"Easy Like Sunday Morning"

Bloggy-

It's been a short night. I went to bed at midnight (hacking and coughing and whatnot) and I slept pretty well (I made have had a little help) until about 3:00 am when I woke up and couldn't get back to sleep. For the most part, the coughing has subsided, but I got some quality time in with God about things. That probably took up less than an hour though. So here it is, 5:46 in the morning, and I'm left writing to you.

As part of said conversation with the Creator of the Heavens and the Earth and a lot of reflection after, I had a moment of clarity or two. I guess the big one surrounds this whole singleness issues. Maybe not that, more like my issue with commitment and me and everything that's involved with that. I've come to realize that I am so very afraid of rejection that I only think about asking out gals who if they were to reject me (which they won't since I won't actually ask them out), it's of no real consequence. I know where this comes from and it's weird for me to own up to what could be mildy labled as my my 'mother wound' and my 'Melissa wound.' I'm generally terrified of women - my mom today that all of my friends love is not the same woman who was my mother for the first 20 years of my life. There's...well...there's a lot there. She's a good person now (I'm not going to lie, I was going to put woman there, but in a post that's headed down the road of dating, I really don't want to refer to my my mom as a woman...weird, I know), but she wasn't always. And then there's the Melissa incident. Oh, I could talk about that for hours, but to keep it short, honestly, she was the first woman (see) I was ever in love with. I don't mean like, hey, I'm in High School and really like you, but in the realest possible sense that I could love someone. I remember the day that I realized, hey, this is freaking Melissa and telling a couple of my friends - they all gave me this look like I was an idiot and one of them even said "You didn't know? How the hell could you not know? We all knew that you loved her!" Anyway, I also remember the worst night of my life, where, oddly enough, it was a one-two combination of the infulences of these two women that put in front of me the option to really shut down that part of my life for almost five years (oh, by the way, I took that option and here I am!).

So why all of this meandering? Why all of this talk? Because 1) that's all I talk about on here and 2) things about my choices are starting to make sense to me. Like the whole eHarmony thing - all of those women could (and eventually did) say no and reject me for a variety of reasons (let's be honest, I'm 23, have a huge beard, am not the thinnest man, am slightly arrogant, watch cartoons made for children, am only a technical virgin -which is no virgin at all - and am a youth pastor - who's all that surprised?) and there wouldn't be much of an emotional toll. I'd actually've been really wondering what to do if someone had been interested in me. I put myself in a place to be rejected (I'll show you a soon to happen example shortly) because, in a really self-destructive and sick way, I'm the most comfortable there...it's an additiction really.

I remember the three times that I made a move out of this towards something better. I'll give you a single guess as to how those attempts worked out. The first gal got five or six months in and let it all go (and to be honest, as I was still recovering from the night I probably wasn't helping any). The second gal, well, I'm not sure at what moment she decided that she wasn't in to me, but I got a letter on a Tuesday that casually mentioned that she didn't want to date me. And the third gal was the last one where I put the idea of commitment out there, which she flatly rejected. All three of them - married. (By the way, every girl I've ever dated is married, this even includes most of the girls I 'went out' with in middle school!)

Anyway, even now as I think back on my last few months of posting, I shoot low or for people I can easily escape from or from whom if they did say no, not much is lost. Because, in this whole post-Melissa landscape (by the way, I love Melissa. No longer in the hand holding hugging kissing sort of way, but I dearly love her as my friend. We talk all the time and I'm not bitter towards her - she's just a landmark person in my life), there's only really one gal who I can say without a doubt would knock Melissa off her pedastool. Hmmmm...we'll call her...Diana (not her real name...I don't know that I know any Diana's right now anyhow!).

SO she doesn't live around here anymore, which generally makes me suspect of the whole thing because, as mentioned above, it's easy to escape from. But that notwithstanding, here we go. I knew of her for about a year of college and knew her my junior and legitimate senior year. We still talk at least two or three times a month - and she's still single. Which is really hard to believe. Like really hard. Moving along, I have admitted to a friend or two in confidence that I would move to...well...wherever she is east of the ole miss (1. I know where she lives and 2. I say ole' miss cause I can't spell...that state/river) with little hesitation if she were slightly interested in me (after my eventual graduation from college which should happen this august) and not think twice about it. That's where my first big tip off came. Anyhow, she's a poet, funny, a little nutty, and probably a bit smarter than me. So I was thinking about how one would mention these feelings because I think it's time for me to finally grow up and take a risk because, heck, things aren't working for me as they are (by the way, this is all 6:20 am bluster - by this afternoon, I'll have sobered my judgements earnestly and heavily reconsidered and realized that this all foolishiness, but play along with me bloggy!). So imagined (as any good person with an overactive imagination that can't sleep would) how the conversation would go. I wrote earlier that I would demonstrate how I put myself in place to be rejected, and here we go! Imagine, if you will, this all midconversation and generally light hearted and hahahaha(and by the way, she doesn't even know I have a blog, so this isn't a half hearted tounge in cheek thing):

Me: So, here's the question we have to get to as Taylorites, Ms. Diana, are you married yet?
Her: Oh you know, John...sooo many options that I haven't really picked one yet
Me: For sure, for sure. But seriously?
Her: No, not married. Not really dating anyone. It's been kind of hard getting to know people here and I just think I'm going to wait until after I'm back from teaching [ESL overseas]
Me: You always say that!
Her: I always mean it! There's just no point, you know, in starting something when I'm just going to move off to Taiwan or Indonesia or Swaziland. You know?
Me: I guess...I see that...[and this is where the conversation will realistically break off, but let's pretend for a moment that I grew a pair of testicles in the next few days]...but, can I be fer serious for a second?
Her: Oh no! Serious! Why would you do such a thing? And yes.
Me: Diana, you're a friend of mine. Probably one of the top tier friends, so feel honored and whatnot, so take this however you will [see the avoidance and escape language? Brilliant!]. You're beautiful and you're wonderful. I've known you, what, five years? I think you're...well...there've been one too many lines written by one too many song writers in the past few generations to describe how pretty you are, so I'll let that one be. But you're beautiful through and through and through [insert all thos positive emotional, spritiual and other qualities blah blah blah]...if you were interested in me, and I'm not saying that I think you are or should be or whatever, [again, see the hypothetical nature of the langauge? See how clumsily it comes close to flirting and sending a message, but it really doesn't?] but if you were I know that there'd be no question in my getting a passport and going to Beijing to...well...do whatever while you pass on some mad english skills [see the Hollywood and New York and Ontario influenced romance language from the chick flick genre? But back off, this is my imaginiative conversaton!]. I'm just your friend, and I can't imagine that there aren't a few guys who would jump at the opportunity. I guess...I guess I'm rambling and not making a whole lot of sense, but I think that you're using a silly excuse not to look around and not to date. But hey, what do I know? I'm still in the extended adolescence of college.
Her: Oh. Hmm. Well. Thanks? Hey, you know that project I was talking about earlier, I think I'm going to go work on that now. It was great talking to you and all, but I'll talk to you later, yeah?
Me: Yeah! Swell! It's awesome that we're friends!
Her: Yep. Friends. Good solid friends. By friend!

