Keep in touch

I don't keep in touch with my friends much. Always seem to need more time for me. I'm usually hungry and tired. Back usually hurts. Mind tethered from the selfishness I've weathered; when will I be free? Home is what I really want but haven't found...Dear Jesus soothe this self-battered soul and stop me spinning round. I write the same thing for years with little spots of sun; I've failed and failed and failed and failed and You, You won.
"I marvel that you returned so soon..."
I don't keep in touch with friends much...but on you I spit and swore.
Sever again, my sprit from them. The darkness sees light - a twilight. A kiss - forgiveness. I rest with You at our home in the countryside. We explore the hills and make plans. When I wander off, please reprimand.

Older Things

I came across some old photo-shopping I did and thought they were postable...the originals were all photos I took.

More Carousel

Some of the figures for my nearly completed carousel...I look forward to posting a photo of the completed project, because it is beautiful!

Indebted Musings

What is a slave and how does one become one?

Is it possible a slave was made for that purpose, like clay for molding? If a slave is made for slavery, then one would think slavery would be the ideal situation for a slave. A complaining slave, then, should be told to suck it up as there’s nothing better for them.

If slaves are made for slavery, who’s producing them? Is it possible their creator is inefficient and uses a flawed design? If so, then it’s very possible a slave could find something other than slavery for which they are better suited. In this case, a slave should be encouraged to experiment and find their best-suited lifestyle; but then, they’re a slave, they don’t get that option.

Artistic Liberties

I wrote the following account for a manuscript reading in my speech class. Some of it may be a bit exaggerated or even false, but for the most part this is what happened. If either of my "sick friends" have any concerns as to the accuracy of it, please let me know! I guess it's more misleading than inaccurate.

-----------------------------------

My hands were red and completely frozen from bracing myself on the sharp rocks – definitely the strongest wind I had ever braved. As I struggled around the rim to the very topmost rock, I imagined my body as a hand stuck out the window of speeding car. This was very similar, I thought, my body leaning and falling against the powerful but inconsistent wind, rocks scraping and bruising me with every slip.

This was the adventure of a lifetime, and I was about to learn something that would change mine forever.

Just out of high school, I had flown to Amsterdam and boarded a medical ship en-route to West Africa to do development work. We had stopped for ten days on the island of Tenerife in the Canary Islands. Sixteen of my friends and I had rented cars and set off for a day-hike up the island’s 10,000 foot creator – El Tiede, the volcano. As we ascended, however, we realized the tropical coast hadn’t prepared us for the frigid alpine climb, and slowly the exhausted group shrank to five. The winds grew stronger and stronger, and in a short while, we would run out of daylight. Two of my friends started feeling sick, and we all came to the realization that we couldn’t make it to the top.

Dejected, we began our descent. I was, by far, the most disappointed, but I saw no way around it. The rest of our party was already waiting at the rental cars that were due the next morning. We had no warm clothes, no food, and no shelter. Fortunately, my sick friend was thinking, and he was far more creative than I; puking and exhausted, he hatched a plan that would give him some rest.

There was a bungalow part-way down the volcano; moments later, I found myself and my two sick friends begging the Spanish-speaking owner with hand signals to let us stay for the night. We weren’t sure how we would make the long trek down and the two-hour trip back to the ship the next day, but we jumped out onto the limb – my two sick friends, for rest; me – to overcome the odds and make it to the top.

And now I was on a volcano, above the clouds off the coast of Africa. I was hungry, cold, exhausted, and alone. The only food I had eaten was some soup broth and a wafer some Spanish boy scouts had given to us the night before. The clouds were blowing through and past me, mixing with the blinding phosphorus gas jetting from three or four vents in the crater. I pushed myself into a small enclave and attempted to take a picture with my frozen hands. This was it, I thought, “I’m the only one to make it.”

After a moment of silence, my thoughts returned to my cold body, my malfunctioning knee, and my empty stomach. Side-stepping back down the loose cinders, I focused on the sun now risen above the sea of clouds below me. In the next moment the whole journey became a metaphor for my life, and I began questioning God about whether he would be there for me if I took my life to places others feared. Should I live in defiance of the odds? Would God be there to take care of me?

As I stumbled down the mountain, conversing with the sky, I noticed a small piece of plastic hiding under a rock on the path before me. In a moment of appreciation for the beautiful surroundings, I decided to remove the litter and dispose of it properly, but as I approached and knelt to pick it up, I found it was more than just plastic.

Now, at this point, I had no idea how I could make it back to civilization. I was in a foreign country and they spoke a foreign language. I had no map to find my way back to the port and no way of knowing how to find a place to eat and sleep until I made it back. But there I was, alone, on the side of a volcano, holding in my hands a beautiful ham and cheese sandwich.

Would God provide for me? I pulled the sandwich out of the plastic bag and smelled it – it seemed ok. How had it got under the rock? One of the boy scouts could have left it, I guess. I really have no idea. But that sandwich was more than just food.

When I enjoyed it with my two now-rested and jovial friends a couple hours later, I reflected on the provision of shelter and food where before I had seen only a barren cinder cone.

The three of us spent the rest of the day hiking, hitch-hiking, and taking wrong buses until we made it back to our ship that night. No one really noticed we were missing, but we knew where we had been; that we had conquered and could do the impossible with a little faith, a little pain, and a lot of help from our creator. Have you braved any fierce and daunting volcanoes? He’ll be waiting there for you.

World AIDs Day

I found this quite valuable. www.worldvision.com/AIDstest
Happy Thanksgiving.

