Sconsin and Chicago

A foot and a half of snow and a few inches of ice, and a 6 hour trip suddenly became a 39 hour epically ridiculous extravaganza. A lot of things can happen when you are with your brother and sister on vacation. Here a few I would like to remember:

1... When Tyler lit his hands on fire... Twice.
2... Frost-bitten limbs and the German pub
3... Fried macaroni and cheese bits/Macaroni and cheese pizza
4... The cart escalator
5... The "Farting Man" in the cheese store
6... Watching 3 days worth of television shows and movies I have already seen and didn't want to watch again
7... "I don't follow traffic laws in parking lots-- Stop for who??-- Assholes."
8... After hitting another car, "They're called 'Bumpers' for a reason. If you weren't allowed to hit them they'd be called something like... 'Don't-touchers'"
9... The foot-soaked journey around Chicago at night looking for boots
10.. Running into Brianna's older brother who was also stranded in Chicago

Silences

Tonight I played in the snow with some old high school friends.  It was good, because playing in the snow is pretty much always fun.  I have changed since high school.  I used to think about that and be sad, because I thought it was a bad change, a change into someone I didn't want to be.  Maybe that's true, but I don't think it is that way.  I'm certainly different.  Maybe I'm more comfortable.  I can't put my finger on it.  Anyway, I seem to be impervious to awkward silences in conversation.  I don't even notice them, actually.  It's not uncomfortable and I usually don't realize the quiet isn't a social normalcy until someone starts filling the silence with pointless words.  Words.  That reminds me...

"Sin and love and fear are just sounds that people who never sinned nor loved nor feared have for what they never had and cannot have until they forget the words... Hearing the dark voicelessness in which the words are the deeds, and the other words that are not deeds, that are just the gaps in people's lacks, coming down like the cries of the geese out of the wild darkness in the old terrible nights, fumbling at the deeds like orphans..." 

About a year before I became Christian I freaked out about the meaning of words.  Why do people fill silences?  What's so bad about the quiet anyway?  Everything I talked about with people seemed pointless, and I guess it was, because what I really was looking for in the words was a meaning I wasn't finding.  Everything else just seemed silly, a waste of energy and time.  Sometimes I get that itch still.... Like hearing the same lesson 80 times and you feel like scratching your skin right off because you're so mentally bored you have to find some way to fill the intellectual void.  My lack of conversation contributions have little to do with a lack of interest or attention span.  I just can't seem to find a purpose in so many words and so much talking all the time, I guess.

Stress Ranting

Four professors are looking at my research paper. I found out tonight. I am seriously horrified. I have written so many papers in the past couple years I can't even remember what I've written and what I've just thought about. But those are nothing compared to the monster I have been working on this week. I don't know why, but I was stressed about this one from the get-go. I suppose that's good. I usually procrastinate and do something off the top of my head the day before and end up hating it. This is different. First of all, I found the topic interesting and did a mildly acceptable amount of research. I pulled in primary documents, travel narratives, young adult fiction, poetry, movies, a speech, and even a classical reference from Shakespeare's The Tempest. Then, when I thought I was too annoyed to play around with it anymore than I already had (It's seriously a mess. At least my BS work is well organized) Dr. Hartley called me to ask me about it. He's an old English professor I had from the summer. I really like him and sometimes I run into him and we talk about literature and stuff. But then he called me and it seriously freaked me out. He wants to read my paper, "if that's okay" (and of course it is... who would say "no, that's not okay you creep" even if they were terrified??) He specializes in the stuff I am currently researching so it's incredibly intimidating, even if I didn't already respect him. Plus, he is friends with Dr. Creary and Marlene De Le Cruz-Guzman (both professors I have had for different classes and I babysit for them). They want to read it the paper too...

So in addition to the professor I was originally writing the paper for (Dr. Godwyll, who is incidentally, the CARE education partnership leader and the decisive judgment for my future) I also now have 3 other professors ripping apart my paper. Yikes. I don't get stressed, but I'm stressed. Criticism from the people you respect is tough, and I am a total coward. I wanted to be challenged, and now I'm shaking like a leaf.

I love Jews

I have a strange affinity for Jews. That sounds weird. Probably because it is weird. Not to like Jews, but to like a person for the main reason that they are Jewish. It's like loving a person simply because they are Hispanic, and I am fully aware of how ridiculous it is, but I'm just coming right out and admitting that for whatever reason every Jewish person I meet is a delight. Anyway, there's a Jewish guy who sits next to me in my Education class and I can't stop asking him questions.

I asked him why he felt it was significant to study scripture in Leviticus and Numbers, specifically, scripture explicitly describing things such as different types of offerings and numbers of clans and things like that. He just kind of shrugged and says without much thought, "It's always important to know one's history. It's how we learn who we are now and how we got there. You can't completely understand US politics without having basic knowledge of US history first." I guess I knew that, all along. The old testament is kind of like the biography of Jesus before Jesus. Plus, it helps to understand the context of Jesus. Man, I really love talking to Jews.

On another note: I watched John Tucker Must Die tonight... By the title, I always thought it would be like a kung fu movie. It wasn't. Not even close. But it made me laugh pretty hard in a couple places so that was good. Also, I have 19 books checked out from the library currently which is my new high record. It's sad to think about having to take all of them back.

LizPod

"Let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles.... Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith..." (Hebrews 12:1-2)
Do I even have any kind of claim on faith? I always said things like, "My faith"... but is it really mine?