So there you go...my lame imagination ends with me being rejected - it's like I can't even see a world where that doesn't happen! Anyway, it's 6:41, which means that I've been thinking about this way too long. And I've already talked myself out of having that lameo convo with her, but here's the point; I now know that I'm intentionally setting my sights low and trying to settle but trying to fail at settling, so doesn't that balance itself all out? The answer? Not at all. But now that I know I'm sick and really looked at how it's affected me, shouldn't that help me fix it? Probably not. Not until I'm thin and pretty. That'll pretty much fix everything (he says not being all that sarcastic). Seriously though, (and I was being more than a little serious in that last comment) I know what I need to work on. If I ever want to get married, have kids, and experience marital style intimacy, I've got to fix this. May Grace cover this.

"What the world needs now..."

Bloggy-

So today I have a final. Guess who hasn't studied? That's right, me. And what am I doing? Blogging (something I've done with regular inconsistency since September), so we know where I stand on the whole studying issue. Anyway, I've got an ethical issue that I'm sorting out. And it's this kind of ethical dilemma (?) that will bar me from hiring a single youth pastor if, God forbid, I become a real pastor. I'm not attracted to a student or former student (just to clear that up for everyone), so it's nothing like that. I just - what's the wisdom of asking out one of your adult sponsors? Probably not very. Especially if she seems the type who doesn't date all that much. She's much quieter than I am - that's for sure. I'm not even positive why (by the way, I am studying right now as I blog...yay...) I'm attracted to her. She's very sweet, very kind, she connects well with students - - - I think she's funny. But heck, I think this about a ton of people. And to prove my shallowness as a man, yes, she is very pretty. I don't know. The best way to solve this quandary is by dating lot's of women who aren't her and aren't volunteers in my youth group. First, that'll prove my manly prowess and virility (right?) and show that I shouldn't date someone who is much quieter than I am because I would just dominate them in conversation and everything else. Okay, so in that last sentence, I just ran the course of the 'what if' and it seems like a good decision to not ever date for any reason. Awesome.

Okay, maybe that was a bit over the top. But seriously. I won't be asking her out. Yes. That realization came to me as I typed. Why won't I? Basic reasoning - it would be amazingly awkward if she said no. Second, that would totally be an abuse of authority for me to do so. Third, it'd raise (unwarranted) suspicions as to why I ask any woman to help out with the youth group. Fourth, I fear rejection. Fifth, she's way younger than I am (did I mention she's a freshman?). Sixth, if she says yes and then we do date and things click really well, then the other women (and possibly men) would feel threatened by her continued presence. Seventh, picking up on the last point, my relationship past is dotted with breakups (hence singless now...logic! It's so wonderful!), so if that trend continues (and someday I hope it'll break) what happens to the students when we break up? You see how smart I am? Very. Eighth, asking her out would be a tactic admission of either a)laziness b) lack of options or c) lack of creativity, because I mean, seriously, she's one of only six or seven collegiate women I see on a regular basis.

Wow. I'm amazing. I didn't even need you bloggy. Okay, so I did, but only to process. For a long string of one's and zero's you're a great listener. I'm the man. That's right, I Da Man!

Bloggy-

So it's been forever since I checked in last and let you know what was going on in my life and we did a little processing, so this may be short, it may be long or it just may be...itself. We'll see.

Anyhow, on the relationship front, I finished the fight in Halo 3. I know - sounds ridiculous, but seriously, it's freaking Halo 3! And what gamer doesn't fall a little in love with Cortona? Or at least want to make sure she's okay? If you don't, then I don't think you deserve to play the game. So I went over to John C. Wengatz and played with a bunch of the guys on the floor for about a total of seven hours and I was amazed at the graphics, the game play, and most importantly, the story. Halo the series, as much of an action game as it is, actually has a very compelling narrative before - I don't think it'll go down in the annuls of history as on par with "The Great Gadsby", "The Divine Comedy" or "The Song of Roland", but it's better than most video games that I've heard of or played. Anyway, I could go on about the Master Chief for awhile, but I won't. Let's just say that the game is amazing.

In other news, well...let's see...I don't have a lot of other news. Let me assure that my life has been pretty boring. Youth group is going pretty well for High School and Middle School and that's kept me pretty busy. Hmmm...that about covers it yo.

Alright, I'm out.

Dr. J

"Shiny"

Bloggy-

I'm stoked - a friend of mine is going to let me learn some youth min stuff from her, and that's pretty awesome. Beyond that, I think after talking with the boss man, I've got a rough idea of a plan for the semester. Hopefully. Okay. Work.

Dr. J.

"I Saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness..."

Bloggy-

My heart comes to you heavy...Allen Ginsberg once wrote "I'm with you in Rockland where you scream in a straightjacket that you're losing the game of the actual pingpong of the abyss" - I guess it makes more sense if you've read more Ginsberg. But here's the thing...I'm with her in Rockland where she screams in an open room void of meaning and banging demanding an answer to a question that shouldn't be asked. The world is an evil place - beauty is often destroyed in her fragility because of the violence of the human fingerprint.

God, do something!
Justice. JUSTICE.
That's what You promised,
now show up please!
It's a sure thing that Your faithful,
and that's we go on.
When we're down, when we're out,
You'll show up, Glory bound King-of-Angel-Armies.
So God, Justice.
Compassion.
Mercy.
That's what we beg for.

