Accepting the Discrepancy

I heard someone say recently that our fear of death motivates so much of what we do irrationally as people and that we can't really develop or move on until we learn to accept our own death. I heard this in a message about "radical acceptance" of the good and the bad elements of life.

Accepting the good and the bad elements of life has really been weighing on me a lot lately, because I've been trying to decide whether it's better to view life as basically bad and spoiled (with some positive surprises) or better to view life as basically good overall (with some negative surprises). I basically came to the conclusion that every single moment and aspect of life is filled with good things and bad things. I think that calling life good OR bad is creating an artificial image that isn't often (if ever) really true and it's an easy lie that we want to tell ourselves. Life sucks. Life is beautiful. We want to create that definition for life because it's easier and it's easier because if we can define life, then to some small extent, we are in control of life; we know what to expect, so we aren't quite so out of control. It is much harder to just accept every part of life that happens to you, and let it happen to you, recognizing that most things are really out of your control. It's harder, but I'm realizing that in the end, it's a much better life.

So I've been thinking a lot about this radical acceptance thing, and about looking every moment in the eye, good or bad, and letting myself really feel it and embrace it, and then give it to God.

In another talk this week, I heard someone talk about a sense of inner conflict that is almost an emotion, a not-rightness, and how this pain always comes from a real conflict - I think he used the word 'discrepancy' - so instead of complaining and bemoaning the melancholy and trying to fix the emotion, we should accept the emotion and take some time to sit down and ask ourselves what the discrepancy is.

I've been struggling with a strong, almost-overpowering sense of inner conflict for several months now. I have wondered if I am again dealing with depression, and I don't rule that out, so my response has been not to let myself slump, not to fall into myself, as it were. I tell myself that I have no reason to feel conflicted, because - in nearly every way - my life is better right now than it has been in a very long time. I'm doing what I want to be doing, and - though there is more financial frustration than I've ever had before - there is not really anything that I think, "If I could change this, I would be happy." So I've done exactly what maybe I shouldn't do, which is to combat the sense of melancholy without even stopping to ask the source of melancholy.

When the speaker talked about stopping to find the discrepancy that needs to be fixed, I did just that, and have spent the past three or four days trying to figure out what the discrepancy is, with no luck. Last night was particularly intense and unpleasant for me, so this morning, when I listened to a song by Joanna Newsom called "Monkey and Bear", I suddenly had a sense of what the discrepancy is, and I realized that they were right: fear of death - unwillingness to accept death - pervades everything, even if (like me) you don't really see yourself as afraid of death.

I haven't exactly figured out what the discrepancy is for me except that it has to do with fears so deep I almost can't touch them, so I think I want to just show you the lyrics to the song, which I transcribed as prose since I want to focus on the story of the song more than the lyricism or poetry of it.

I guess I had a moment when I thought, "I am Bear," and then a minute later, "I am Monkey," and a minute after that, "I am both Bear and Monkey," and a red light went off that said: discrepancy!

I guess for me, Bear is the beast who years to be wild and the artist and the believer, and Monkey is the pragmatist, who wants to be fed more than to be free. And yet it's not that simple, because freedom was Monkey's idea, and the story is told from his perspective, even though everyone dislikes Monkey and loves Bear. If I see myself as both Monkey and Bear, it is all directed at myself. My Monkey (that sounds hilarious) is enslaving my Bear, but it's all still me, all of it! And I'm afraid that Bear is dying...

So here I am feeling that. How do I accept that? Where do I go with that?

Down in the green hay, where Monkey and Bear usually lay, they woke from a stable-boy's cry.

He said, "Someone come quick! The horses got loose, got grass-sick! They'll founder! Fain, they'll die."

What is now known by the sorrel and the roan? By the chestnut, and the bay, and the gelding grey? It is: stay by the gate you are given, and remain in your place, for your season, and had the overfed dead but listened to that high-fence, horse-sense, wisdom...

"Did you hear that, Bear?" said Monkey, "We'll get out of here, fair and square. They've left the gate open wide! So, my bride, here is my hand, where is your paw? Try and understand my plan, Ursula. My heart is a furnace: full of love that's just, and earnest. Now you know that we must unlearn this allegiance to a life of service, and no longer answer to that heartless hay-monger nor be his accomplice. (That charlatan, with artless hustling!) But Ursula, we've got to eat something and earn our keep while still within the borders of the land that man has girded (All double-bolted and tight-fisted!) until we reach the open country, a-steeped in milk and honey.

