anything. Not until Friday....that's when it will be time to drive up to the mountains and enjoy a good sublime landscape or two. The best that the Sierra Nevadas have the offer. Hurrah!

Now I will take this time to let you all in on a little secret that has been eluding me for years: Sleep is important.

Yep, betcha didn't see that one coming. But it's absolutely true and very helpful to apply seriously to. My dad and I were talking today about how we don't like to go to bed. I love to sleep, and I love the feeling of snuggling in bed for a while when I wake up. But for some reason going to bed at a reasonable hour (i.e. Not three in the morning) just makes my heart revolt. I can't figure out why this is, the closest I come to explaining the feeling is I just suppose I really don't want to miss something. Which is really ridiculous because what exactly is happening in my house past the hour of 10? If you guessed "Nothing" then you are the lucky winner! Collect ten points. Of course, sometimes I'm not home at a reasonable hour, and I have only my friends to blame for this. :D Actually, I just need more self-control, but whatever way you want to look at the situation, it's probably their fault. I kid, I kid.

Anyway. Perhaps, to put it in my dad's terminology, I should make the 'life choice' to go to bed at a regular time and get a regular amount of sleep. In this situation the benefits really do outweigh the costs.

Writing Helps From Masters

I have great respect for Mr. Vonnegut, but only because I read Slaughterhouse-Five and liked it. After SH-5 I ventured into the pages of Breakfast of Champions and was not altogether pleased. Maybe my high school brain didn' t get it (I've been discovering that lately...my high school brain was kind of lame in the broken sense of the word). But I also couldn't get into Timequake....so maybe there's a trend there. I guess I should read more and make a more informed decision. But none of this matters because what I'm really trying to say is that Vonnegut has some interesting things to say to writers (and to readers if they care to look at things backwards).

Here's something I found on the internet. Eight tips Vonnegut gives to new writers:

1. Use the time of a total stranger in such a way that he or she will not feel the time was wasted.

2. Give the reader at least one character he or she can root for.

3. Every character should want something, even if it is only a glass of water.

4. Every sentence must do one of two things—reveal character or advance the action.

5. Start as close to the end as possible.

6. Be a sadist. No matter how sweet and innocent your leading characters, make awful things happen to them—in order that the reader may see what they are made of.

7. Write to please just one person. If you open a window and make love to the world, so to speak, your story will get pneumonia.

8. Give your readers as much information as possible as soon as possible. To heck with suspense. Readers should have such complete understanding of what is going on, where and why, that they could finish the story themselves, should cockroaches eat the last few pages.

The greatest American short story writer of my generation was Flannery O’Connor (1925-1964). She broke practically every one of my rules but the first. Great writers tend to do that.

Death and Sadness

Last night my puppy died. I wasn't there at the time, but I did see her be in pain for the whole weekend. She would hold her little stomach in and tense all her muscles as if thinking that if she rolled into a small enough ball all the pain would go away. There are not many things more affecting or pathetic as watching, or holding, a sick dog. They are so fragile and heartbreaking. When I came home that night I sat up with my mom for a while just crying and reminiscing over the very, very short life of this puppy. She was so sweet, playful and good. I can't believe how well-behaved and lovely she was. I've never been so attached to a dog before. She was my dog. I loved her and she loved me and we would snuggle together or chase each other around the house or play catch for hours as if no one else but us existed.

As my mom and I sat crying on the couch, huddled together and remembering Sophie's beautiful brown eyes that never conveyed much intelligence, but were incredibly sweet and loving just the same, my mom said, "If this is what losing an animal feels like, imagine how hard losing a human would be." I don't dare to think about this too much. There have been times in my life when I think about what it would be like to not be able to see, touch, smell, or hear the people that I love. The emotions that rise from those thoughts are excruciatingly sad and painful. These feelings just remind me of how unnecessary death is; how we're not made to feel death, to experience grief and loss. We're meant to be whole and fulfilled with the love of God and with the love of those around us. People always talk about the things that humankind lost at the fall. They speak of how we lost innocence and good choices and gained diseases, pain, wrong decisions, grief. We talk about how we gained death and lost life and we say it so matter-of-fact, sometimes without feeling the devastation of such a loss.

How could they have known? How could Adam and Eve have known what terrible things lay in wait for the future? How could beings born into goodness known of anything other than goodness or innocence? It's hard to get mad at them for being idiots when I think that they didn't know that they were choosing between good and bad, for all they knew they were choosing between good and and even greater good that God was holding back from them. They were naive and innocent and those qualities were ultimately destructive, which is very poetic and achingly sad. We like that don't we? We like it when beauty and innocence and goodness are corrupted and then redeemed. We like those things because they mirror humankind's own tragicomic story. It's tragic because the beginning is so terrible, but comic because it ends in a marriage, a love-match.