For the moment, I'm without words, so Bloggy, let me leave you with Allen's Poem Howl (from http://members.tripod.com/~Sprayberry/poems/howl.txt):::

HOWL

For Carl Solomon

I

I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by
madness, starving hysterical naked,
dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn
looking for an angry fix,
angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly
connection to the starry dynamo in the machin-
ery of night,
who poverty and tatters and hollow-eyed and high sat
up smoking in the supernatural darkness of
cold-water flats floating across the tops of cities
contemplating jazz,
who bared their brains to Heaven under the El and
saw Mohammedan angels staggering on tene-
ment roofs illuminated,
who passed through universities with radiant cool eyes
hallucinating Arkansas and Blake-light tragedy
among the scholars of war,
who were expelled from the academies for crazy &
publishing obscene odes on the windows of the
skull,
who cowered in unshaven rooms in underwear, burn-
ing their money in wastebaskets and listening
to the Terror through the wall,
who got busted in their pubic beards returning through
Laredo with a belt of marijuana for New York,
who ate fire in paint hotels or drank turpentine in
Paradise Alley, death, or purgatoried their
torsos night after night
with dreams, with drugs, with waking nightmares, al-
cohol and cock and endless balls,
incomparable blind; streets of shuddering cloud and
lightning in the mind leaping toward poles of
Canada & Paterson, illuminating all the mo-
tionless world of Time between,
Peyote solidities of halls, backyard green tree cemetery
dawns, wine drunkenness over the rooftops,
storefront boroughs of teahead joyride neon
blinking traffic light, sun and moon and tree
vibrations in the roaring winter dusks of Brook-
lyn, ashcan rantings and kind king light of mind,
who chained themselves to subways for the endless
ride from Battery to holy Bronx on benzedrine
until the noise of wheels and children brought
them down shuddering mouth-wracked and
battered bleak of brain all drained of brilliance
in the drear light of Zoo,
who sank all night in submarine light of Bickford's
floated out and sat through the stale beer after
noon in desolate Fugazzi's, listening to the crack
of doom on the hydrogen jukebox,
who talked continuously seventy hours from park to
pad to bar to Bellevue to museum to the Brook-
lyn Bridge,
lost battalion of platonic conversationalists jumping
down the stoops off fire escapes off windowsills
off Empire State out of the moon,
yacketayakking screaming vomiting whispering facts
and memories and anecdotes and eyeball kicks
and shocks of hospitals and jails and wars,
whole intellects disgorged in total recall for seven days
and nights with brilliant eyes, meat for the
Synagogue cast on the pavement,
who vanished into nowhere Zen New Jersey leaving a
trail of ambiguous picture postcards of Atlantic
City Hall,
suffering Eastern sweats and Tangerian bone-grind-
ings and migraines of China under junk-with-
drawal in Newark's bleak furnished room,
who wandered around and around at midnight in the
railroad yard wondering where to go, and went,
leaving no broken hearts,
who lit cigarettes in boxcars boxcars boxcars racketing
through snow toward lonesome farms in grand-
father night,
who studied Plotinus Poe St. John of the Cross telep-
athy and bop kabbalah because the cosmos in-
stinctively vibrated at their feet in Kansas,
who loned it through the streets of Idaho seeking vis-
ionary indian angels who were visionary indian
angels,
who thought they were only mad when Baltimore
gleamed in supernatural ecstasy,
who jumped in limousines with the Chinaman of Okla-
homa on the impulse of winter midnight street
light smalltown rain,
who lounged hungry and lonesome through Houston
seeking jazz or sex or soup, and followed the
brilliant Spaniard to converse about America
and Eternity, a hopeless task, and so took ship
to Africa,
who disappeared into the volcanoes of Mexico leaving
behind nothing but the shadow of dungarees
and the lava and ash of poetry scattered in fire
place Chicago,
who reappeared on the West Coast investigating the
F.B.I. in beards and shorts with big pacifist
eyes sexy in their dark skin passing out incom-
prehensible leaflets,
who burned cigarette holes in their arms protesting
the narcotic tobacco haze of Capitalism,
who distributed Supercommunist pamphlets in Union
Square weeping and undressing while the sirens
of Los Alamos wailed them down, and wailed
down Wall, and the Staten Island ferry also
wailed,
who broke down crying in white gymnasiums naked
and trembling before the machinery of other
skeletons,
who bit detectives in the neck and shrieked with delight
in policecars for committing no crime but their
own wild cooking pederasty and intoxication,
who howled on their knees in the subway and were
dragged off the roof waving genitals and manu-
scripts,
who let themselves be fucked in the ass by saintly
motorcyclists, and screamed with joy,
who blew and were blown by those human seraphim,
the sailors, caresses of Atlantic and Caribbean
love,
who balled in the morning in the evenings in rose
gardens and the grass of public parks and
cemeteries scattering their semen freely to
whomever come who may,
who hiccuped endlessly trying to giggle but wound up
with a sob behind a partition in a Turkish Bath
when the blond & naked angel came to pierce
them with a sword,
who lost their loveboys to the three old shrews of fate
the one eyed shrew of the heterosexual dollar
the one eyed shrew that winks out of the womb
and the one eyed shrew that does nothing but
sit on her ass and snip the intellectual golden
threads of the craftsman's loom,
who copulated ecstatic and insatiate with a bottle of
beer a sweetheart a package of cigarettes a can-
dle and fell off the bed, and continued along
the floor and down the hall and ended fainting
on the wall with a vision of ultimate cunt and
come eluding the last gyzym of consciousness,
who sweetened the snatches of a million girls trembling
in the sunset, and were red eyed in the morning
but prepared to sweeten the snatch of the sun
rise, flashing buttocks under barns and naked
in the lake,
who went out whoring through Colorado in myriad
stolen night-cars, N.C., secret hero of these
poems, cocksman and Adonis of Denver-joy
to the memory of his innumerable lays of girls
in empty lots & diner backyards, moviehouses'
rickety rows, on mountaintops in caves or with
gaunt waitresses in familiar roadside lonely pet-
ticoat upliftings & especially secret gas-station
solipsisms of johns, & hometown alleys too,
who faded out in vast sordid movies, were shifted in
dreams, woke on a sudden Manhattan, and
picked themselves up out of basements hung
over with heartless Tokay and horrors of Third
Avenue iron dreams & stumbled to unemploy-
ment offices,
who walked all night with their shoes full of blood on
the snowbank docks waiting for a door in the
East River to open to a room full of steamheat
and opium,
who created great suicidal dramas on the apartment
cliff-banks of the Hudson under the wartime
blue floodlight of the moon & their heads shall
be crowned with laurel in oblivion,
who ate the lamb stew of the imagination or digested
the crab at the muddy bottom of the rivers of
Bowery,
who wept at the romance of the streets with their
pushcarts full of onions and bad music,
who sat in boxes breathing in the darkness under the
bridge, and rose up to build harpsichords in
their lofts,
who coughed on the sixth floor of Harlem crowned
with flame under the tubercular sky surrounded
by orange crates of theology,
who scribbled all night rocking and rolling over lofty
incantations which in the yellow morning were
stanzas of gibberish,
who cooked rotten animals lung heart feet tail borsht
& tortillas dreaming of the pure vegetable
kingdom,
who plunged themselves under meat trucks looking for
an egg,
who threw their watches off the roof to cast their ballot
for Eternity outside of Time, & alarm clocks
fell on their heads every day for the next decade,
who cut their wrists three times successively unsuccess-
fully, gave up and were forced to open antique
stores where they thought they were growing
old and cried,
who were burned alive in their innocent flannel suits
on Madison Avenue amid blasts of leaden verse
& the tanked-up clatter of the iron regiments
of fashion & the nitroglycerine shrieks of the
fairies of advertising & the mustard gas of sinis-
ter intelligent editors, or were run down by the
drunken taxicabs of Absolute Reality,
who jumped off the Brooklyn Bridge this actually hap-
pened and walked away unknown and forgotten
into the ghostly daze of Chinatown soup alley
ways & firetrucks, not even one free beer,
who sang out of their windows in despair, fell out of
the subway window, jumped in the filthy Pas-
saic, leaped on negroes, cried all over the street,
danced on broken wineglasses barefoot smashed
phonograph records of nostalgic European
1930s German jazz finished the whiskey and
threw up groaning into the bloody toilet, moans
in their ears and the blast of colossal steam
whistles,
who barreled down the highways of the past journeying
to each other's hotrod-Golgotha jail-solitude
watch or Birmingham jazz incarnation,
who drove crosscountry seventytwo hours to find out
if I had a vision or you had a vision or he had
a vision to find out Eternity,
who journeyed to Denver, who died in Denver, who
came back to Denver & waited in vain, who
watched over Denver & brooded & loned in
Denver and finally went away to find out the
Time, & now Denver is lonesome for her heroes,
who fell on their knees in hopeless cathedrals praying
for each other's salvation and light and breasts,
until the soul illuminated its hair for a second,
who crashed through their minds in jail waiting for
impossible criminals with golden heads and the
charm of reality in their hearts who sang sweet
blues to Alcatraz,
who retired to Mexico to cultivate a habit, or Rocky
Mount to tender Buddha or Tangiers to boys
or Southern Pacific to the black locomotive or
Harvard to Narcissus to Woodlawn to the
daisychain or grave,
who demanded sanity trials accusing the radio of hyp
notism & were left with their insanity & their
hands & a hung jury,
who threw potato salad at CCNY lecturers on Dadaism
and subsequently presented themselves on the
granite steps of the madhouse with shaven heads
and harlequin speech of suicide, demanding in-
stantaneous lobotomy,
and who were given instead the concrete void of insulin
Metrazol electricity hydrotherapy psycho-
therapy occupational therapy pingpong &
amnesia,
who in humorless protest overturned only one symbolic
pingpong table, resting briefly in catatonia,
returning years later truly bald except for a wig of
blood, and tears and fingers, to the visible mad
man doom of the wards of the madtowns of the
East,
Pilgrim State's Rockland's and Greystone's foetid
halls, bickering with the echoes of the soul, rock-
ing and rolling in the midnight solitude-bench
dolmen-realms of love, dream of life a night-
mare, bodies turned to stone as heavy as the
moon,
with mother finally ******, and the last fantastic book
flung out of the tenement window, and the last
door closed at 4. A.M. and the last telephone
slammed at the wall in reply and the last fur-
nished room emptied down to the last piece of
mental furniture, a yellow paper rose twisted
on a wire hanger in the closet, and even that
imaginary, nothing but a hopeful little bit of
hallucination
ah, Carl, while you are not safe I am not safe, and
now you're really in the total animal soup of
time
and who therefore ran through the icy streets obsessed
with a sudden flash of the alchemy of the use
of the ellipse the catalog the meter & the vibrat-
ing plane,
who dreamt and made incarnate gaps in Time & Space
through images juxtaposed, and trapped the
archangel of the soul between 2 visual images
and joined the elemental verbs and set the noun
and dash of consciousness together jumping
with sensation of Pater Omnipotens Aeterna
Deus
to recreate the syntax and measure of poor human
prose and stand before you speechless and intel-
ligent and shaking with shame, rejected yet con-
fessing out the soul to conform to the rhythm
of thought in his naked and endless head,
the madman bum and angel beat in Time, unknown,
yet putting down here what might be left to say
in time come after death,
and rose reincarnate in the ghostly clothes of jazz in
the goldhorn shadow of the band and blew the
suffering of America's naked mind for love into
an eli eli lamma lamma sabacthani saxophone
cry that shivered the cities down to the last radio
with the absolute heart of the poem of life butchered
out of their own bodies good to eat a thousand
years.

