September 19, 2007
September 18, 2007
Status
Sometimes life gets so busy you hardly have the chance to breath from one day to the next, and sometimes it slows to such a crawl that "watching paint dry" seems like it might be fun. Usually it's somewhere in between, and that's where it's been for me as well lately.
Don't get me wrong, I keep busy (last week: getting my car fixed, work, men's meeting, trustee meeting, shooting the bike rally, grandma's birthday, etc), but LIFE in itself doesn't present massive shifts in it's existence and perceptions. Not that I want to rock the boat, but it helps, from a writing perspective, to have some thing TO write about.
The truth is there is always something to write about, just like there is always something to photograph, you just have to train your eye to see what's there - not just on a surface glance, but the things that are deeper. Work is fairly interesting at the moment anyway - just finished up Nietzsche's book, "On the Genealogy of Morality." I don't get a lot of it, but still, certain ideas he proposes are interesting or (for me) fresh. There was one quote in particular that I saved:
"The beautiful," Kant said, " is what pleases without interest." Without interest! Compare this definition with one made by a real "spectator" - Stendhal, who in one place calls the beautiful "une promesse de bonheur" (a promise of happiness).
For me, it's less about what I read, and more about the ideas provoked by what I read. I run across phrases like "horror vacui" (the horror of emptiness) or "nitimur in vetitum" (we strive for what is forbidden) (from Ovid), and, for at least a brief moment (lately), my mind and imagination thrills with the thoughts, ideas, and perceptions caused by such statements. What I've been missing lately is the ability to take that spark and fan it into a bright fire, into a full-length poetic discourse into the state of existence it portends. My mind is striking steel and flint but without fodder. This is why I need to read more, and just write, even if it is garbage writing. Writing, like walking, is a self-continuing action (yes, this is scientifically proven - it's basically muscle memory or something like that). The trick is to start. For me, lately, it's been an issue of time. I'm busy, but worse, I don't utilize the time properly that I do have. It's analogized with the image of a rocket: focus, like the nozzle; control, achieved through the fins, and balance, proper distribution of assets, which allow it to fly, when combined with everything else.
I need to remember (and implement) one of my favorite ideas, a quote from one of my favorite low-budget films, "The First $20 Million":
"Simplify, clarify, economize."
The trick in life is not in knowing, but in doing....of such thoughts is my state of the union of myself address composed.
Don't get me wrong, I keep busy (last week: getting my car fixed, work, men's meeting, trustee meeting, shooting the bike rally, grandma's birthday, etc), but LIFE in itself doesn't present massive shifts in it's existence and perceptions. Not that I want to rock the boat, but it helps, from a writing perspective, to have some thing TO write about.
The truth is there is always something to write about, just like there is always something to photograph, you just have to train your eye to see what's there - not just on a surface glance, but the things that are deeper. Work is fairly interesting at the moment anyway - just finished up Nietzsche's book, "On the Genealogy of Morality." I don't get a lot of it, but still, certain ideas he proposes are interesting or (for me) fresh. There was one quote in particular that I saved:
"The beautiful," Kant said, " is what pleases without interest." Without interest! Compare this definition with one made by a real "spectator" - Stendhal, who in one place calls the beautiful "une promesse de bonheur" (a promise of happiness).
For me, it's less about what I read, and more about the ideas provoked by what I read. I run across phrases like "horror vacui" (the horror of emptiness) or "nitimur in vetitum" (we strive for what is forbidden) (from Ovid), and, for at least a brief moment (lately), my mind and imagination thrills with the thoughts, ideas, and perceptions caused by such statements. What I've been missing lately is the ability to take that spark and fan it into a bright fire, into a full-length poetic discourse into the state of existence it portends. My mind is striking steel and flint but without fodder. This is why I need to read more, and just write, even if it is garbage writing. Writing, like walking, is a self-continuing action (yes, this is scientifically proven - it's basically muscle memory or something like that). The trick is to start. For me, lately, it's been an issue of time. I'm busy, but worse, I don't utilize the time properly that I do have. It's analogized with the image of a rocket: focus, like the nozzle; control, achieved through the fins, and balance, proper distribution of assets, which allow it to fly, when combined with everything else.
