C'est La Vie
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What a beautiful piece of heartache this has all turned out to be. Lord knows we've learned the hard way all about healthy apathy. And I use these words pretty loosely. There's so much more to life than words..
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Wednesday, November 12, 2003
It has been a hectic and roller-coastery month-plus since my last real blog post.
After leaving Jyl's on the eleventh, I spent two weeks on a farm with some friends of mine. Since I did not get a job in NC, I did indeed end up staying put here and keeping my phone job, so it was nice to have a place to crash while looking for a new place in town. Meanwhile, my car broke down the day before I needed to be out of Jyl's place, so I got that towed back to where I bought it (since it's a Volvo, the only reasonable option was to bring it back to the guy that had a million Volvo's sitting around and thus wouldn't need to order so many parts or consult so many help guides and such.. not to mention that he could fix it for less since there are all the lemon law issues and whatnot). I then spent the next week and a half scrounging for rides and making interesting arrangements to live without a car. Following that, my landlords were generous enough to loan me one of THEIR vehicles, which is an Oldsmobile Bravada, and made me nervous as all get out (chanting the mantra "I hate this car! I hate this car!" over and over every time I drove) for the first day or two, but then I fell in love and actually really enjoy driving it now.. especially since when I did move into my new apartment, my street and several around are under MASSIVE construction right now and so it's been nice having an off-roadish-capable-vehicle to drive instead of a clunky old volvo or some compact new-and-thus-made-rather-awefully car or such. Anyway.. yes, my car is STILL in the shop.. it has been over one month now. Theoretically should be ready in about an hour, though.. as of yesterday they just had to fix the front of the air compressor which was leaking out the A/C fluids, and is used for defrost options, and thus needs to be fixed before I can pick up the car and drive safely.. especially considering that we actually did have a VERY light dusting of snow here VERY late Sunday night/monday morning. So anyway, I called him around 2 today and he said he hadn't gotten to work on it yesterday (they've been swamped this past month, apparently), but that they were working on it now and would be done today. Oy. So Kenny's gonna take me down there to pick it up and to talk to the guy about payment options (or lack-of-payment options, since in the month I had it, I certainly did not do all the damage to it that he had to fix when the transmission blew) in a little bit and then go to Bible study tonight. In other news, I did have the endoscopy. As per my endoscopic tradition, I woke up during it. In particular, I woke up while they were dilitating my esophogus (read expanding my throat) because I couldn't breathe and they kept trying to tell my heavily sedated self that it was ok, but my will-to-live-controlled-self decided it was NOT ok to not be breathing, and I woke up, and I saw the massive, red, rubber thing they were trying to shove down my throat and thought "that thing is bigger than my head!" .. And then I passed out again and I'm mostly recovered from the whole endoscopy experience except that every meal I've eaten since then, I've choked. They said everything looked good, though, and that they biopsied one polyp and I should get the results for that any day. I won the halloween costume contest at work, dressed as an old lady, complete with wrinkle-imitating makeup, grey and white wig, old lady clothes, and a walker. I had a great time dressing up for a whopping THREE seperate occasions (four or more if you could all of Friday's events individually) and everyone was very complimentary of my skillz. I got the fantastic news that two of my friends are finally engaged, friends whom I've known since I was 15 and have been waiting since meeting them for them to finally realize how fantastically suited for eachother they are. EVERYONE that knows them both has been waiting for this day. So they're getting married in January, and I was so happy to find this out yesterday that I very nearly cried. Yay for Mel and Darrin! Monday, when I got home from work around 4 o'clock, I opened the door to my danky basement apartment to see streams of water coming towards me. Well, not towards me, per say.. more like down the tilted floor (which sits opposite the 6-foot-high-and-shorter ceilings) towards what used to be the basement drain. A pipe had burst in the utility/storage room, and had been gushing water for at least an hour before I got home. Imagine if I had been out of town or something! So anyway, it had seeped through the walls in my bedroom and closet/hallyway/bathroom areas, and also through the wall and under the door betweem the storage room and my living room.. since I hadn't unpacked much, most of my clothes and suitcases and boxes and such were on the floors in these various locations, so lots of stuff got fairly wet. I didn't know where the water shut-off for the house was, but I figured out how to make the pipe stop gushing and held it like that off and on for about ten minutes or maybe fifteen before the plumber guys got there and shut off the water. I was drenched, my stuff was getting soaked, and my arms hurt like the dickens. My landlord fixed the pipe and reacted as best as could possibly be hoped, though, so just a frustrating experience in that it happened but good in how it was handled. At any rate, I just didn't feel at home there, so I'm in the market for a different place at this point, though it's still possible I will end up staying there. Some great stuff coming up in the next couple of weeks, and I've had a number of wonderful hours with friends and loved ones, so all in all, things are well. Off to get some grub and hopefully get my car. Thanks for coming back after more than a month's absence on my part.. Blessings!