II

What sphinx of cement and aluminum bashed open
their skulls and ate up their brains and imagi-
nation?
Moloch! Solitude! Filth! Ugliness! Ashcans and unob
tainable dollars! Children screaming under the
stairways! Boys sobbing in armies! Old men
weeping in the parks!
Moloch! Moloch! Nightmare of Moloch! Moloch the
loveless! Mental Moloch! Moloch the heavy
judger of men!
Moloch the incomprehensible prison! Moloch the
crossbone soulless jailhouse and Congress of
sorrows! Moloch whose buildings are judgment!
Moloch the vast stone of war! Moloch the stun-
ned governments!
Moloch whose mind is pure machinery! Moloch whose
blood is running money! Moloch whose fingers
are ten armies! Moloch whose breast is a canni-
bal dynamo! Moloch whose ear is a smoking
tomb!
Moloch whose eyes are a thousand blind windows!
Moloch whose skyscrapers stand in the long
streets like endless Jehovahs! Moloch whose fac-
tories dream and croak in the fog! Moloch whose
smokestacks and antennae crown the cities!
Moloch whose love is endless oil and stone! Moloch
whose soul is electricity and banks! Moloch
whose poverty is the specter of genius! Moloch
whose fate is a cloud of sexless hydrogen!
Moloch whose name is the Mind!
Moloch in whom I sit lonely! Moloch in whom I dream
Angels! Crazy in Moloch! Cocksucker in
Moloch! Lacklove and manless in Moloch!
Moloch who entered my soul early! Moloch in whom
I am a consciousness without a body! Moloch
who frightened me out of my natural ecstasy!
Moloch whom I abandon! Wake up in Moloch!
Light streaming out of the sky!
Moloch! Moloch! Robot apartments! invisible suburbs!
skeleton treasuries! blind capitals! demonic
industries! spectral nations! invincible mad
houses! granite cocks! monstrous bombs!
They broke their backs lifting Moloch to Heaven! Pave-
ments, trees, radios, tons! lifting the city to
Heaven which exists and is everywhere about
us!
Visions! omens! hallucinations! miracles! ecstasies!
gone down the American river!
Dreams! adorations! illuminations! religions! the whole
boatload of sensitive bullshit!
Breakthroughs! over the river! flips and crucifixions!
gone down the flood! Highs! Epiphanies! De-
spairs! Ten years' animal screams and suicides!
Minds! New loves! Mad generation! down on
the rocks of Time!
Real holy laughter in the river! They saw it all! the
wild eyes! the holy yells! They bade farewell!
They jumped off the roof! to solitude! waving!
carrying flowers! Down to the river! into the
street!