Relevant Ambiguity

I bought the ticket with hesitance. The guy after me didn’t think. “He has friends there,” I thought. This necessitated an internal deliberation on the meaning of “friend,” and my conclusion did little to distract me from the dream betrayal in progress. I guess if I die and live a life like everyones’, I’ll be a part of something.

Hours into the journey I gave up on the window and began scanning the rows for a like mind – not that I would relate with them though. My type wouldn’t want to. Still, it would have been nice to have known she was present.

What else to do? Stare folk down and make them uncomfortable? Not enough energy. Sleep against the cold window? Too loud. Too bumpy. What is a friend really?

Writing my thoughts seemed to help clarify, so I wrote. Pages. I’m sure I looked intelligent to her. I guess intelligence wasn’t enough. In any case, I realized “friend” wasn’t the debate, and “home” was a much more relevant ambiguity. It was then that my friend interrupted me.

“Where you headed?” she asked.

“Same as you, I guess,” I said with my intelligent/confident smile and eyebrow movement combo. Then the questions kept coming and I kept eating the attention. Eventually I ate her and it was all over.

worthwhile

Nice web log...contains decent resolutions of many historic and otherwise high quality photos such as this one by Jorge Rueda Aleria. The webmaster appears to have access to high res images from magnum photos and is posting them.

Be sure to look in the archives as well (all one of you who visit my blog).

http://celticbrushes.blogspot.com/

It's Death, I know

Little photoshop fun. Now if only I could make things look this way on purpose...

www.archive.org how did I miss its existence?

One beautiful photo

Well, if you too would like a picture of a mime shooting with a mime gun...
http://bilan.usherbrooke.ca/voutes/voute4/p622119-a.jpg

Free and good book

So I read this book a few years ago and found it inspiring. Now I see I can download it for free! It's about a guy that started a punk band for Christian ministry in Amsterdam.

http://www.steiger.org/books/lionsden/Den.PDF

-you should be able to right click that and choose "save link as" or something like that to download it. Left clicking will open it.

More Carousels

More work on my Carousels project (see below). I'm thinking it will be a carousel/merri-go-round with humans riding fantastic figures and animals riding fantastic human beings. In the center will be a man standing (spinning in place) with three heads or faces. This was my initial visualization of this concept...

Betrayal Intersection

I wrote this soon after watching “House of Flying Daggers.”  I’m pretty sure that movie had some deep meaning but I really don’t know what.  So I opted for the post-modern and siphoned my own from it.


Dagger in the back – stabbed in the heart
You were watching all along
Fight for me, I run from you
Like Judas, “I belong!”

What’s the difference between left and right?
They’re both well-worn, both bend out of sight…
I’ve never been, so how can I know?
Seed shoved dead into dirt, I watch others grow:
“This is my choice, I’ll make it alone”

Sun’s now gone
Dark
Shivering
Cold mud
No one
…

I remember the warmth
The beach
The waves
Innocence
…

Every agreement has two sides
Every argument one
I’ve taken the wrong path so many times!
(Betrayal intersection has lost its fun)

Carousels, Ben & Art?

I’ve been assigned the task of creating a visual work of art from the following mewithoutYou song…I think I’m going to make a landscape with two carousels – one representing religion and one representing capitalism.   Should be good….

“On a bus ride into town, I wondered out loud, "Why am I going to town?"
As I looked around at the billboards and the stores I thought, "Why do I look around?"
And I kissed the filthy ground...the first dry spot I found...
I didn't have to wonder why I was laying down. ”Before long I was too cold...took a bus back to the station,
I found a letter left by a pay phone with no return contact
And it read like a horn blown by some sad angel,
"Bunny, it was me...it was me who let you down"
It was the shyest attempt I'd ever seen at conversation.
”But if I didn't have You as my guide, I'd still wander lost in Sinai,
Counting the plates of cars from out-of-state,
How I could jump in their path as they hurry along!
And You surround me, You're pretty but You're all I can see
Like a thick fog...
If there was no way into God,
I would never have laid in this grave of a body for so long.
”And St. Cyril's fair always came through the first week of September
But it's already the 19th...and there's no sign of it...
Yet I have a hard time remembering all the things I should remember
And a hard time forgetting all the things that I was supposed to forget.
And, Christ, when You're ready to come back,
Then I think I'm ready for You to come back;
But if You want to stay wherever exactly it is You are,
That's okay, too...it's, it's really none of my business.
”And if I didn't have You as my guide, I'd still wander lost in Sinai
Or down by the tracks watching trains go by
To remind me: there are places that aren't here.
And I had a well but all the water left,
So I'll go ask Your forgiveness with every breath,
And if there was no way into God,
I would never have laid in this grave of a body...so long, dear.”

Painful creates

Distaste in common hates

“Just food, please”

But continues and time

Eats the purposeful rhyme

“just me, it’s all I have”

Question’s debated

In art, in part

“answers-questions questions”

“Not species, kingdom, get it right.

It’s by spirit, not might.

Perspective matters less when you look right.”

Why beats how for fun

My muscles are undone

RAs

So I think I got the picture posting down now. This is an exciting picture including all the resident assistants for my building (Theopholus Tower). This was after our end-o-training dinner.
I feel pretty old sometimes.

The Kinks, and I don't mean the band

Ok, so I can do text for this thing really easy but the campus network seems to be blocking my picture upload capabilities.  I’ll get it figured out eventually.  I guess no one knows this thing exists yet so it really doesn’t matter.  Goodbye me.

Shaun and I explore 

kitchenette 

cat tails 

In intro

my alter ego has got the best of me
fort knox has tried to be
but failed