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Hippie: (after hearing Max wants to avoid the draft)You still have options man. "So how do i do normal "It's been known for a train to jump its track. It's ok, so you'll know, most times they come back. It's ok to lose your life, when you finally see your birth. It's ok to say, "I love you," and figure sometimes it's gonna hurt. "As a comedian, you have to start the show strong and you have end the show strong. Those are the two key elements. You can't be like pancakes, all exciting at first, but then by the end you're sick of 'em!" "Hey, this is weird! I ordered one frozen yogurt and they gave me two. You don't happen to like frozen yogurt, do you?" "I love it!" "You're kidding! What a crazy random happenstance!" "Only one more trip," said a gallant seaman, "It was Flannery O'Connor who said that 'grace must wound before it heals.' Her words help me to separate what is most true about life from the things we want to be true. We want life to be painless. True grace is a hard sell because in order for the human heart to understand forgiveness and love, it must first experience darkness and isolation. A life lived under the rule of grace is a life of need which allows us to receive an appreciate the gift of the giver of grace. This is why we will always have the poor with us; this is why God will not allow us to ignore injustice; this is why we are called to a life we cannot handle alone, which can and will break us in the effort to live it -- because grace must wound before it heals." Regarding 2007: Should auld acquaintance be forgot, I thought Christmas Day would never come. But it's here at last, so Mom and Dad, the waiting's finally done. And you gotta get up, you gotta get up, you gotta get up, it's Christmas morning. O little town of Bethlehem, Walk humbly, son Strings of lights above the bed "In a little while I'll feel better "Please tell me once again that You love me. That You love me. Please tell me once again that I matter to You and You really care. Please tell me once again that You're with me, forever. It's not that I could ever doubt you, I just love the way it sounds. I just love the way it sounds." "Every once in a while, a bannerzen posts." "7:30. What kind of people have to be at work at 7:30?" have you seen my love Traveling is significant because it takes so much effort. Either you're going to some place you love, or you're leaving some place you love. Usually it's both. I think I have Bond's ability to get into trouble but not his ability to get out of it. Someday I'll be in some foreign country with 5 thugs with automatic rifles pointed at me, and I'll just.... fart "You had no alternative .. We must work in the world. The world is thus." --- "No .. Thus have we made the world." The summer ends and we wonder where we are And there you go, my friends, with your boxes in your car And you both look so young And last night was hard, you said You packed up every room And then you cried and went to bed But today you closed the door and said "We have to get a move on. It's just that time of year when we push ourselves ahead, We push ourselves ahead." Looking out the bedroom at this snowy TV.. ever since commencement, no one's asking 'bout me. But I bet before the night falls, I could catch the late bus.. take small provisions and this Beethoven bust. I could find work in the outskirts of the city, eat some fish on the way.. befriend an old dog for a roadside pal, find a nice couch to stay -- a pull-out sofa, if you please!" Ooh! Get me away from here I'm dying "The trouble with folks like Brownie is they hold their life in like a bakebean fart at a Baptist cookout and only let it slip out sideways a little at a time when they think there's nobody noticing. Now that's the last thing on earth the Almighty intended. He intended all the life a man's got inside him, he should live it out just as free and strong and natural as a bird." "Life is a phantasmagoria .. It is a pell-mell of confused and tumultuous scenes. We try in vain to find a purpose - to bring an order, a unity to life. I suppose that is the appeal of art. Art is the blending of the real and the unreal, the conquering of nature. It is real enough for it to reflect life, but has the unity that life lacks." "in time memories fade. I've always had this feeling about Patty that she's complex and intriguing...I like Patty alot. She's got a good heart and tells terrible squirrel jokes. "Try to remember that world-weariness isn't necessarily a bad thing. In the book of Mark, I think its Mark, Jesus looks at a blind man and sighs. Jesus sighed before even telling the man he would be healed. He sighed, and I'm not sure that there's a much more human expression of frustration than this. Faced with the horrid picture of a cursed earth and looking into the white eyes of a man blind from the day he was born, He sighed. The Creator of the universe in human form was sad "of the evils of this world," the world He created. Your Creator sighed for you in the same way before He healed you and made you His." After the last secret's told After the last bullet tears through flesh and bone After the last child starves And the last girl walks the boulevard After the last year that's just too hard There is love -- Andrew Peterson, After the Last Tear Falls "when you most need people, you don't need perfection - just to know someone gives a damn" "A CALL TO ACTION: "My brother's always [telling me], 'You should be more mysterious--boys like that.' But I'm not good at that. It would just make me more uncomfortable." "Loners want to kill you, but not for any particular reason, and they'd probably like you if they weren't being guided by the violent voices in their head." "No one wants to oil a snake these days!"