"Will you keep your fancy clothes on, for me? Can you bear a little longer to wear that leash? My love, I swear by the air I breathe: sooner or later, you'll bare your teeth. But for now, just dance, darling. C'mon, will you dance, my darling? Darling, there's a place for us. Can we go, before I turn to dust? Oh my darling, there's a place for us. Oh darling, c'mon will you dance, my darling? Oh, the hills are groaning with excess like a table ceaselessly being set. Oh my darling, we will get there yet."

They trooped past the guards, past the coops, and the fields, and the farmyards, all night, until finally the space they gained grew much farther than the stone that Bear threw to mark where they'd stop for tea.

"But walk a little faster and don't look backwards. Your feast is to the East, which lies a little past the pasture. When the blackbirds hear tea whistling, they rise and clap, and their applause caws the kettle black, and we can't have none of that! Move along, Bear; there, there; that's that."

Though cast in plaster, our Ursala's heart beat faster than Monkey's ever will.

But still, they have got to pay the bills, hadn't they? That is what the monkey would say.

So, with the courage of a clown, or a cur, or a kite, jerking tight at its tether, in her dun-brown gown of fur, and her jerking of swansdown and leather, Bear would sway on her hind legs; the organ would grind dregs of song for the pleasure of the children, who would shriek, throwing coins at her feet then recoiling in terror.

"Sing, dance, darling. C'mon, will you dance, my darling? Oh darling, there's a place for us. Can we go, before I turn to dust? Oh my darling, there's a place for us. Oh darling, c'mon, will you dance, my darling? You keep your eyes fixed on the highest hill where you'll ever-after eat your fill. Oh my darling, dear, mine, if you dance I love you still."

Deep in the night shone a weak and miserly light where the monkey shouldered his lamp. Someone had told him the bear had been wandering a fair piece away from where they were camped. Someone had told him the bear had been sneaking away
To the seaside caverns to bathe. And the thought troubled the monkey for he was afraid of spelunking down in those caves. Also afraid what the village people would say if they saw the bear in that state: lolling and splashing obscenely. It seemed irrational, really, washing that face, washing that matted and flea-bit pelt in some sea-spit-shine, old kelp dripping with brine.

But monkey just laughed, and he muttered, "When she comes back, Ursala will be bursting with pride until I jump up, saying, 'You've been rolling in muck!' saying, 'You smell of garbage and grime!'"

But far out, by now, Bear ploughed because she would not drown: first the outside-legs of the bear up and fell down, in the water, like knobby garters. Then the outside-arms of the bear fell off, as easy as if sloughed from boiled tomatoes. Low'red in a genteel curtsy, Bear shed the mantle of her diluvian shoulders; and, with a sigh, she allowed the burden of belly to drop like an apron full of boulders.

If you could hold up her threadbare coat to the light where it is worn translucent in places, you would see spots where, almost every night of the year, Bear had been mending suspending that baseness. Now her coat drags through the water, bagging, with a life's-worth of hunger, limitless minnows.

In the magnetic embrace, balletic and glacial of Bear's insatiable shadow; left there! Left there! When Bear left Bear. Left there! Left there! When Bear stepped clear of Bear.

"Sooner or later you'll bury your teeth."

Dumbledore is Not Gay. Sorry.

I'm sorry, but I have to say something: it is not within J.K. Rowling's rights as an author to declare four months after the last Harry Potter book is published that Dumbledore is gay. I'm not talking about whether or not Dumbledore should be gay or has a right to be gay or even might possibly be gay, but the fact is that once a book leaves an author's hands, it is no longer her book! A writer gives birth to a book like a mother gives birth to a baby, and any writer is therefore intensely possessive of their book. But just as a mother cannot declare that her child is gay unless the child declares homosexuality first, an author cannot declare a character to be gay unless the book itself makes that same declaration.

I have no problem with Dumbledore being gay, except that it makes me wonder about Gandalf.... I heard in a history class once that some historians believe most priests and monks in the Middle Ages were actually gay. I've heard that homosexuality may have been something Paul struggled with. I've even heard it said that Jesus was gay. All of these are interesting to think about and worth pondering while you read church history or the New Testament or Lord of the Rings but in the end, it's all speculation, because it doesn't say that anywhere in there.