I need to remember (and implement) one of my favorite ideas, a quote from one of my favorite low-budget films, "The First $20 Million":
"Simplify, clarify, economize."
The trick in life is not in knowing, but in doing....of such thoughts is my state of the union of myself address composed.
September 14, 2007
September 12, 2007
Three months
Sometimes words are the hardest things to say.
I struggle, quite frequently, with the fact that I am a writer who seems to have forgotten how to write. It does not make me question my identity, but rather wrestle with why the words no longer come.
I'm sitting here, with a decidedly wonderful zinfandel port in my glass, classic jazz playing, and undecipherable and wordlessly silent thoughts swirling in slow motion through my mind. Words used to drip from my fingers like honey, spurred into existence from images, scents, thoughts, ideas, and scant moments that grabbed my imagination and shook it until something beautiful fell out. Now my mind is molasses, giving up only lines here and there, nothing complete, nothing whole.
I go over what I have written recently, which does not take long. Not even six complete items in three months. Titles like "Ouroboros" and "Cantiga de Amor" flash before me - potential, but stuttering in the gate, not even making it out on to the field. My life is whitespace, and I stand before it, pen in hand, just staring. I am not pretentious enough to say that I am waiting for the art to be released; I am simple enough to say I don;t know where it's gone. That's not completely true. I can still feel it within me, but it is inaccessible, the faint murmurings that bubble up indecipherable. Writing used to be as simple as fishing - just drop my line into my mind and wait a short while for a nibble, and I would hook a fish of some size. Now my mind is saudade, as I wrote in "Cantiga de Amor":
Untranslatable expression of the soul
reaching out to the past and present
embracing everything, loosing everything
Transliterating words with something more
and in "Whitespace":
Let the violin play, pulling out notes like knots
like raw cotton, like cathedral shadows at twilight
haunting you with reminders
of your own vulnerability
of your own dreams, and losses
and hopes you yet still hold
So many hopes yet swirl themselves around in circles through my mind. Dreams like ghosts from a valiant past. And in myself I forget how much larger the world is outside of me. Other people with other lives, other wounds, other hopes. I must move beyond myself, learn to expand again, to feel deeper, further, more intensely. Breathing is a gift we do not appreciate often enough. Life is what I make of it. And sometimes...
"Life’s not all about what is
Sometimes it’s about what isn’t
At least not yet…"
I struggle, quite frequently, with the fact that I am a writer who seems to have forgotten how to write. It does not make me question my identity, but rather wrestle with why the words no longer come.
I'm sitting here, with a decidedly wonderful zinfandel port in my glass, classic jazz playing, and undecipherable and wordlessly silent thoughts swirling in slow motion through my mind. Words used to drip from my fingers like honey, spurred into existence from images, scents, thoughts, ideas, and scant moments that grabbed my imagination and shook it until something beautiful fell out. Now my mind is molasses, giving up only lines here and there, nothing complete, nothing whole.
I go over what I have written recently, which does not take long. Not even six complete items in three months. Titles like "Ouroboros" and "Cantiga de Amor" flash before me - potential, but stuttering in the gate, not even making it out on to the field. My life is whitespace, and I stand before it, pen in hand, just staring. I am not pretentious enough to say that I am waiting for the art to be released; I am simple enough to say I don;t know where it's gone. That's not completely true. I can still feel it within me, but it is inaccessible, the faint murmurings that bubble up indecipherable. Writing used to be as simple as fishing - just drop my line into my mind and wait a short while for a nibble, and I would hook a fish of some size. Now my mind is saudade, as I wrote in "Cantiga de Amor":
Untranslatable expression of the soul
reaching out to the past and present
embracing everything, loosing everything
Transliterating words with something more
and in "Whitespace":
Let the violin play, pulling out notes like knots
like raw cotton, like cathedral shadows at twilight
haunting you with reminders
of your own vulnerability
of your own dreams, and losses
and hopes you yet still hold
So many hopes yet swirl themselves around in circles through my mind. Dreams like ghosts from a valiant past. And in myself I forget how much larger the world is outside of me. Other people with other lives, other wounds, other hopes. I must move beyond myself, learn to expand again, to feel deeper, further, more intensely. Breathing is a gift we do not appreciate often enough. Life is what I make of it. And sometimes...