-- Her mom: "We're all safe." -- Jamie Bevill and her mother during Christmas-Decorating dinner, December 20, 2002 i'd throw out all my shoes i'd set up cans for friends to dump their shoes senseless shoes a pioneer of callouses lordy-be and bless my soul i'd be a barefoot spaceman the first you'd ever know" "The best way to have God's will for your life is to have no will of your own!" "Generations circle and each one atones. The sins of the father are seperate from my own. In Pilgrim's Progress, it's forgiveness that makes whole, and as time levels and consoles, I place the daisies in your bowl." "For a moment he just stared at her. Then, with an urf-urf-urf of laughter, he turned back to the controls." "It's on the internet.. so, then, it must be true." "Be at least as interested in what people can become as you are in what they have been." Blessed be the rock stars!" Get up for the shower.. wash and scrub and scour every part as if a cleaner man could better bear the shame.. "She was eating gnarly amounts of calcium." Homeless man to girl trying to give him money: "No, thanks, ma'am. I never work on Sundays." "Wow! I never thought I'd need a radar-guided spatula!" "Isn't it great that I articulate? Isn't it grand that you can understand? ... I can talk, I can talk, I can talk!" I believe that people laugh at coincidence as a way of relegating it to the realm of the absurd and of therefore not having to take seriously the possibility that there is a lot more going on in our lives than we either know or care to know... I suspect that part of it, anyway, is that every once and so often we hear a whisper from the wings that goes something like this: "You've turned up in the right place at the right time. You're doing fine. Don't ever think that you've been forgotten. When I lay these questions before God I get no answer. But a rather special sort of "No answer." It is not the locked door. It is more like a silent, certainly not uncompassionate, gaze. As though He shook His head not in refusal but waiving the question. Like, "Peace, child; you don't understand." CCM: You've spoken a lot more about crying than I ever thought you would. "Youth is not a period of time. It is a state of mind, a result of the will, a quality of the imagination, a victory of courage over timidity, of the taste for adventure over the love of comfort. A man doesn't grow old because he has lived a certain number of years. A man grows old when he deserts his ideal. The years may wrinkle his skin, but deserting his ideal wrinkles his soul. Preoccuptaions, fears, doubts, and despair are the enemies which slowly bow us toward earth and turn us into dust before death. You will remain young as long as you are open to what is beautiful, good, and great; receptive to the messages of other men and women, of nature and of God. If one day you should become bitter, pessimistic, and gnawed by despair, may God have mercy on your old man's soul." ""Don't go matchmaking for me, Ilse," said Emily wit a faint smile... "I feel in my bones that I shall achieve old-maidenhood, which is an entirely different thing from having old-maidenhood thrust upon you." "I wish Aunt Elizabeth would let me go to Shrewsbury, but I fear she never will. She feels she can't trust me out of her sight because my mother eloped. But she need not be afraid I will ever elope. I have made up my mind that I will never marry. I shall be wedded to my art" "Tomorrow seems like a long ways away. But it will come, just like any other day... Deep inside, where the wounded creatures hide, I am afraid. Maybe I got lost somewhere along the way somehow. Please rescue me... Yea, though I walk through the valley of the dark shadow of death, I will fear no evil. For you are with me... Though I fear, though I am afraid, You are with me. Though I'm angry, tired, broken down and confused, You are with me. Though I sin like I've never sinned before, lose myself right out an open door, You are with me." "The invisible people agreed about everything. Indeed most of their remarks were the sort it would not be easy to disagree with: "What I always say is, when a chap's hungry, he likes some victuals," or "Getting dark now; always does at night," or even "Ah, you've come over the water. Powerful wet stuff, ain't it?"" -- C. S. Lewis, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader "When People object... that if Jesus was God as well as Man, then He had an unfair advantage which deprives Him for them of all value, it seems to me as if a man struggling in the water should refuse a rope thrown to him by another who had one foot on the bank, saying, "Oh but you had an unfair advantage." It is because of His advantage that He can help." "But, you know, as a Christian, one of the big questions you always ask yourself is, "So we believe in Jesus, we believe in the teachings of the church, but what does that look like when it's lived out?" Because surely, one of the things that Jesus said that I think we often overlook is, "The person who hears my words and does them is like the wise man who built his house on the rock." He didn't say "the person who hears my words and thinks about 'em" or "whoever hears my words and agrees with it." But he said, "Whoever hears it and does it." "find that which gives you breath and grants you more to give "I have packed all my belongings. I don't belong here anymore. This pair of sandles, one pack to carry, this old guitar and this tattered old Bible. And I know I won't be afraid. 'cause I know, I know Home is where You are." "Open up your weepy eyes, everyone is dancing. Angels peer through sweet disguise, through a fire of cleansing. "Long hair, no hair; Everybody, everywhere:
Breathe Deep, breathe deep the Breath of God!" "You may be bruised and torn and broken, but
you're Mine!" "I don't deserve to speak, and they don't deserve
to hear it. It's makin' me believe that it's not
about me." "Kickin' against these goads sure did cut up my
feet. Didn't your hands get bloody as you washed
them clean?" "They say God blessed us with plenty. I say
you?re blessed with poverty. ?Cause you never
stop to wonder whether earth is just a little
better than the Land of the Free" "Computers will know everything in the 21st
century. They'll be like me in the 20th
century." |