There is a reason that literature classes still read and dissect Shakespeare and Joyce and Cervantes, and it is that the text takes a life of its own outside of the writer. Maybe Shakespeare gave an interview in which he completely explained Hamlet, but if he did, we've long since lost it, and we've lost it because we don't care very much about what Shakespeare thought; we would prefer to wrestle with Hamlet ourselves because we know that - for ourselves - we can explain Hamlet's behavior better than anyone. We can explain it better because we are reading it, and the story is really half the writer's creation and half the reader's creation. I read it so it's my story as much as Shakespeare's (in a sense) so I can tell it how I want to. That's the beauty of literature and why we keep reading it.

Were Rowling to say at some point that she had always thought of Dumbledore as gay (but for whatever reason never chose to show directly that in the book) then I would be very interested in reading through Harry Potter and trying to get inside Dumbledore's head and figure out if I think he is gay. That's half the fun of reading, trying to figure out what is going on beneath what is happening on the surface. Of course, Harry Potter is not really that kind of book and its characters aren't really all that complex, so I do not think I would find any indications one way or the other as to Dumbledore's sexual tendencies.

Honestly, in my reading, Dumbledore has no sexuality, because Dumbledore is not a "real" character in that way. He is a hero, a distant idol, and even at the end - when Harry begins to doubt Dumbledore's sincerity - the wizard is still out there, away, not part of the action. He is therefore as sexless as McGonnagal or Gandalf or any other great austere saints. Sexuality is a significant and vital part of life, and I don't want to suggest that the really big important ones don't have it, but as long as they are portrayed as the really big important ones (off there somewhere, only stepping in to lend a hand to the little guy) then there is something good in recognizing that you can be somebody apart from your sex. That you can be Dumbledore and no one ever knows - or cares - whether you like men or women or don't even think about it at all.

J.K. Rowling was at a book signing when some kid asked her whether she thought "Dumbledore would ever find true love." This is a funny question to me since Dumbledore dies, and I would have replied "No, he died too soon," but Rowling replied "Dumbledore is gay," which is also funny because (a) Dumbledore is still dead and (b) it doesn't answer the question unless you assume homosexuals cannot find true love and (c) it seems like something a frustrated author would say to a stupid question.

I blame a media determined to be non-judgmental for picking up on this and declaring in headline after headline: Dumbledore is Gay.

So it is with a heavy heart that I have to break the news: I don't care what his mamma says, Dumbledore is not gay. I read the books. I never heard him say it. Sorry.

The Vastness of Open Plains and Grey Winters

I have changed my mind. I now believe that I thoroughly enjoy conversation. It has been two very long weeks since I wrote last, and if I were to summarize the best parts of the past two weeks, I could do it in a single word: conversation. A series of personal, face-to-face, one-on-one conversations has been all that kept me out of the pit of despair in the past several weeks.

In fact, the last two weeks might best be described as polarized: one moment of overwhelming chaos followed by one moment of intimacy followed by one moment of stress. More than once, my emotions shifted so suddenly and so extremely to leave me wondering if I might be bipolar. I guess it was last Monday that I was on the phone talking to a friend and almost literally felt a sense of despair hit me in the face. A sense of isolation. (The phone, by the way, is no longer my friend.) I jokingly said, "Well, I'm going to go shoot myself in the face. Have a great night," and my friend thought I was talking about homework I had to do, and I did nothing to correct the mistake. Somehow, the nameless and faceless despair stuck to me throughout the week.

In stark contrast with these dark moods stood the brief shining moments of real closeness with another person, and there were a surprising number of these. I went to the Renaissance Festival the weekend before last and was pretty unhappy to have to go, mostly because I was tired of always being out of town and felt overwhelmed by other stuff going on, but I ended up staying up late into Friday night having one conversation and spent Saturday lazing around the campsite talking with several other people! From my brief experience, the Renaissance Festival is okay, but the campground outside is pretty cool.

