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.