"Life’s not all about what is
Sometimes it’s about what isn’t
At least not yet…"
September 10, 2007
Want and Need: Learning the difference
God rarely gives me what I want, but He always gives me what I need.
I'm not talking about what I think I need, but what I actually do need. This was reinforced to me this afternoon.
I've been having a bit of car trouble, most recently having my car die on my way home from work. I was driving along, and then the radio cuts out, the power steering seems to stop working, and flooring it isn't getting me over 20mph. I pull over, check everything under the hood that I know how, and can't figure it out. I let it sit for a moment, drive it around the block where I pulled over a couple times, then as I'm trying to get back on the road, it completely dies - no click-click-click, no straining to start, no anything at all. Car's dead. I call the mechanic, explain what happened, he says it sounds like the alternator, suggests I get a new battery, should be able to get back to Concord from Palo Alto that way. I call my buddy Sale, he comes and takes me to Sears, I get a battery, put that in, and am able to get back home. Still have the root problem to take care of - just needing a new battery would have been too easy.
Anyway, so this morning I call my mechanic up again, and he tells me to bring the car on over to his house. Car starts up okay, but midway there I start losing power again. I'm praying, "God, please just get me there. I need to know you're with me. Just make all the lights green so I know you're with me and I can get there okay." See, the car was having the most problems whenever I slowed down. If I didn't have to slow down, I should be alright getting there. I've driven across town with all green lights multiple times, so I thought my request was well within reason, and would help me know God was with me. Doesn't happen. I get of the main road and start toward Irfan's house, and there's a light, and the car dies. It won't turnover, nothing. I'm able to get past the light by pushing the car off to the side, and then I call Irfan. I'm only a few blocks away, so he tells me to walk to his place and get a jumper kit and see if I can finish making it to his place if I can get the car going again. So I do that. Those things are heavy by the way. A battery is like 50 pounds I would guess, and the little jumper pack must be 30 or so. It's not that that's so heavy in and of itself, but its weight is unexpected for its size. Anyway, I get back to my car, am able to jump it alright, and excitedly start driving to his house again. I start going up a hill, and it dies again. Stop, move off to the side, pop the hood, jump the battery, close hood, get in, and press the gas to go again, but it's already died again *sigh* - get out, repeat the procedure. This time I think through the procedure, shave unnecessary actions that slowed me down, and manage to unhook the jumper, close the hood, get in the car, and press the gas in probably about 2.5 seconds, and am just barely able to catch it before it dies again and get the gas going. Flooring it let's me build up speed to about 10mph, I slingshot around the last corner, where it promptly dies again, but I have just enough momentum to coast up the hill far enough to make it to his house. I'm thinking to myself, "God, why didn't you help me get here" as he tests the engine and confirms that the alternator is dead (it was putting out like .76 volts, when it's supposed to do 12 volts). Driving me home, Irfan is saying that he knew God helped me get home and get to his place. That's when it hit me. I wanted God to make it easy on me and just make all the lights green and let me get there without any more problems and just coast up to Irfan's house. I needed to get my car there so he could fix it. I thought that I needed the lights to be green for that to happen. I didn't, but was blind to God's provision in getting me there. God showed me that, and through the circumstances I was able to learn a lesson. One that I knew in my head, but had forgotten in my heart. The easy way that I wanted is not the way that was best. It's like that old phrase, "The best is oft enemy of the good." My was was good, but it was no the best. If I had had my "good" way, I would have missed God's "best" way. Of course hindsight is 20/20, but I hope I take this lesson to heart. I know there are many areas in my life where it applies, where I need to remember patience and faith when I get tired and don't understand and just want my way, and I want it right away. So many verses come to mind from these thoughts.