III

Carl Solomon! I'm with you in Rockland
where you're madder than I am
I'm with you in Rockland
where you must feel very strange
I'm with you in Rockland
where you imitate the shade of my mother
I'm with you in Rockland
where you've murdered your twelve secretaries
I'm with you in Rockland
where you laugh at this invisible humor
I'm with you in Rockland
where we are great writers on the same dreadful
typewriter
I'm with you in Rockland
where your condition has become serious and
is reported on the radio
I'm with you in Rockland
where the faculties of the skull no longer admit
the worms of the senses
I'm with you in Rockland
where you drink the tea of the breasts of the
spinsters of Utica
I'm with you in Rockland
where you pun on the bodies of your nurses the
harpies of the Bronx
I'm with you in Rockland
where you scream in a straightjacket that you're
losing the game of the actual pingpong of the
abyss
I'm with you in Rockland
where you bang on the catatonic piano the soul
is innocent and immortal it should never die
ungodly in an armed madhouse
I'm with you in Rockland
where fifty more shocks will never return your
soul to its body again from its pilgrimage to a
cross in the void
I'm with you in Rockland
where you accuse your doctors of insanity and
plot the Hebrew socialist revolution against the
fascist national Golgotha
I'm with you in Rockland
where you will split the heavens of Long Island
and resurrect your living human Jesus from the
superhuman tomb
I'm with you in Rockland
where there are twenty-five-thousand mad com-
rades all together singing the final stanzas of the Internationale
I'm with you in Rockland
where we hug and kiss the United States under
our bedsheets the United States that coughs all
night and won't let us sleep
I'm with you in Rockland
where we wake up electrified out of the coma
by our own souls' airplanes roaring over the
roof they've come to drop angelic bombs the
hospital illuminates itself imaginary walls col-
lapse O skinny legions run outside O starry
spangled shock of mercy the eternal war is
here O victory forget your underwear we're
free
I'm with you in Rockland
in my dreams you walk dripping from a sea-
journey on the highway across America in tears
to the door of my cottage in the Western night
***End***
I'm with Her in Rockland,
I'm with Her in Rockland

"Rescue is comming..."

Bloggy-

Okay, it's time to play some catch up because I've got a lot on my heart and mind and you just need to sit back and get ready to read kid! Anyway, we'll start with Tim's wedding - he's married! It was a great wedding, it was outside (and sooooooooo hot!) and Erin was beautiful. I didn't cry...well maybe I did, but the sweat covered it up pretty well (gross!). The wedding was in Ft. Wayne at a park - and that was just super. I got to see three of my best friends from High School, and that's always good. The best and weirdest part comes with one of the wedding guests in particular. Bloggy, think hard, back to the awkwardness of "Drinks with the ex-", now imagine that quadrupled and then add her husband into the mix. Okay, well, not put that at a wedding where I went by dateless. Okie dokie - but here's the deal, it was good to see them both. I enjoyed getting to catch up with Matt and here how his whole career is going; it was good (but really weird) to dance with Sara (her idea, not mine - okay, so that was REALLY STRANGE, but I learned something from Matt during that whole thing - once you're married, it becomes about trust. Jolly good job Matt). Anyway, so yeah. Weirdness, but weirdness that grows.

So I came home from the wedding the next day (Sunday) - I was supposed to be at church by 9:00 am to help downstairs, but had alarm problems and wound up leaving at 9:10 am or so and made it to the church by 9:47 am. Yeah. I'll let you do the math on that one, but let's just say if I'd gotten pulled over I was going to jail. So the afternoon at church went alright - hung out and went to a cookout. It was awkward. Really, really awkward. Not in the growing way, but in the awkward way. I don't even know where to begin there. But, moving right along, I met later that night in C-bus with a friend and we had coffee of sorts and talked and hung out and as I sat across from her, a conversation that two separate people on two separate occasions came to me - so I kept things in the happier realm where no one would have to think. That's the American Way!

Wow, let's just skip most of the week with this description: Meetings, stress, overworked, confused, blah. But bloggy, I've got a new friend that I've been worried about and haven't told her yet. I don't know her well, I don't see her often, and we don't talk on the phone ever, and we probably don't agree on an issue or two, but she's beautiful and wonderful and been an encouragement and a rescuer to me and she's sad now - I know that sounds very 1st grader, but sometimes that's the best way to express your soul. Oh bloggy - sorrow has overwhelmed her shores, and darkness hedges her in as though light were about to be extinguished and the ground she walks upon is ablaze in apathetic regard to her, but I pray that somehow, someway, she would see God.

Well, I need to work some more - I'm reading background material on...well...it's Thomas Aquinas and it's just good to read to be able to answer questions that my kiddies ask. Take her easy bloggy.

Dr. J

"I now pronounce you Husband and Wife"

Dear Bloggy-

I come to you at the end of a long, long day - but a joyous day indeed! I wrote this morning and then drove back to the lodge where I was informed it was my duty to hangout on the beach and enjoy the day - enjoying the day consisted of reading some more of Jack Kerouac's "On the Road" on the side of the lake, eating lunch, playing some baci (Sp?) ball and just generally having a good afternoon. After that, I went up, got dressed, and started getting ready for the wedding.

Anne was beautiful and Chad was darling (did I just sound...ummmm...girly?) and the ceremony went well - I was the last person to call Anne Anne Simmons and the first to refer to her as Anne Hope; I know what you're thinking - such a stud! Anyway, I do have some pictures that the photographers took and I'll be putting them up here soon.

Anyway, the reception was great - lot's of great food, friends, dancing (and an open bar...seven Sam Adam's and two rum and cokes and here I am!). Afterwards we went down to the beach for some late night swimming and fire - oh how sweet it's been!

I did realize some things today though as I was prepping for the wedding, doing my reading and also just kind of existing around the whole wedding scene - are you ready for some crazy awesome realizations? Well here they are bloggy!
1. I miss writing - I haven't been reading any 'good' literature of late. Everything I've been reading has had to do with work or something like that, but today as I was reading "On The Road" something came alive in me again and I'm looking to write - I'm itching to do it. So yeah, hopefully I'll be putting some new stuff together soon and using that typewriter on my desk at home!

2. I miss adventure - Again, "On the Road" reminded me that I used to have adventures and find places and travel and have good times - I haven't done that in forever. I think I've let working in a church 'tame' me - I've lost Aslan's roar and that's not a good thing. I need to start just taking a random trip/adventure/dumb move once a month at least. I need to travel and dig the road (oh Jack! How you write that makes me feel!)

3. Weddings are fun and great and beautiful, but they're only a moment. The marriage begins today, but doesn't end today. It's just the start.

4. I miss having GREAT friends around to talk to and just be with. I miss talking until late in the night about things that matter and having people who hugged and touched and loved (not in a sick sexual way, Bloggy, but in a healthy friend way). I don't have that right now and maybe my loneliness stems from that, but what do I know...I'm no psychologist!