Sunday night, I was up until after 4 arguing the war in Iraq with my roommate. That was not exactly a good conversation, mostly because it felt so pointless. If you have ever seen Richard Linklater's films Slacker or Waking Life then you know what I'm talking about: conversations that sound profound and feel important, but really amount to random words thrown around like spaghetti in a food fight.
"The worst mistake that you can make is to think you're alive when really you're asleep in life's waiting room."
"I mean, I'm not saying that you don't know what you're talking about, but I don't know what you're talking about."
~Waking Life
However, despite the seeming pointlessness of these conversations, they mean something to me. It has been a long-standing practice for me not to talk openly about politics or religion, and I find myself more and more talking about both. My same highly-political roommate also asks a lot of questions about theology and what I believe, which - I'm embarrassed to say - are not questions I think about usually.

I do not like the idea of regularly staying up most of the night arguing about politics, but I am glad to have a roommate who disagrees almost across the board with everything I believe, with whom I can politely debate and against whom I can test my ideas and beliefs.

The alleged reason that Michael and I stayed up until 4 talking was to be awake when the cold front came through, which we thought would be at about midnight. So at about midnight we stepped outside and talked. Neither of us had a watch or a cellphone with us, and our conversation was so animated that we were surprised when the storm finally came through to find that four hours had passed.

The storm did finally come, however, and somewhere in the pounding rain and howling wind, winter fell on Austin. I like what Don Miller said in Blue Like Jazz about Texas winters:

"In Houston, where I grew up, the only change in the weather came in late October when cold is sent down from Canada. Weathermen in Dallas would call weathermen in Houston so people knew to bring their plants in and watch after their dogs. The cold came down the interstate, tall and blue, and made reflections in the mirrored windows of large buildings, moving over the Gulf of Mexico as if to prove that sky holds magnitude over water. In Houston, in October, everyone walks around with a certain energy as if they are going to be elected president the next day, as if they are going to get married.

"In the winter, it was easier for me to believe in God, and suppose it had to do with new weather, with the color of leaves clinging to trees, with the smoke in the fireplaces of big houses in opulent neighborhoods where I would ride my bike."

If you have not yet, go right now and read everything Don Miller has ever written.

I'll wait.

Okay, now that we're on the same page, I also love winter. I love the terrible, cold, rainy, grey days because the world seems so very immense and so very holy. I love the beautiful, bright, biting, cold days because the world seems so very small and people so alive. Either way, in Texas, you look up when it gets cold. You look at the sky and at the trees and at the faces of everyone around you. When its hot, you look down, shuffling, trying not to let the weight of the universe push you into the steaming ground. In the heat and humidity, the air is impossibly thick, too thick to reach through to another human.

I got locked out of my car yesterday for the first time since I bought this car. I bought new glasses and had an hour to kill while the glasses were made, so I went to a nearby theater hoping to sneak into the last 45 minutes of a movie. (I feel okay not paying if I'm only staying for part of the movie.) However, there was already someone checking tickets, so I turned around to find that I had left my keys in my car. Luckily, the rain had stopped, but it was still cold and windy, and I stood by my car, my hood pulled tight around my face like Kenny from South Park, and it was beautiful.

It was fiercely lonely, but a good lonely. Not a summer lonely, driven indoors into our artificial cool by the oppressive heat, nostalgically wishing for the days when summer was carefree and heat's cure was a packed swimming pool. Not the loneliness of a crowd, sitting alone in a crowded lecture hall, unknown and never to be known. Not a bedroom lonely or a television lonely, sitting or lying bored in a dark, silent room, praying to God that someone will call who wants to talk or (even better) wants to be with you, but knowing that call will never come. These are tragic, hopeless lonelinesses.

Leaning against the back of my car, bracing against this cold wind, this strange and unusual cold wind, staring at a vast gray sky, so gray that it turned the whole world gray... That loneliness is not a bad feeling, though it can hurt almost as much as the bad loneliness does. The loneliness of a grey winter day in Austin, Texas, is like the arctic wind sweeping down from Canada, across the vast white plains. See the Coen Brothers film, Fargo, for an example of this moment. The vast loneliness is like stopping for water while hiking into the Grand Canyon with my closest friends and catching my breath at the complete silence in the middle of that huge place. Vastness. It's like going to the Davis Mountains in West Texas, the darkest place in the Western Hemisphere, and staring at the sky and trying to wrap your mind around the immensity of an accelerating universe. Vastness.

