to love

what an odd thing
to love
amidst tumult
a quiet admiration

near and far

composition

that old tightness in my chest
familiar core waver
shaking double vision

the why and the how
why would
how could
why should
how can i

and the will

"i do and i will"

don't do
do i do if it doesn't
if i don't will it ever

will myself
to composure

This is 30

rented This is 40 and am watching it for the second time in one day.  i just really love it so much.  it does a good job of capturing weird ways that adult insecurities and hostilities manifest themselves.  it makes me feel comforted and weird at the same time.  life.  only one.  this is me at 30.

it's not the next decade that freaks me out... it's the three that follow
completely impossible to imagine

multiple discourses

1.  after a strange week in Boston, a man supposedly responsible was taken away alive (though reporters seem confused as to how he survived so much gunfire) and there is cheering in the streets.  now is the chance for everyone to get their stories together.  now it is time for multiple discourses to compete for attention, ultimately resulting in "the truth" and "what really happened."
2.  i am so thankful for protective services- people who do good work to protect innocent lives, often at the cost of their own.
3.  The Place Beyond the Pines was unnerving.  it was a stark reminder that even the best intended people on the "right" side of the law are still human and flawed and susceptible to error.
4.  my brother made the cut for the special forces this week.  i have such conflicted feelings.
5.  technology is so fast.  already, images and memes are assembled and passed about what happened moments ago in Boston.  it is fascinating to live in a world where we are such active contributors in creating the art and language and reality of our collective experience.  postmodernism.
6.  i can hardly handle any more mandatory faith formation meetings.  i become really hostile.  so often, the speakers resort to open condescension of atheism, often demonizing all atheists in one fell swoop.  today the man was ridiculously dismissive of stephen hawking (both the man and his work), and then went on to spout  manipulated, biased, ridiculous nonsense in an effort to provide evidence for the existence of god.  i always scribble pages and pages of frustrated responses to ridiculous breaches of logic made during these talks, intending to blog in detail later.  but, as has happened every time before, i come home and go to blog and feel like recreating the mess is just a waste of time and space.  angry, though.  it makes me angry.  i feel like it is an attack on reason and basic intellect.  i really need to look for other work... life is too short to subject myself to that sort of nonsense if there are better options.
7.  one gem, though:  "you have to work really hard to be an atheist- there is so much to deny."  um...
8.  speaking of working hard:  by this time in 2 weeks i will have finished taking my comps exam.  i will be free in a whole new way.  i have big plans for that freedom.
9.  thank you, buffalo exchange, thank you.
10.  happiness is created by chemical reactions in your body.
11.  possible sources- infinite
12.  like multiverses
13.  some song
14.  am i afraid of death?  no.  i don't even know what it means.
15.  reality is spun.

hostility toward monotony

I woke up in the middle of the night and wrote this down.  I have no memory of context in the dream, but I was DEFINITELY ranting these words:

What's new?
Nothing.
Same same same
& then you die &
they put a - on your gravestone
where your life used to be
to represent the
all encompassing sameness of
your everyday existence.
A big blank.

What the heck goes ON in my subconscious while i sleep?  Seriously.
But truthfully, someone must have written something about the symbolic meaning of the - at some point...

found poetry

library books

contain rebellious, scribbled notes

of inspired minds

for a moment after i found this, i felt like i was in The Da Vinci Code, deciphering a cryptic and life altering message.  i was not.