New Things

So I don't know if you've noticed, but things have been operating a little differently around here. I have (re)discovered that I am irredeemably terrible at blogging-as-journaling. Either I'm not creative enough, or my life is too boring, or I'm just too much of a lazy slouch to detail my thoughts regularly enough to maintain a successful blog.

However, the whole point of this was to get myself to do something regularly, something I could at least pretend that other people would view in an effort to hold myself accountable, and if there is one thing that I will always untilthedayIdie do regularly, it is read. Therefore, I have decided to combine my efforts to make some visible record of my integration into life with my (relatively recent) urge to keep track of my voracious reading--if for no other reason than to have something to brag about. From now until I get sick of it, I will hereby chronicle every single book that I read. It won't necessarily be much (as you would see if you read some of my earliest attempts. Nothing but disjointed thoughts; complete gibberish to anyone who was not already residing within my cranium), but there will be pictures! Pictures are fun.

F. Paul Wilson's THE TOUCH und Dat-tay-vao (short story)

Thomas Mullen's THE LAST TOWN ON EARTH

Gene Wolfe's INNOCENTS ABOARD

 

George MacDonald Fraser's THE REAVERS

Ode to Pain

We still hadn't learned, though, that growing up is all about getting hurt.  And then getting over it.  You hurt.  You recover.  You move on.  Odds are pretty good you're just going to get hurt again.  But each time, you learn something.

Each time, you come out of it a little stronger, and at some point you realize that there are more flavors of pain than coffee.  There's the little empty pain of leaving something behind--graduating, taking the next step forward, walking out of something familiar and safe into the unknown.  There's the big, whirling pain of life upending all of your plans and expectations.  There's the sharp little pains of failure, and the more obscure aches of successes that didn't give you what you thought they would.  There are the vicious, stabbing pains of hopes being torn up.  The sweet little pains of finding others, giving them your love, and taking joy in their life as they grow and learn.  There's the steady pain of empathy that you shrug off so you can stand beside a wounded friend and help them bear their burdens.  And if you're very, very lucky, there are a very few blazing hot little pains you feel when you realize that you are standing in a moment of utter perfection, an instant of triumph, or happiness, or mirth which at the same time cannot possibly last--and yet will remain with you for life.

Everyone is down on pain, because they forget something important about it: Pain is for the living.  Only the dead don't feel it. Pain is a part of life.  Sometimes it's a big part, and sometimes it isn't, but either way, it's part of the big puzzle, the deep music, the great game.  Pain does two things:  It teaches you, tells you that you're alive.  Then it passes away and leaves you changed.  It leaves you wiser, sometimes.  Sometimes it leaves you stronger.  Either way, pain leaves its mark, and everything important that will ever happen to you in life is going to involve it in one degree or another.
~ White Night Jim Butcher



















Facial Expression of Pain
from the Relief of Pain and Suffering Exhibit,
Louise M. Darling Library , UCLA

Wir sind leben in ein melo Lubrasine

I love the rain. Rainrainrain fall on my head, stream down my face, turn my extremities blue. Rainrainrain smell so frisch, wasche away the filth daß accumulates in this crazy life. The rain inspires me to acts of creativity; it prompts me to get off my lazy butt and tun etwas. The rain--and even more so, the fog/mist that often accompanies it--possesses enough magic to even transform the bedrückend junkyards of Abilene into a land of enchantment. So why the hell am I living in a place that almost never receives the blessed gift of rain?

Ich swear, ob I lived in the Northwest I would blossom like the recently planted oregano daß ist sitze in mein window at this very moment. Oder, I suppose, like the colorful bouquet ich hat gestolen from someone else's rainy blogpost. I run every single time it rains. With the soothing voice of the rain cooing in my ear I'm transported back in time to the Tage in which I actually gave a damn about my life. I'm productive, I'm upbeat, I'm rapturous--pretty much the opposite of the average Texan's response in every possible Weg. I hate the „wenn doch nur“ game, but I'll be damned if I can't stop thinking about of a person I would be had this futile texas experiment nie come to be.