Proverbs 16:25
There is a way that seems right to a man,
but in the end it leads to death.
Proverbs 21:2
All a man's ways seem right to him,
but the LORD weighs the heart.
I Corinthians 1:25
For the foolishness of God is wiser than man's wisdom,
and the weakness of God is stronger than man's strength.
Isaiah 55:8-9
"For my thoughts are not your thoughts,
neither are your ways my ways,"
declares the LORD.
"As the heavens are higher than the earth,
so are my ways higher than your ways
and my thoughts than your thoughts.
Job 37:5
God's voice thunders in marvelous ways;
he does great things beyond our understanding.
God I just pray that I would remember and have trust in you, faithfully and continually and unceasingly. Thank you. Help me to know and remember the difference between want and need, and to trust you for both. Amen
"Man proposes but God disposes"
--Thomas à Kempis, 1450, The Imitation of Christ (full text here.)
"For man purposith and god disposith."
[c 1450 tr. T. à Kempis' De Imitatione Christi (EETS) i. xix.]
I'm not talking about what I think I need, but what I actually do need. This was reinforced to me this afternoon.
I've been having a bit of car trouble, most recently having my car die on my way home from work. I was driving along, and then the radio cuts out, the power steering seems to stop working, and flooring it isn't getting me over 20mph. I pull over, check everything under the hood that I know how, and can't figure it out. I let it sit for a moment, drive it around the block where I pulled over a couple times, then as I'm trying to get back on the road, it completely dies - no click-click-click, no straining to start, no anything at all. Car's dead. I call the mechanic, explain what happened, he says it sounds like the alternator, suggests I get a new battery, should be able to get back to Concord from Palo Alto that way. I call my buddy Sale, he comes and takes me to Sears, I get a battery, put that in, and am able to get back home. Still have the root problem to take care of - just needing a new battery would have been too easy.
Anyway, so this morning I call my mechanic up again, and he tells me to bring the car on over to his house. Car starts up okay, but midway there I start losing power again. I'm praying, "God, please just get me there. I need to know you're with me. Just make all the lights green so I know you're with me and I can get there okay." See, the car was having the most problems whenever I slowed down. If I didn't have to slow down, I should be alright getting there. I've driven across town with all green lights multiple times, so I thought my request was well within reason, and would help me know God was with me. Doesn't happen. I get of the main road and start toward Irfan's house, and there's a light, and the car dies. It won't turnover, nothing. I'm able to get past the light by pushing the car off to the side, and then I call Irfan. I'm only a few blocks away, so he tells me to walk to his place and get a jumper kit and see if I can finish making it to his place if I can get the car going again. So I do that. Those things are heavy by the way. A battery is like 50 pounds I would guess, and the little jumper pack must be 30 or so. It's not that that's so heavy in and of itself, but its weight is unexpected for its size. Anyway, I get back to my car, am able to jump it alright, and excitedly start driving to his house again. I start going up a hill, and it dies again. Stop, move off to the side, pop the hood, jump the battery, close hood, get in, and press the gas to go again, but it's already died again *sigh* - get out, repeat the procedure. This time I think through the procedure, shave unnecessary actions that slowed me down, and manage to unhook the jumper, close the hood, get in the car, and press the gas in probably about 2.5 seconds, and am just barely able to catch it before it dies again and get the gas going. Flooring it let's me build up speed to about 10mph, I slingshot around the last corner, where it promptly dies again, but I have just enough momentum to coast up the hill far enough to make it to his house. I'm thinking to myself, "God, why didn't you help me get here" as he tests the engine and confirms that the alternator is dead (it was putting out like .76 volts, when it's supposed to do 12 volts). Driving me home, Irfan is saying that he knew God helped me get home and get to his place. That's when it hit me. I wanted God to make it easy on me and just make all the lights green and let me get there without any more problems and just coast up to Irfan's house. I needed to get my car there so he could fix it. I thought that I needed the lights to be green for that to happen. I didn't, but was blind to God's provision in getting me there. God showed me that, and through the circumstances I was able to learn a lesson. One that I knew in my head, but had forgotten in my heart. The easy way that I wanted is not the way that was best. It's like that old phrase, "The best is oft enemy of the good." My was was good, but it was no the best. If I had had my "good" way, I would have missed God's "best" way. Of course hindsight is 20/20, but I hope I take this lesson to heart. I know there are many areas in my life where it applies, where I need to remember patience and faith when I get tired and don't understand and just want my way, and I want it right away. So many verses come to mind from these thoughts.
