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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Tuesday, August 10, 2004
FRIDAY, JULY 30, 2004. 2324
BY THIS TIME ONE WEEK FROM NOW (oops, "recruit writing" [all caps] has become such a habit, I almost forget how to write in normal/civilian writing!), I will be in my rack after my pass-in-review and first day of liberty. Today, as with nearly every Friday here, there was a pass-in-review (aka graduation) taking place, and when we saw all the graduates in their dress whites marching along, and sailors riding with their parents away from here and all, we got very excited. Some folks even started to cry! One week, just one. And then, assuming everyone behaves, we have a nice, mostly open week during which we'll have a lot more fun. If I had it all to do over, would I be yoeman again? Well, not that I had any say in the matter anyway, but... Goodness, it's been hard. One of those situations in which part of me thrives, and a lot of me is overwhelmed, and if I weigh the pros and cons, the answer is a resounding NEGATIVE. And at the same time, who else could do it? And would I be happy not doing this job? Probably no one and probably not. I'm glad I get the advancement out of it...if I had come in as an E-3 afterall, I'd've done this job with no obvious benefit to myself except for being sure my paperwork is done correctly. I dunno, it's just too much sometimes, and yet nearly perfect for me aside from that. I'm also frustrated at the same biggest pet peeve as in the civilian world: hypocricy. The same people who cross themselves before meals are the ones who lose their tempers quickly or have no confidence but plenty of opinions and overreact to most situations, crying or arguing or whatever. One, specifically, upon finding out I'm a virgin, told me (and I quote) "I would shoot myself now!" She has since blamed all my stress on such frustration and made several further comments to that effect. What's more, since she happens to be a leader in our division (and especially now that she's getting cool again), some others have joined in with her. Grr. Argh. Meanshile, in related news, the same shipmates who sing gospel music and talk loudly about going to gospel service and whatnot will (within literally 1 minute) also sing songs about sex (with very graphic lyrics) or what have you, and dance in suggestive ways all the time. Grr, argh again. In other, not-so-related news (aka moving right along) on Tuesday, I'll be meeting with Captain Moran, the Commanding Officer of Recruit Training Command. Perhaps while or before Beth even gets to post this letter. That is, not just me, but all the award winners and honor recruits. It's for the outbriefing that will help to make this a better place. My eyelids are closing themselves, so I'm off for now. SATURDAY, JULY 31, 2004. 2342 With 15 minutes left in July, I feel like it's the new year or something. Insanity! I can't believe it's almost August already, I mean, will be before I finish this letter maybe, or at least before I fall asleep, and yet I haven't experienced summer at all except the being really hot sometimes part. No waterskiing, no picnics or cookouts since I left, no horseback riding, no walks in the park, no... summer. Just a lot of marching and plenty of indoor workouts. I've missed a lot of the PT times due to health and having too much work to do, so only one of the ones I went to was outdoors. Today, speaking of athletic events indoors, we had Captain's Cup, which is kinda like a field day or such, with a whole bunch of competative, Navy-and/or-physical-fitness-type events. For example, pull-ups and sit-ups, as well as stretcher and firefighting equipment relays. When they were picking people for the 1.5 mile relay (12 laps around this track, one lap per person, thus 12 people per team, evenly split between genders for integrated divisions), they needed a 6th female and no one was stepping up, so my chipmates started saying my name and I agreed that I'd try it so long as they didn't hate me if we lost because of me. It was so much fun! I haven't done a relay in ages, and the 200 meter (apparently what one lap on this track is) was never my event on the track team. I could compete (and barely that) at the 400 or win often enough on 800-5k (with 2 miles being my best even back then) but never the 200. But the guy in front of me and 2 or 3 before him secured our lead, and I maintained it somehow, mostly because the closest person to me was prolly exerting herself so much trying to close the gap that she died before her 200 was up. But I did what I do in a distance run, and pulled something out of me on my finishing straightaway and took off even faster, giving the next male about the same lead I got and it was kept or widened for most of our runners. When we won, we won by a fair amount. 5 more days 'till graduation, and happy August everyone! SUNDAY, AUGUST 1, 2004. 1120 Another week, less than one more to go before pass-in-review, and this is my last holiday routine here, since next week is liberty weekend and then we'll be gone by the following Saturday. Fantastic. Gonna go shine my boots, shower, eat, and get back to military life, in that order I think. Love ya'll! Patty--I hardly recognize my name anymore--it's either yoeman or SR Tracey.
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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
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