5. I am looking forward to marriage - not tomorrow, but yeah, it's something I want to do. I don't want to wait forever, but it's a good thing - a hard thing to be sure, but good.

SO I think that covers my lessons about myself, bloggy. I know you just love my introspection...

Anyway, it's pretty late and I'm headed to Mars Hill tomorrow for church pretty early, so I'll write you later kid!

Dr. J.

"By the power vested in me by the state of Michigan and as Minister of the Gospel of Jesus Christ..."

Dearest Bloggy-

Okay, so I'm sitting in a Michigan Coffee shop doing some writing now. Anyway, yesterday...yesterday started pretty early by heading North to Michigan. I'm way up in Whitehall, MI, which is about an hour north and west of Grand Rapids right on the lake - it's absolutely beautiful here! Anyway, the drive was pretty uneventful, got here a little early (hey, there's a first time for everything!), so I drove around town which is exactly what you would expect from a small, tourist driven, lakeside Michigan town - so I'm pretty much in love. Anne showed up with Chad, gave me a call and I met back up with them at the lodge, saw where the wedding is going to be (hopefully I'll be able to get pictures!) put my stuff in my room and started reconnecting with people I hadn't seen forever or ever met.

The rehearsal went really well - it's a pretty simple wedding without communion, singing, candles, flower girls, etc., so yeah. The bride and groom had a great time with it and it only took about 30 minutes (just a note - rehearsals for weddings shouldn't take longer than 45 minutes usually). After that we went to dinner at this restaurant about 30 minutes away from the lodge and it was SPECTACULAR!!! They had an open bar for us and the food was great. And it had the mark of a truly great restaurant - Guinness on Tap! 3 sizes - 12, 22, and 33 ounces! Guess which Guinness I had...anyway, the blackened salmon was great and then the peanut butter pie was almost sinful!

We went back, to the lodge, I went and smoked a stog on the beach with Jared and Brett and watched the sunset over the lake (Dear God, thank you for being an artist!). Some regulars who come every year came down to the beach and started a fire, and I hung out with them for about three hours - good people, they gave out beer like it was candy at a parade (I kept it at one - Killian's Irish)! It was a good group and got a lot of interesting conversation out of it...I never want to be a "Christian" who is uncomfortable with just people - I had a good time, shared a little truth and heard their lives. And got free beer. All things Jesus would enjoy. I think.

Anyway, now it's breakfast, blogging, coffee and then back to the lodge to review stuff, write the names in the book (sometimes you forget things when you get nervous!) and then another night of chillin!

Oh, and I might stop by my friends Matt and Nathalie tomorrow to hang out with them post church - it'll be a ball! And I'm going to Mars Hill for Church in the morning! ROCK FREAKING ON!!!

Somewhere-----Over the Rainbow...

Bloggy-

So this is a quick one. Just letting you know that today is crazy - I'm getting my stuff together to go perform a wedding in Michigan! Rock on! That meant that I had to call all the kids and remind them about the camping trip (yeah - so far 3 kids are going...all girls...yeah...I need guys in this group). I've got a ton of things to do-and to help myself, I'm going to list those things here:
::: Pack my stuff (duh)
::: Write a slammin' wedding sermon
::: Clean the office
::: Leave a message with the trustees
::: Copy a DVD for K
::: Clean out my car
::: Copy and prep a parent letter
::: Clean my house
::: Make a door sign so people know where I'm at
::: Call M. about sleeping in O-town
I think that covers it. Anyway, it stormed like mad here last night - oh poopy it was AWESOME!!! Okay, just generally excited!! Okay, later bloggy!

Dr. J

And the winner is...

Jonah! This is of course, bloggy, the ending of what I told you earlier. Or something like that. Anyway, out at the Vespers service at the fairgrounds, it'll look something like this:

I. A brief introduction to Narrative
1. We tell stories...blah...blah...blah
II. The bastardized Jonah
1. Noah retold in the words of John (me)
III. Comment on Assyrians (Ironic that ASS is in their name...or God being funny)
IV. Discuss Hessed
V. Discuss God's love for those we hate and the commission towards them utilizing John 1, John 4, Acts 1, and the Greatest Commandment
VI. Tie into fair week
VII. Commission the people
VIII. Pray

Ok, so doesn't follow groome perfectly, but it'll do donkey...er...bloggy! So yeah - I also just watched the butterfly effect - a lot better than I expected! Okay, I'm going to go call a friend or two (speaking of, Rose just called from Texas - she's well, thanks for asking).

Later Bloggy!

"Freedom is the right of every sentient being..."

Bloggy-

So I've seen Transformers three times now - call me a huge nerd, mostly cause I am. It's been amazing the past few times that I've seen it. And I'll make a small confession - I've cried every time Optimus Prime transforms for the first time from semi-tractor trailer to his full on glorious state of Optimus Freaking Prime. How can you not? It's the resurrection of my childhood, the symbol of strength for an entire generation of boys - forget that weirdo "He-Man" (okay, so I would totally go and see a well done He-Man movie because, well, I watched a lot of that as a kid too), Optimus Prime is where it's at! But moving along, the film does delve into some serious (okay...somewhat serious) discussion about human choice, the sin of the father (a wee bit), courage, Linkin Park, and is redemption of the human race possible. The last, of course, is something that has captured my attention (that and the running gun battle that takes up about an hour of the film - which is SO SWEET) - I deal in the business of talking redemption and salvation, but Megatron raises the point to Optimus during a rather heated discussion ("we don't fight in this house young man!") that the human race doesn't deserve to be saved, to which Optimus Prime responds that every species should have the opportunity to chose. We learn two things here: 1. Optimus Prime and John Calvin would not have been friends, 2. Action movies do occasionally have substance (Put that in your [John] Piper and smoke it academy!). Anyway, loved the movie.

Moving on to more important things, my friend Anna came to visit today and that was swell. Anna and I go way back (about five years, which at 23 is like forever) and it was good to catch up. I like having Anna as a friend - she's an honest and good person who is also quick witted and full of movie quotes (although she doesn't want to see Transformers...minus one cool point). We sat around with Josh and just talked and it was good. I miss having Anna around - she's a really good friend and God was good in allowing us to get to know each other. Now, before we move on, at some point in this blog I'm going to chat about stuff that has nothing to do with Anna, so don't get any ideas occasional readers of bloggy! We had our "When Harry Met Sally" conversation long ago!