Sometimes, even the good loneliness hurts like cold fire. In the bad loneliness, you feel like you should matter but for some reason, you don't seem to matter, and no one seems to care. In the good loneliness, you realize that you should not matter, and all evidence suggests that there is no way that you even begin to matter. ("By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food until you return to the ground, since from it you were taken; for dust you are and to dust you will return." Genesis 319) Somehow, however, you feel - in the face of the odds - that you do matter. Maybe it is because you realize that nobody matters exactly and therefore we are all in this together. When the earth is so large compared to a human and yet the earth is so very small compared to the universe, you want to clump up with other dust mites. Maybe it is a sense of connectedness: the world is bigger than me, but - however small - I am a part of it, and on that scale, what makes Bob Dylan's accomplishments any more significant than my own?

Whatever the reason, the experience works something like this: Bam! Vast world. Right in my face. So much bigger than I am. So much older than I am. So much cooler than I am. And then an afterthought: but that's okay. That's holy.

So all of this to say that as I leaned against my car in the cold gray afternoon, waiting on a spare key, I was intensely alone and it way wonderful. I thought about what I want my life to be about. What meaning I do have. That was when I realized how much conversation has meant to me lately. I decided that I want to talk to people. And I want to convince them to talk back. I want to meet people at cafes for lunch and coffee shops at midnight and invite them to my house for dinner. And I want to spend all the time between conversations being completely lonely (in the good sense), wandering the streets and staring up at the stars and trying to wrap my mind around an immensity I do not understand and letting it change me. I short, I want to be the best kind of career slacker. So please let me know if anyone is hiring.

It is sunny now - the other kind of winter - and by afternoon it will warm up to autumn again, but that's okay. Honestly, how much vast lonely weather can a person take in one sitting? Especially right after a long summer.

An Oceanic Feeling

I went to the soccer fields at Zilker Park today with my dog, Riker. After a brief and meandering walk, we settled down on top of the Rock Island, my back against a scraggly tree, the dog reclining to my right like a lion.

I read the chapter in The God Delusion, by Richard Dawkins, called "Why God Almost Certainly Does Not Exist".

I read two chapters in my cosmology textbook about the formation of stars and the formation of galaxies.

I read a chapter in Velvet Elvis: Repainting the Christian Faith, by Rob Bell, called "True" about sensing holiness in great moments, ordinary moments, and tragic moments. Rob Bell tells the story of being speechless when he held his newborn son in his hands. He also tells the story of sensing holiness while holding the dead body of a friend's one-day-old child.

Two weeks ago, I went to Zilker to read and the grass was all dead, burnt by thousands of hot bodies during the Austin City Limits Music Festival, and the fields were covered with rows of trash bags, filled with plastic bottles, cups, and debris. Today, however, the grass was beautifully green and lush.

When the wind stilled, a little sweat would trickle down my nose, but the wind was rarely still; a gentle cool breeze slipped across the surface of the rock and between the trees, rustling branches and sending leaves to the ground around me.

Thousands of birds and locusts screamed from everywhere around me. Dogs barked sometimes, and if they got too near, Riker would bark back. I decided to leave my iPod off so that I would not miss the music.

Rightness. Holiness. A sense of something bigger than me, greater than me, flowing around me, part of me but... apart from me. Holiness. I cried a little while reading Rob Bell just at identifying so immediately with the immensity in his stories.

Once the sun started to sink below the horizon, I packed up my books, and Riker and I strolled back across the fields to my car. My air conditioner is broken, so I never go anywhere without all my windows rolled down.

The radio is broken in my car, so I usually put on my iPod, but I decided today to keep listening to the other music around me. My car makes an almost imperceptible, rhythmic squeaking noise when I'm not braking that makes me a little nervous, whi-whi-whi-whi!

Austin is growing these days, so the sounds of construction are almost all-pervading. I sat at a stoplight and listened to the sound of metal-pounding-metal. Riker sat in the passenger seat with his head out the window and his tongue hanging from his mouth, smiling.

At some point, I put my headphones on and listened to Joanna Newsome tentatively singing, "Joy! / Landlocked / In bodies that don't keep / Dumbstruck with the sweetness of being / Until we don't be," over the majesty of a full orchestra.

The windows were still open, and when I pulled into a neighborhood, I passed a sprinkler in someone's front lawn. It made a sound, one of a trillion sounds that cannot be reproduced in words, but that every author wants to capture, because the sound is just. so. right. Ra-ta-ta-ta-tat! Ra-ta-ta-ta-ta-tat!