I can't say that I blame people for telling their kids that dogs go to a better place when they die, because it's such a comforting thought thinking that you'll someday meet up with your beloved companion again just as you'll meet up with other people who are just as dear, if not more so.

Be Agressive To Your Cat

Read more books. Watch more movies. Write more awesome observations about people and their lives. Do all of these things and live in a drugged up daze of self/world-reflection. Then life will be truly wonderful and not at all cheapened by actually living it.

Usually around this hour, 3am, my cat will come into my room and rub her face against my computer. This is one of the things that I find most irritating in life, although I couldn't tell you rightly why. Probably from selfishness. Or maybe I'm just not a fan of cats. This one is pretty fluffy, which makes up for her being obnoxious.

There is slight, subtle intrigue to the life of a good-girl. Someone who isn't involved in this particular way of living might think that it is very dull. But I feel that thinking about things before making a decision is a very exhilarating way to live. The consequences are much more real and less predictable, which is ironic because the consequences, when thought about, are usually as predictable as a piece of carpet. Crafting theories about how life appears to work only becomes interesting when one puts them into practice. I'm all about philosophizing about life, but it means nothing if no one is willing to act on said philosophies. So what is the problem of this? There always has to be a problem, because pessimists always like to ruin everything. The problem of this is that even though we might be able to see some possibilities of consequences, we can't see them all, and running the risk of acting on a philosophy and then getting a horrible consequence is like playing russian roulette only better. Why is it better? I was just getting there. It's better because with russian roulette you're dead and don't have to deal with your problems and with life you're not dead (obviously) and have to deal with the problems that acting on a theory presesnts.

Everyone does this. It's just like life. We make choices thinking one thing and more often then not our thoughts turn out to be very, very wrong and make us very, very sorry. And at the moment we think, "CRAP, I'm screwed! Life is going to suck now because I made a bad choice." But really, it's just a growing opportunity, which every sophomore realizes when they finally take the Great Look Back and see that all the dumb things they did taught them something and made them into the person that they are today.

How cute. Isn't hindsight quintessentially quaint? A perfect ending that rests on the foundations of a faulty beginning. We like to think this way because it creates drama and tension and we love for our lives to be a story that people will want to listen to. For such hopeless pessimists we can sure be really hopeful optimists.

Living life is heady. It's a drug, an endless game of russian roulette. Will our choices be correct, or will be they terribly wrong? Throw up your hands, shrug your shoulders and declare WHO KNOWS?! Let's do it anyway!

Here's the intrigue of the good-girl: She breaks too many hearts. She's too amazing. Her exterior is shiny and new and is made of intelligent foam that molds to the countours of your body. What could be better? But she can only have one, and it has to be the right one. There's no way of telling which one that is unless there's knowledge. And knowledge, especially now, is painful to extract, painful to hold, and painful to let go of in favor of some other knowledge. And the shiny, new, intelligent foam good-girl longs to find a shiny, new, intelligent foam good-boy who, when she rests against his intelligent foam body, will not push his shape into hers, but will meet her shape and uphold it while she meets and upholds his. And they will be like two boxes pushed next to each other. No depressions, no indents, no parts sticking out and jutting into the countours of the other box. Just straight lines that rest against each other and stay straight.

We don't need to change. We just need to morph into one another. Two become one flesh. There is beauty in that. Why else would we like mixing colors so much?

A Group of Worms Were Hypothetically Speaking...

Have you ever met someone and then parted ways, only to discover that when they are gone you feel like something is missing? Hmmm, that's really vague. Let me clarify.

Things I'm not talking about: I'm not talking about significant relationships, but rather trivial ones that meant next to nothing and were more like acquaintance than friendships.

Things I am talking about: People that I've known only briefly, but wished I could have known them for longer or better. There are people that are mysteries. A person can be a mystery and then after I've spent a day or so with them they are not a mystery anymore. That's okay. But that's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about when I spend a day with a person, or maybe two days, and I think back on the time and on their personality and on their actions and I think to myself, "I still know next to nothing about this person." (Random fact: Next to nothing is one of my favorite cliches. I just decided that right now. It's very poetic)

I was trouping around the 'Space a bit looking at old friend's pages and I came across a guy who I knew a while back, but who I didn't know very well. A keen sense of loss enveloped me as I looked at his page and read some of the comments his friends had left him. I felt like I had lost a potential friend....even though he had never been a friend in the first place.