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, March 12, 2006
"Mamma said there'd be days like this, there'd be days like this, mamma said (mamma said, mamma said) Mamma said there'd be days like this, there'd be days like this my mamma said." After a very nice but mostly unproductive day yesterday, I ended up at the Starlite (or the Lite for short) as I am wont to do, and actually closed the place down, which I haven't done in a while. So I was asleep by maybe 2:30 or so and woke up just after 7 this morning just because my body is adjusting in some ways to my work schedule. My mind still doesn't wake up until at least 10 or two cups of coffee into the day (whichever is first, maybe), but my body can't seem to sleep in past 7 anymore without at least an "I'm-late-for-work!"-panic and an "Oh,-it's-an-off-day"-roll-over. Anyway, I wasn't planning to wake until after 9, but I decided that an early start couldn't hurt me and it would give me time to finally water my garden (which I've been putting off since Thursday) before hitting the road. After deciding that I was running too late to try out the new church before going to my Gramps', I was all excited that I was going to get moving by ten-thirty and make it here earlier than I have in a while. So I went to the gas station to check my tire pressure and fluid levels... I just got my oil changed two weeks ago or so, and knew that my power steering was running low because the Ru has been a little persnickity on his turns and parking.. but I've checked my oil twice since the change and the levels were just fine, and I did have power steering fluid, just not a great deal, and I've driven vehicles without power steering before -- now that I've got muscles, it should be that much easier, right? But today when I checked my oil, it was completely out. Then I noticed in the rear-left corner of the hood-wall and engine innards: a bunch of weird dark brown lines, like someone had taken tarrish paint and flung it off a paint brush inside my hood. Then I noticed that it was wet, whatever it was, and was EVERYWHERE in that section. Large glops of it and big drips of it along with the little paint-brush flung looking lines up near the top. It looked like gloopy oil, but I couldn't figure out where it was coming from and I couldn't see anything that caused alarm -- the boot on my CV Axle was just fine, so it wasn't the joint grease on that. (Forgive me if I get the terms wrong, I can see the part in my mind, I just don't actually know what these things are called).. It hit me hard, though -- I knew my muffler and at least one section of my exhaust pipe needed to be replaced, and I knew that the place I took it to for that also said my catalytic converter was what caused all the rattling and also needed to be replaced. I know that my clutch cable has been needing to be replaced for a while, because people just keep putting spacers on it to stretch it out, and the silley guy who replaced my clutch when I first got to Jax didn't replace the cable while he was in there. And I've already gotten my CVAxle, clutch, brakes and tires replaced. So I really didn't want something completely unexpected to be wrong with my car. But the worst part was the day -- I wasn't just heading to my Gramps' just to see him and Gramma Jan or just for the fun of it -- nope. Friday is Gramps' birthday, and last Wednesday was (my older brother) John's birthday. So we were all going to meet here (Gramps and Gramma Jan, John, Peter, Sloane, Mom and Mary, and myself) to celebrate both birthdays. The one task I actually accomplished yesterday was their present shopping. So, despite the fact that it was now almost 11 and I had really not wanted to show up late on my first Sunday at this new church (figuring maybe I would've missed all the worship music and that was one of the things I had been particularly interested in seeing there) .. despite that, I went on down there because it was the only place I could think of to go. And after the serviceI found Terri, the woman I mentioned from last Wednesday. To make a long story short, her husband was able to take me to get some oil to bandaid my car with for the moment so we could get it to a good repair shop (the one Terri and her family use), and then take me to the airport to get a rental car. In the meantime, I managed to spill coffee on both of my shirts -- the one I was wearing and the one I had packed for tomorrow. "Well this day's been crazy, but everything's happened on schedule.. from the mmphhmpphpmph to the coffee I spilled on my shirt." -- Derek Webb (I think that line is from the rain and the mud..??) I got on the road, in my brand-new Nissan Sentra rental car, around 2:30pm. And then, because of Bike Week in Daytona, I decided to take the scenic route down instead of my normal path through Daytona and Orlando. Except that it was a beautiful Sunday and EVERYONE was driving. Slowly, at that. And every light turned red when they saw me coming. (To match my fingernails, perhaps?) I joined my grandfather and family for dinner at our usual place around 7:30. There is NO WAY it should ever take five hours from Jacksonville to Lake Placid in non-Thanksgiving traffic. And because this peppy little Sentra drives a whole lot different than my Albert, I kept finding myself going much faster than I thought I was -- on the way home, assuming less traffic and less lights, I'll be using the car's cruise control. (Albert's doesn't work, but I'm used to how he drives.) Anyway -- after that, it was all pleasant .. my niece was especially bubbly this evening and especially happy to see me for some reason. My twin brother was wearing the Blue Angels shirt I got him for our birthday -- mom and Mary say they made him wear it "or else" .. which makes me feel like when hypothetical old Aunt Edna makes little Jimmy a really ugly, itchy sweater for Christmas and poor little Jimmy has to wear it every time he sees her until he "accidentally" rips a big hole in the elbow or (if he's not so clever) outgrows it past squeezing-into-one-last-time. I'm staying here tonight and then will head back tomorrow with the time being flexible based on what's up with my car. It is nice to know that I'm in this peaceful, relaxing place and tomorrow I'll be able to sit on the patio in the zero-gravity chair (hopefully there'll be a breeze .. Gramps weighs even less than I do these days and keeps the house super-duper hot and still wears jackets) and look out over the lake and read my book and maybe even journal. (Yup, all the stuff I don't put here.) Hopefully my little Al, jr has some minor problem (apart from the others mentioned) and will be ready to go in no time. Otherwise, I'm going to be seriously out of luck trying to manage my life in Jacksonville without a car. But hey, at least I'm not in school this semester and everything I do outside of work is in walking distance....
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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." |