I have read the arguments Richard Dawkins calls his most convincing. I have read Freud arguing against God. And yet, as I crawled out of my car, and whistled to Riker, who jumped out and ran a little circle around me, I thought, "Do some people just not have this feeling? This oceanic feeling of rightness?"

It has been a good day.

A Warrior for Peace

I heard a talk this weekend about Christian men as warriors, which created a lot of thought and discussion between Joe Ricks, Bryon Hance, my dad, and myself. The three of them shied away from the metaphor and were a little disappointed with its use. Their reasons are pretty good: the militant metaphor is hard to use practically. Either you take it literally, which is a terrifying thought and suggests fundamentalism, or you take it as a metaphor, which risks leaving the image meaninglessly impractical for our daily lives. Sure, you can get hyped up at the thought that "I am a warrior for God!" or something like that, but if it doesn't really tell you how to live on Monday morning, it is useless. Dad says that an intense connection to the practicality of an ideal is a big part of 'emergent' Christianity. (Shudder. I hate that word almost as much as 'postmodern'.)

While I agree that focusing on the Monday-morning practicality is a great idea, because it takes spirituality out of the theological realm and into real life, I have to say that I believe a warrior image - or even better, a defender image is desperately needed these days.

The quote below is from the website for The Defenders:

“We are joined together to take a stand, declaring that the sexual exploitation of children, using pornography, and buying sex is not something real men will tolerate. Real men guard themselves and protect children with dignity."

I’ve heard a lot recently about how there are more people enslaved in the world right now than ever before in history, and that the vast majority of these slaves are women and children. This includes a huge number of sex slaves, child soldiers who are kidnapped and forced to kill, and “simple” economic slaves, who run restaurants, salons, etc., around the world. I don’t know if you remember, but there was actually a bust just out of Austin only a few months ago where hundreds of women and children were being kidnapped in Mexico and brought here where they were forced to work without pay in American restaurants.

I agree with Joe that we do NOT live in a time of universal moral decay or debauchery like a lot of Christians think. In some ways, our culture is morally better than ever; in some ways, the situation is the same as always; and in some ways, the situation is worse. I also understand the great care that has to be taken about not creating a militaristic image to outsiders, but I do think that a warrior image is still a useful thing to stress. And we can leave “Christian” out of the title to avoid misinterpretations. When a culture wants to (rightly) stress equality of men and women in the home, workplace, and society, it is awkward and difficult to admit that it is men who are a big part of the problem (even if one's role is as small as buying pornography that might feature underage or slave actresses.) and therefore it has to be men who take a role in fixing the problem.

“Real men” have to be proactive and passionate about defending the women and children around them. If we take the religious overtones out of the equation (but keep the spiritual leaning), then we are not warriors against the forces of Satan, but defenders against the forces of evil that really truly do exist. From that perspective, ancient customs like a knighting ceremony (very macho) mean something as a practical metaphor. Imagine the scene from The Gladiator when the evil emperor Claudius forces the hitherto anonymous gladiator to reveal himself by asking, "Who are you?" The gladiator replies, "My name is Maximus Decimus Meridius, commander of the Armies of the North, General of the Felix Legions, loyal servant to the true emperor, Marcus Aurelius. Father to a murdered son, husband to a murdered wife. And I will have my vengeance, in this life or the next." Maximus is driven by an all-encompassing purpose in his life (be it vengeance) that tells him who he is and defines what he wants to do with his life. The emotion I get out of that is intentionality and aggressive proactiveness against the less savory elements of life.

We are not philosophers in an ivory tower talking about how to achieve inner peace and tranquility. If we achieve inner peace and tranquility, it is because those are skills we need in our fight.

Many of older Christians have probably heard the military metaphors so much that they are burned out on it all or else simply can no longer hear the metaphor at all. However, young people like myself who have grown up in churches that stressed peace and personal happiness probably do need to hear, I think, that they actually have a purpose in this life and it is not just to become happy. Our purpose is to be a defender of the helpless. And I wonder if the older men and women might not benefit from a reminder that only those who sacrifice their own happiness for someone else get to be happy.

And so, with this whole discussion in mind, I watched 300 this evening, and thought about it as a metaphor in which it is not about fighting the Persians or the 'infidels' or Satan. It is about fighting brokenness and wrongness. I thought about the grueling process by which boys are transformed into soldiers in the movie. About how the first and possibly greatest battle that a defender of wholeness must fight is the battle to make oneself whole and how it's a process that you never finish but you cannot begin to fight brokenness in the outside world until you have begun to fight it in yourself. Apparently that whole inner peace and happiness thing really is an important tool to becoming warriors of wholeness.