Yesterday was nerve racking - I went to bed at about 2:30 am because I was doing laundry (we finally got a 'working' washer and dryer!) and cleaning the house because the trustees were coming over to look at the house. In case I haven't fully disclosed my living situation, I live near the church and rent from the trustees - which means that I rent from the people who pay me. Yeah. Talk about weird. Anyway, they wanted to come over and see what colours we painted the house (perfume bath, amaryllis yellow, marigold drop and fresh if you were wondering) which meant that I needed to clean the entire house like it hasn't been cleaned before! I was rather successful in that venture with the help of my super awesome roommate. Anyhow, so I was up late, then got up at 9:00 and went to work, then came home briefly to change, then went and picked up two students, worked a bit on the habitat house and then raced home for the inspection of my home. Yeah. Then went to Transformers. Good times.

I turned my application in at the volunteer fire station in Hartford a couple of days ago - I'm really hoping that I get on in the next few weeks/months - I spent some time with the guys, got to know the chief and assistant chief (who goes to my roommates church) and that was pretty swell. I just think it'd be a great opportunity to get to know some people in town and get to really pour into the community through practical work, dig?

Now for the general musings that come with this blog - I'm struggling with the whole dating thing. Wait - struggle implies that I'm involved in it! :) Anyway, I always hoped that I would transition from being friends with someone for awhile and then date. It seems right and natural - you know the good the bad, how they react, etc., and then you move into a...how to put this...a special friendship. I've got plenty of great friends that are gals (now you understand the warning from earlier), but nothing's really developed over the years. I think that the thing that bothers me about all of this at that it bothers me. I'm pretty aware of the fact that of all my closest friends, I'm pretty much the only guy who is not in a relationship. I guess it wouldn't matter so much if I didn't feel as though I were a failure at something - I guess if you wanted to sit me down on a couch, that's probably the root of the whole thing. People keep asking - mentors, friends, relatives, my parent's, people at church (that's usually their first question when they meet me), everyone, and when I say that I'm single, it's almost like I've disappointed them, and I have a huge problem with that. Granted, that's probably not the only reason (in fact, I know it's not), but I would say it's a significant piece of the pie.

What makes it worse is that at some point somewhere someone was attracted to me, but I create this aura that makes it hard for people to share with me, and I don't know how to change that. I know this because I put up the honesty box application on my facebook profile and got an admission, and it's causing me some serious problems. The biggest is the realization that I'm not a safe person, which is what I've always wanted to be, is just someone that people can feel free to talk to about who they are and what's going on. Granted, this is an attraction issue, so it's probably in a different realm, but to me, they're pretty well connected. Lack of ability to admit long term attraction to me translates into a realization that John (that would be me if you don't know who's blog this is) will move into a posture of judgement and anger. I know that I get heated about issues I care about - the validity and intent of scripture, education, ethics in politics, justice - but do I carry that with me in my day to day? I must, if this is this woman (I don't like boys...it's okay if they don't tell me they're attracted to me) is terrified to tell me that she's liked me for awhile. Another component, and the one that should be the initial reason for personal concern is, what if? Heck, I'm horrible at this kind of thing, but what if? Who knows, all I know is that I'm having a personal breakdown over less than twenty words on facebook. That has to be a whole new level of pathetic!! :D

Anyway, I'm getting ready for the National Youth Workers Convention (did you like that shift? I thought it was slick - but don't worry, there'll be more at some point) - we're going to Atlanta and I've got some really good friends that I'll be traveling down with. It'll be an interesting trip because we have people from all over the theological spectrum and experience gambit - Methodists (both left and right), Church of Christ, Lutheran, Presbyterian, Wesleyan, Evangelical Free, and Independent Charismatic. What a van load! The real question is, did we choose to be here or was this predetermined since the beginning of time?

So I think this may be the last thing, but probably not, I'll just meander until I'm done. I've mentioned before that I'm trying out one of those dating websites (***See "Even Murders Are Getting Married!***), and I've been talking to one gal in particular. We're at the mail phase, which I can say I've never hit before, but it's pretty important to me. Anyway, I bring up this awesomely...weird...piece of my life because I can't even do that well. I'm learning through this process that I'm really bad at personal motivation and really good at unintentionally scarring (not scaring!!) other human beings. I don't even know how to fully explain my screw-up except to say that I should probably find a robot and date her. And beyond that, this whole thing is weird, as I mentioned in the aforementioned post because - well, it's like...it's almost like I'm paying for a breakup! Maybe my lack of hope has something to do with this relationship problem of mine (hardee har har har). I'm probably spending way too much time thinking about this, but I've got way too much time on my hands.

For example, my average day looks something like this:
1. Wake up between 9:00 am and 9:45 am.
2. Take a shower
3. About 10:00 - 10:15 am, roll into the office and tell Paula I'm there
4. Work until 2:00 pm...have lunch or breakfast, whatever you want to call it
5. Work from 2:30 until...neh...usually between 4:00 and 6:00 pm
6. Go home (a long trip mind you)
7. Maybe eat. Maybe see what Hartford people are up to. maybe clean. usually sit around for awhile wishing I had a book for the love of all that is good and holy!
8. Go to bed around midnight or so
9. Repeat until Friday...skip to step 7 from 11:00 am until I sleep

What you don't see is that there is a lot of time away from people (I'm really, REALLY social, but my schedule doesn't show it all that much) and a lot of time to think...A WHOLE LOT. Not good for John. Not good at all! So welcome to this thing, where I ramble on about what goes on in that time by myself. It's important to know that I'm more balanced than I present myself here - I know that there's nothing really wrong with me (outside of the obvious!), but when I'm alone...no one can hear my mind scream (sometimes I blow up glasses with my mind...that makes me happy!).

Now I'm just typing. I'm sitting at Payne's watching the crowd move in and out and that's what I've been doing the entire time. I kinda just want to sitdown at random tables and talk to people, but this doesn't seem like that kind of crowd. But a lot of them seem like they'd have great stories. Okay, now I'm sounding creepy - I'm turning into 'that guy' (but not 'THAT guy' or worse yet [whispers with tears in eyes] 'it was... [looks at ground and holds hands over face...begins to sob]...that guy...').

Okay, so now I'm going to peace out. Maybe I should tell one or two more people about you bloggy. Well, keep it real.

Dr. J

No Smoking Near the Fireworks of my Life...okay, maybe you should...

Hey Bloggy-

I'm sitting in Columbus at my parents house waiting for my Mom to get home so we can do dinner. Anyway, let's see what's new. Not really a whole lot. Yesterday was the 4th of July and that was a blast (I'm sure no other blogger has made that joke yet) - as is tradition, I tried to kill myself with fireworks and barely escaped myself. At the Fogler's, it wasn't so bad - a couple of mortars, a few roman candles - it was at C.'s that it got crazy. I went over there after an afternoon with he and his brother's girlfriend and probably instigating the break up of he and his girlfriend (oh what an afternoon). Anyway, abotu blowing things up, they had single, double and tripple break shells and well, there was a lot of drinking that had been a fire right prior to my arrival, so it was one heck of a show. So we're launching these mortars into the sky five or six at a time and towards the end, the shells are so big and the tubes are so charred and hot that the shells start getting hung up in the tubes and that caused for...well...low altitude/ground bursts that made for an exciting evening. Afterwards, drove back to my 'rents and went to bed t o wake up early this morning to take Samantha (my car) into the shop. That was fun - $250 for a sensor.

