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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Sunday, August 08, 2004
Josh, Beth, and Karleen were off visiting his brother and sister-in-law in Virginia and seeing nature there, as well as going to our mutual friends' wedding. Yay Alex and Kelly! Congrats, you two! So, my letter from this past Sunday isn't posted yet, but here I am at their house enjoying my Liberty weekend. My mother and Mary surprised me at graduation on Friday, and they were here 'till yesterday (Saturday) evening, so I got to spend some good time with them as well as these three friends. We went out for lunch on Friday after pass-in-review, and then us yung'uns went to the mall because it was nearby and we didn't have much time, and then they left and Mom and Mary took me out to the Rainforest Cafe for dinner. Yesterday, we went to the Lincoln Park Zoo, which was my request because I hadn't been to a zoo since I was maybe 11. I saw some fabulous things there, and we had a great time. And we got to see some of the sections where Return To Me was filmed, though the zoo didn't put any emphasis on that themselves. We then visited Navy Pier, which has a great USO, and a marvelous Stained Glass exhibit. Then Mom and Mary left from there (to fly home), and Beth, Josh, and Karleen came back with me to the base, where we got to enjoy ourselves in a relaxed atmosphere. This morning, I went with them to church, and we came back to their place and I slept for like four hours or something, sprawled out in Civilian clothes, enjoying a comfortable couch and not-entirely-sterile-all-tile-almost-all-metal-and-everyone's-dressed-the-same atmosphere. We watched the See Spot Rock DVD (they'd been watching a Guster one while I was asleep) and are listening to Over the Rhine now, at my request, and we've had good food and they broke out their newish espresso machine, and it's so nice here. Only about an hour 'till we'll have to leave to get me back to the base in time, but it's been a really nice visit.
I certainly don't have the same appetite I did as a civilian, prolly because of having to eat so quickly and a lot of the foods in the galley just not appealing to me.. they weren't bad at all, just only so much I was motivated enough to spend my time and energy eating, since both were very limited. I lived off a mixture of blue Powerade and Pineapple Juice (they had pineapple juice, of all things, in the galley!) and chocolate milk for one meal a day when we didn't have PT or a promised ITE session to follow. And I've mentioned the hashbrowns several times, and peanut butter with bananas or pb&j sammiches, and green peppers.. have I mentioned those? They have slices of green peppers there most days, and I actually eat them raw (with no dressing, either).. which is funney, since I used to absolutely despise them as a kid and even pick them off pizza and all. Now here I am, eating 'em up with most of my meals. Some of my division kids told me I was really weird for it, too. ;) A lot of my division introduced me to their parents, and it was funney because it was the way I'd imagine it would've went if I had had a chance to introduce them to my RDC's.. they talked about what I did in the division, and I talked about how much they helped out and whatnot, and I felt like the summer camp counselor (because boot camp graduation felt like summer camp graduation) or the teacher or the RDC, instead of a fellow recruit. But really, that's kinda how it was all along.. from when the males first got there and they thought I WAS some level of RDC or something because I'd already been running the forming-division for almost a week before they got there, and I was they only female recruit they were allowed to talk to (because I was the yoeman and we had to interact) and I was teaching them all the basic stuff we'd been taught before they got there, and I was in the office fairly often and all.. so they didn't know that I was really just a recruit like them, and that's never entirely changed. There's still been a lot of talk of favoritism and double standards amongst some of the lesser esteemed members of the division, but the ones that'll be in the fleet longer and that have the character that'll get them advanced sooner have already come to understand some of the subtletees of how things work in the adult world, whether military or civilian. Of course, I myself got to see some of the frustrating political side of things in regards to the Awards Board, with kids who had horrid military bearing and limited ethical convictions getting awards that spoke very highly of them, and with the awards being stated at the ceremony in a way that made it sound like they were chosen in a way to indicate they actually EARNED the awards, and throughout their entire bootcamp experience, when in reality the selections were made a month in advance, and based on one high-pressure interview with the awards board and maybe a couple of strings pulled. But I've been around long enough to have seen such politics in action before, and don't reckon the awards themselves will mean a whole lot when certain of the winners get out into the fleet and mess up really bad or such. Some of them, mind you, were fabulous and I fully support them winning. I was really proud to stand up front with those ones during the ceremony. And then there's communication, which is severely lacking in most areas of this world, military and civilian alike, and which I'd love to increase. That was the one thing I mentioned at the debriefing with Captain Moran and other high-ups in the bootcamp chain of command that all the award winners and honor-recruits from non-award winning divisions got to attend. The debriefing at which I was told by a Commander who worked with Admiral Patricia Tracey that I share her name and to look up her bio when I got back on the internet.. and then by the galley boss who worked for her as her personal chef when he was in the military that several of the folks at the debriefing were commenting that along with her name, I also shared much of her military bearing. That made me really proud. So, I will be looking up her bio and learning more about her soon. It's funney, because right now there is one Patricia Tracey at each end of the rank/rate spectrum (if you count me as a Seaman Recruit, since I don't officially get the title of Seaman 'till I leave for A School, 'cause we're all Seaman Recruits at bootcamp, regardless of our pay grade). I do wonder if she'd've heard somehow. So, I'm off to eat some dinner before returning to the base, and spend more time with my friends here. Love and blessings! Patty -- the bootcamp graduate!
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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." |