This is a metaphor that I imagine being especially powerful - at least in our culture - to men, but I suppose it is not meaningless to women also, who are commissioned as much as men are to fight brokenness and hurtness in the world around them.

And so what's the practical implication? (Since - in the long run - practicality trumps poetry.) Well, that's a little harder to say, and I'm still thinking about that. But I think that it is worth keeping the emotional sensibility of the warrior image for as long as it takes to figure out what that means on Monday morning.

And Then It Was Today

I spent the evening doing nothing that I intended to do and it was everything that I could have wanted it to be.

I have to say that for the first time in my life, after 5 roommates, I am really enjoying having a roommate.

I specifically got this apartment because I wanted to live alone. I had a whole list of reasons why I wanted to live alone, and all my previous experience with living with other people suggested to me that I could not get what I wanted unless I lived alone. So, for 3 months I lived alone. (That number is not really true, because I spent 6 weeks in there living in PPD.) I have to say that living alone was AWESOME. I guess I got to see myself in a different way than I ever had before. I saw myself as a bachelor adult and I yearned for the odd quirks and habits that come from being accountable to no one. The funny thing is that I started to see them in myself. I started to create a morning routine and I set the alarm for the same time every day. I had something of an evening routine too. I bought a pair of pajamas for the first time in my life because I found that a shower was no longer always the thing I did right before bed, but the thing I did before fixing a cup of coffee and watching Simpsons and Seinfeld. And the best part was that my "routines" were completely flexible enough to be tossed out on a whim, and I could - and did - spend the evening out without having to inform someone about how my plans had changed, and then justify it.

The point is that for the first time in my life, living alone created a sense in me that this is ALL my life - every minute of it, from the moment I wake up until I wake up again. How I manage my time and my resources is both my privilege and my responsibility. But significantly, it is mine. Living the bachelor's life is amazing, and when (and if) Mike moves out in January, I might well decide not to get another roommate.

However, I have been surprised at how cool it can be to have a roommate. It has been surprising to find that it does not necessarily mean that I can't still have some of that independent life. I still have friends over; my Doxology small group met at my house Wednesday. What I have gained, however, is daily conversation, and I did not even suspect how good that would be. Mike smokes occasionally (a couple of cigarettes every couple of days, I think) and I have gone outside with him a couple of times and sat on the balcony talking politics and religion and life, and even though we come from very different perspectives on a lot of issues, the conversation is friendly and really good. Incidentally, I'm not sure how we might have breached the conversation wall had it not been for cigarettes. "Hey, I'm going to go stand outside. You want to join me?" does not allow the same easy excuse as "Hey, I'm going to go smoke a cigarette. You want to join me?"

So tonight, Mike and I cooked spaghetti, (Cooked meals is another thing I enjoy which is so much easier when cooking for 2.) watched Simpsons and Seinfeld, and then stood out on the balcony talking for several hours, until just a few minutes ago, actually. After the conversation, we both went into our own separate rooms, agreeing to do it again sometime. Those of you who have easily come by successful adult relationships with your roommates might not understand how shocking it is for me to realize that living with someone can actually be more than an economic relationship.

I was telling my mom and dad a few days ago about how cool it is that Mike cooks regularly, (The second day he lived here, I came home to find a plate of pasta for me in the fridge.) and I jokingly said that I now understand the advantages of a wife. Besides the (joke) advantage of someone to cook for me, the actual feeling I'm getting at is that there is definitely something nice about the practical side of things, which I hadn't considered before. A relationship like that isn't just in your head or your heart, "soulmates", or something like that. There is that, but then there is also something nice about cooking dinner with someone. Cleaning dishes with someone. Just the nitty-gritty living of life with someone. It's not like, "I love this person, so clearly I would want to have her around as much as possible, so that's worth the sacrifice of my own independence. And besides, that's more practical too." It's more like, "I love this person, and it is pleasant to think of having the same life, with the same dog that needs walked and morning and evening habits that complement each other." Mike, of course, is not my wife; we are friendly at best and merely sociable under most circumstances. Even if we were best friends, he would not fit this description, because he's a guy, and because there still is something, I think, to that whole lovey-dovey side of the coin. But having a really positive roommate situation really is a new perspective for me. Of course, I do not think I could possibly have seen this perspective if I hadn't had a few weeks to understand my own independence.