In news of myself, I'm getting bored with my life. I guess - well, I don't think that I'm happy. But I'm pretty sure it doesn't matter if I'm happy - lot's of people in lot's of places haven't been happy and lived long and semi-productive lives. I'm not sure what's causing this whole insightful thinking of mine - mostly because I've done a lot driving, which leads to lots of thinking. Hmm...I guess - well being single, my job is going alright I guess, and just not having a whole lot of friends in the area. We'll see.

In other news, I think I'm going to get the internet/home phone/and cable soon. That'll be awesome. Yep. Then I can...waste my life more effectivley I guess. I think that'll probably cover me for now. On a sweet note, I did have a pretty sweet convo with a friend from Cali. Okay, now I'm done.

Dr. J

Hey bloggy. It's been a long day. Short version is this; questionable sermon, nap on the couch, two hour phone convo, and walk around town. Alright. G'night.

So it's been awhile bloggy, but here I am! To fill you in, I've been doing VBS all week, which has been crazy...in fact Krazy because as we both know, children are not my strong suite. Anyhoo, in the course of doing VBS I got to be the story teller and help with football - that was good. Yep. The music - well it was little kid music with that slight feel of "are we teaching these kids the aryan heresy?" For example, one of the lines in a particular song went something like "The Bible says that Jesus was a joyful human man!" Okay, there's a lot of debate to be had here, you throw in the Isaiah 53 passage (which any good Jew will tell you is about the sufferings of the nation of Israel, but we'll stick with the Catholic/Orthodox reading that it's about Jesus.) where it talks about Messiah being a "Man of Constant Sorrows" (and that can be taken a couple of ways), the discussion of if Jesus were Divine (which I strongly hold that He was...hence the capitilization of He)...so you see that at times my head was going to explode over 'minor' details like that. Oh, and some song that sounded just like "All Star" by that band...oh...I don't know...they did the Shrek soundtrack...anyway - yeah, it was the EXACT same song except there were a few changes like - well, let's just say that it was so minor that I'm glad I wasn't the one that had to worry about artistic originality!



Moving right along, last night was the Relay for Life and I 'volunteered' to walk from 2:00 am - 4:00 am. It wasn't so bad - and I really did volunteer. A bunch of middle schoolers who are in the orbit of the church were there and they pretty much moved as a herd - if one walked, they all walked. Man, what would've happened if one of them had taken the "Black Pill?" Scary! Anyway, I've decided that if I have one daughter, it's time to stop. Not that I have the ability to have children at this point, but when that comes up, yeah, stopping at one. The reason I say this is all I see is how sisters fight and I refuse- did you hear? - REFUSE to deal with that in my own home. If, by some cruel twist of fate (or divine Judgement) I do have two daughters...I'm putting one up for adoption. Probably the most annoying one. I'm just kidding...but seriously?

In other news, Samantha is pretty sick. I've tried some over the counter fuel system cleaner, but Idon't think that's going to do the trick this time around. She needs a doctor, so I'm taking her to the dealership on Monday and they're going to charge me $65 to tell me what's wrong and then offer to fix it for like $1000 more...did I mention that I, as a twenty something youth pastor who just started his job, don't have that kind of money? Oh well, I hear the devil is always buying souls, at least according to twentieth century musicians.

Let's see, I guess I'll avoid angry ranting about being single (or does this count as that?), but I will say that I miss a lot of my friends. Oh. :( Well, off to planning world dominiation (or a bonfire tonight, whatever....it's all the same, right?)

Bloggy-

'Fore I go to bed, let me just say that my mind is pretty much killing me! So I got that "honesty box" for facebook and threw it up this afternoon and some girl either a) as a super mean prank or b) to...I don't even know why! put that she likes me! Why are women so weird! Anyway, now I'm looking at every girl I know that has facebook like "Are you the one walking around with a wee bit of a crush on me? Is that how you roll?" Oh, and I read Ruth today, that was an excellent book. A couple of things I took away today:

1. The oppening paragraph makes it a point that they (Naomi and her sons and husband) left Israel for Moab...hmmmm...
2. Boaz was full of integrity
3. Family affiliation was huge.

Okay...tommorw, Esther maybe?

Drinks with the Ex

Hey bloggy. I'm back in the office after spending a crazy couple of hours in Columbus. Let's just say it was one of the weirdest times I've had in a bit. Where to start? Okay, so I helped my father (not the one in heaven) with some work in the backyard, showered and then went to go pick up F. to play some mad Euchre action. Before I left, I had already called in my regular partner extrodinaire E., and she was going to meet us at the Roadhouse so that we could play. As I pick up F., the X, simply known as X is there. Not a biggy - we get along fine, we're generally kind and even developing a sort of back and forth again. I mean, it's only been six years, so it's about time that happens. The deal is, though, that I haven't spent any extended time with her without her husband, M. So when she says that she'll be F.'s partner, I ofcourse agree (what else can you do?), and she meets us at the Roadhouse. Let me tell what was so weird about it - one, I'm not, as they say in New Mexico, 'attracted to her' anylonger. Our relationship pretty much ended that possibility. It was weird because - well for a couple of reasons I'm not comfortable sharing with you bloggy, because we just met. But anyway, what made the whole of the evening super uncomfortable was that I feel like a successful failure in comparison to her. I've got a job, I'm almost done with college (she's got the first and done with the second); I've got some limited success socially in making a difference in communities or something like that; I've lectured on college and high school campuses; I speak a whole lot all over the place. But I haven't been able to make a relationship happen. That's the wrong way to put it. I haven't been able to put together my life in such a way that a relationship can happen. On top of that whole line of thought, her husband wasn't there, and I really, REALLY did not like that because I wouldn't want my wife to be hanging out with her ex- even if there were two other parties who were with them all the time (did I mention he's going to be a state trooper real soon like?). And then - I tried to explain this to my friend - looks of familiarity that I don't want to share with her, because, well, we're not familiar anymore and I don't want her to think we are. I've moved on (sounds like it, doesn't it bloggy?), but I don't want her to think that I haven't. I'm totally living under the weight of a whole other failed relationship. But bloggy, that's another story for another time. Anyhow, as I was going to couch that night, I ofcourse went to that place where I began to think that she was trying to make all of these thoughts happen - but I don't honestly think she's that malicous (or is she?). Anyway, welcome to my wonderful world of awkward. I've got to get some stuff done, but I'll be back with more stories later bloggy.

J