....... I think my iPod (The LizPod) is broken....... I need to have the next Tech-Saavy person I see tell me if it's broken, fix it, or tell me who can fix it.

The Slowest Life

I've been home since Wednesday and I feel pretty good... I don't have anything to do so I've just been reading and sleeping and watching movies. Last night I finished my last novel I brought with me though, and the ones I ordered haven't come yet so I've just been kinda bored. The most exciting thing to happen in the past 24 hours was when I was carrying my laundry upstairs and smashed my kneecap on the door frame. It seriously knocked the wind out of me, which I didn't know could happen. So I just laid on the stairs gasping, which is just as uncomfortable as it sounds, haha.

There's an artist that has a specific sound which sums up my emotions this week (and many weeks)... You may like him if you haven't already heard him. I have one CD called Pink Moon, which is probably the more popular of his CD's (and it's also probably his most listened-to song). This song is from that CD. There is no great explanation for why I like this CD so much, or why I have never told anyone (except you) that I like him. The video is rather inconsequential.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9IUqN9ozmhw&NR=1

Powerlessness

My Freshman year at OU my Dad called me one night and said my Grandma was sick, that the doctor's were pretty much positive that she had kidney cancer, and that since she only had one kidney to begin with things weren't looking too swell. I live 5 hours away from my dad, and another hour away from Dad are my grandparents. During that 3 minute conversation I felt sick to my stomach... Because there isn't much that makes me feel crummier than when someone I love is hurting and there isn't a lick I can do about it.

Powerlessness. That's what it really boils down to.

It's not really hopelessness, because you still can have a great sense of hope in those kinds of circumstances. What bothers me is that I have no control, and the fact that having no control bothers me is what really bothers me the most. What would I have done if I could have been there with my Grandma or my Dad? Could I save her soul if I had been there? No, I could have done nothing. Why do we always want to save people? God gives me a little bit of strength and it goes straight to my head.

Most depressing thing ever

Yesterday some friends were talking about what they think about when they hear the word "depression". Someone said they thought of a person getting drunk by themselves as the quintessential "depressed person". I said I always think about those ridiculously depressing commercials where there's the stereotyped "depressed person" who just lies on the couch all day in sweatpants with frumpy hair and they say, "I hurt all over" and all of a sudden even though I'm not sad and probably haven't been that sad in my entire life, I feel like I need to lie around on the couch with frumpy hair and stinky sweatpants too.

On Veteran's Day I saw a pretty old lady wearing a Wendy's uniform walking down Court Street with a limp. And then she tripped... And fell... Right in front of me.

Yeah... I decided in the moment that it was way more depressing than the couch potato in sweatpants.

And somehow that is just sadly funny.

I read a book over the summer. It's by John Dewey and it's called Experience and Education... "Plato once defined a slave as the person who executes the purposes of another [...] a person is also a slave who is enslaved to his own blind desires." Anyway, it sounds very much like something else about being a slave I have read. I was considering the concept of slavery this week. Everyone is a slave to someone or something, and everyone worships someone or something. I have yet to determine what those things are for me.

Another thing I realized this weekend that surprised me... Winter quarter will be the first quarter I haven't had an educational reason for attending Fed Hock since Freshman year. It kind of freaked me out. I even considered rearranging my schedule, taking a Methods class early so that I'd have a reason to be at the school next quarter. (I'm still considering it.) It just made me sad, and I'm already sad because I took myself out of the school for the last two weeks of the quarter... They recommend that so that we can focus on our finals and stuff, but now I just miss school. Tomorrow I asked Mrs. Coble if I could go watch the kids' presentations... It's my last day. I have become keenly aware of brevity.

Staying Awake

On Saturday I went for a walk outside. Sometimes I like getting so lost I start to worry if I'll be able to get back home... I always get back home. Sometimes it's in a car, other times riding a bike, or sometimes just walking. I think it's probably some weird American roots screaming for the necessity for exploration. Anyway, I found this gloriously huge hill and walked all the way to the top. I quickly decided that a hill this magnificent needed to be biked down, so I walked all the way back to my apartment before walking back up the hill. I considered the possibility of death meeting me at the bottom, but then I just laughed and peddled hard, yelling like crazy the whole way down. I put my arms out like wings and felt cold. The locals sitting on their porches didn't seem to mind all that much.
Last week was weird. A whole bunch of stuff was on my mind from ages ago, things I hadn't really thought too much about since I was younger and it stung to think about those things. I was surprised to find that these things, things I thought were long gone and out of my life, were still there and still stung. I've been thinking about Jacob... What kind of guy wrestles with God and lives? It's kind of ludicrous, but it happened. Jacob wrestles God, receives a new name, and a handicap. His entire identity is changed. I don't think I will ever be the same as I was, but after thinking about all these things from so long ago I forgot. Sometimes I find my old lifestyle creeping into my new lifestyle, and I think about the condition of my heart. Has it hardened over time? Maybe it is like the paralytic's mat, or the demon-possessed man's scars, the tax collector's reputation, or Jacob's limp. I prayed that I wouldn't fall asleep again.

I have been kind of busy lately, so last night I decided I would make the most of my Friday by dividing my time and attentions between multiple friend-groups. It wasn't planned or intentional, but while it was happening I thought it was a good idea. I was wrong. I am wrong a lot. Basically, some of my friends felt slighted, and I realize now I messed up and hurt them. During the whole process I also managed to somehow find the time to belittle someone else I love, all because my worry consumed my trust in their integrity.

I have been granted a first class ticket through life, and yet I consistently choose to use the free bus pass that's been molding in my pocket.