Proverbs 16:25
There is a way that seems right to a man,
but in the end it leads to death.
Proverbs 21:2
All a man's ways seem right to him,
but the LORD weighs the heart.
I Corinthians 1:25
For the foolishness of God is wiser than man's wisdom,
and the weakness of God is stronger than man's strength.
Isaiah 55:8-9
"For my thoughts are not your thoughts,
neither are your ways my ways,"
declares the LORD.
"As the heavens are higher than the earth,
so are my ways higher than your ways
and my thoughts than your thoughts.
Job 37:5
God's voice thunders in marvelous ways;
he does great things beyond our understanding.
God I just pray that I would remember and have trust in you, faithfully and continually and unceasingly. Thank you. Help me to know and remember the difference between want and need, and to trust you for both. Amen
"Man proposes but God disposes"
--Thomas à Kempis, 1450, The Imitation of Christ (full text here.)
"For man purposith and god disposith."
[c 1450 tr. T. à Kempis' De Imitatione Christi (EETS) i. xix.]
September 04, 2007
Labor Day
Today was a day for working outside. That included building a raised flower bed, moving about a yard and a half of dirt, and planting several things, including an orange tree, a hibiscus, and the aforementioned flower bed, as well as creating a water reclamation system to make use of the AC condensation runoff. Also did some more work painting the bird bath properly - still have to do a lot of highlighting and detail work but have most of the base coats on now - and wiring up a hanging light for the gazebo-tent outside. That last project I was stymied on as I could not find any electrical tape. Did most of the projects that I wanted to, except for patching the holes on the other small pond, or doing any work on my new websites.
That's right - I haven't mentioned it yet, but I finally took the plunge and plunked down the money to get an honest-to-goodness photography website up and running (and selling!). It's really an investment experiment - I get one year at half price (it always pays to look for coupons before buying anything online), in which I will see if having the website will be profitable or not. I just need to get stuff posted now - which will take quite some time, I know. But this is what I really want to do, so I need to make the commitment to it and act on it. Wishing and thinking doesn't get anything done, only actual action does. I'm kind of at a loss as to how I want the site to look, or how I will make it, but I'll figure that out as I go along. You have to love all the tutorials you can find online for just about anything. Have a few sites that I've noted as having layouts that I like, but will have to see what and how much I will be able to integrate into the setup that smugmug uses. I will make sure to post on here when I have the sites up and running. Anyway, I, as usual, need to get going. I still have to shower all the dirt of from working outside today, and get to bed - down on campus tomorrow, so will be getting up very early. I do have two leads on places to check out for jobs. hopefully I'll have some good news on that front shortly.
That's right - I haven't mentioned it yet, but I finally took the plunge and plunked down the money to get an honest-to-goodness photography website up and running (and selling!). It's really an investment experiment - I get one year at half price (it always pays to look for coupons before buying anything online), in which I will see if having the website will be profitable or not. I just need to get stuff posted now - which will take quite some time, I know. But this is what I really want to do, so I need to make the commitment to it and act on it. Wishing and thinking doesn't get anything done, only actual action does. I'm kind of at a loss as to how I want the site to look, or how I will make it, but I'll figure that out as I go along. You have to love all the tutorials you can find online for just about anything. Have a few sites that I've noted as having layouts that I like, but will have to see what and how much I will be able to integrate into the setup that smugmug uses. I will make sure to post on here when I have the sites up and running. Anyway, I, as usual, need to get going. I still have to shower all the dirt of from working outside today, and get to bed - down on campus tomorrow, so will be getting up very early. I do have two leads on places to check out for jobs. hopefully I'll have some good news on that front shortly.