Sigh of a Ninja

Remember how etwas was going to come to outright war between gut alte "Dougie T." und myself? Remember how I was going to rip his hypocritical Kopf from his smarmy little neck ob er didn't mend his ways? Nein, du kennst nichts for I have never mentioned the ongoing feud between the Mensch in my Haus wer are not self-absorbed bastards and the doug who is. Suffice it to say, he hat gemachen our lives miserable mit his passive-aggressive little snits and his unimaginable conflict-avoidance; it is enough to drive man into Beklemmung.
Well, gestern that confrontation finally happened and I am left with nur some of the satisfaction that I had expected would be mine. That rat-bastard had the audacity to suggest that I was the one who sollte man-up and tell people when I have a problem with them! Er, der Man wer attempted to sneak-exempt himself from all grocery bills; the one who slips his dumm little notes onto Ture in the middle of the Nacht; he who cowers behind fake apologies and qualifications, alles davor instituting a reign of terror over dieser Haus that would make Osama bin Laden proud!
What a joke. If not for him, life down here would be pretty consistently fantastic. As it is, we're just hovering around okay.

Public Service Announcement

I am once again enrolled in a German-language class, even though at this point in time I have no idea whether or not I will ever encounter another German-speaking individual again, let alone travel to Germany. There's just something about the language that fascinates me-could it be the tortured, agonizing, and baffling grammar? It can't just be that I've lived there for a month, can it? Am I truly that shallow? (don't answer that) Most likely, my rapture is predominately due to one simple gift learning German offers which I have not experienced for quite some time: a sense of accomplishment.

Wealth as Punishment?

         My attention was snagged today in my ritualistic reading of the book Ecclesiastes by a little gem of a passage that has always nagged at my consciousness, but never really broken through into full-fledged pontificating before this moment:
Ecclesiastes 2:26

"To the man who pleases him, God gives wisdom, knowledge, and happiness, but to the sinner he gives the task of gathering and storing up wealth to hand it over to the one who pleases God."

Now, I'm naturally very wary of Old Testament passages in which sinners/the enemies of God are promised earthly retribution in direct proportion to their evil influence. To me, these promises  ring hollow; evil does not directly correlate with misfortune, nor is faithfulness directly rewarded with prosperity. Case in point: there is a depressing and disturbing cadre of talking heads that has labeled the recent tragedy in Haiti as just and deserved punishment from on high for their past sins; a punishment in the very same vein as the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah in the days of Abraham and Lot. It's all poppycock.
But I digress. This is not to be about the evils perpetrated by humanity in the name of "righteous vengeance," it is about one particular verse in Ecclesiastes and the manner in which it confirms my own intuitive understanding of the way the universe works (what is a blog, after all, if not a public forum for me to congratulate myself on my own ability to ferret out the concealed truths of the universe?)
"to the sinner he gives the task of gathering and storing up wealth." Not "to the sinner he gives earthquakes, fires, and destruction," nor "to the sinner he gives doubt and fears, insecurity and all manner of unrest;" no, to the sinner he gives riches. Fame. Power. All breeds and varieties of "success" as set forth in the Manifest Destiny. If you buy into the words of the Health & Wealth Gospel Goons, the Lord is saying that He will bless the sinner.
Ahh, but there's a catch, isn't there? and it's really quite a doozy. According to the message of the Teacher, Qoheleth, the author of Ecclesiastes, the Lord is not promising blessings, sondern (Ger. "but rather") futility. The fool's life's pursuit, all of his greed and selfishness and who knows what host of unsavory activities may gain him a life of leisure and opulence while on earth, but at the end of der Tag he has accomplished nothing, and all he has will be taken from him and doled out as the Lord sees fit. 
(crap. that pesky H&W crept back in, despite my conscious attempts to avoid it. Sometimes I find myself very peeved at the Old Testament writers.)


Tschuss!