So, thanks to unplanned conversation, I have a lot to do tomorrow before I leave for Tres Dias, and I have stayed up WAY too late. So it's off to bed for me now and then the weekend begins with a rush! Don't let life slow down on you, because that means the spring is winding down...

Connecting the dots

Since I posted last...
- I am responsible for a dog who lives with me. (Though I will not say, "my dog".)
- I have a roommate who treats me like the landlord.
- I am again a teacher.
- I have begun working toward becoming a "steward" at Doxology.

I spent the evening watching football and talking about beer with my dad, who doesn't watch football or drink beer. For that matter, while I drink some beer, I don't really watch football either.

Yesterday, I drove to Crockett alone, which is one of the longer drives I've made alone, and probably the longest drive I've made alone at night. I hung out with a bunch of old guys I didn't know who know my dad and took care of some stuff and had kind of a weird experience where I didn't feel like I needed my dad to be there or needed to be carefully unassociated with him.

Sometimes I look at what's happening around me and wonder "Is this my life?" and then something extraordinarily stupid happens and I think, "Yeap, yeah, this is the one." The past two weeks have been like this.

The tagline for the New York Times is something like "All the news that's fit to print." Well, it's amazing to me that in the past two and a half weeks, there has been - it seems - no news that's fit to print. The key phrase here is "fit to print." Instead, 17 days fill up with an enormous amount of dots or data. One of these days, something is going to happen that will be the key, and the past 2 weeks will somehow make sense. But for now, I won't bother with all the news that isn't fit to print.

And it's really a great way to describe how I feel these days: waiting. Waiting. Waiting.

And so for now, I will read a book and listen to music and type away on my typewriter and keep my eyes open for that last dot to make the picture make sense.

And this posting doesn't make any sense.

IN FAVOR OF IDIOCY, BROKENNESS, AND IMMATURITY

Imagine, if you will, a person who has it all together. Call her Jane, because, you know, why not? Jane's finances are perfect - free of any real debt to speak of because she exercises admirable restraint and foresight when she spends her money. Her time is always her own to spend, and it too is budgeted carefully and spent with restraint and foresight. Her emotions are always positive, or else smooth as glass, and nothing seems to affect her inner tranquility or budge her emotional stability. Her faith and beliefs - whatever they might be - are rock-solid and immutable, neither swaying nor breaking, even in the most extreme conditions. Overall, Jane is a real rock in the storm, a true beacon of maturity.

Of course, Jane is entirely imaginary: I have never met such a flawless soul and don't anticipate it ever happening; usually those who seem at first to fit Jane's description turn out - as you get to know them - to be as flawed as everyone else. For another obvious statement, Jane is, I think, very definitely an admirable person, a hero.

Now, imagine another person, Jack, who seems to have always had it all together. Jack has never been so deep in debt that he can't see a way out, and doesn't know what it is like to look at a bank balance with a clenching guilty feeling in the pit of his stomach and wonder, Where did it all go, and have no answer except a long series of movies and dinners out, or one, big, stupid, and impulsive purchase. Jack has never failed miserably, publicly, embarrassingly, or put his head in his hands and said to no one: "What was I thinking?" He doesn't understand so thinks suspiciously of those whose faith slips through their fingers sometimes, who doubt and question. Jack has never had to fight for a place in life or claw his way back to okay.

Jack, needless to say, is even more imaginary than Jane; if few are really mature then none could have been born with this maturity. As my grandfather would put it: "You can't put an old man's head on a young man's shoulders." However, it feels to me like - whether we say it or not - many people hold Jack up as an ideal to be sought after personally and in those we love. To put it another way, if maturity is a good thing, then the earlier a person comes by it, the better it will be for them.

I have recently decided that I wholeheartedly disagree. While that is true on the simple, immediate level, (More maturity equals less pain.) I think that, in the long run, this idea is absolutely false. Not only is it impossible to put an old man's head on a young man's shoulders, such a feat is highly undesirable and potentially dangerous. If forced to choose between an easy maturity and a difficult journey with no end before death, I hope I might choose what I see from the outside to be the best option: a hopeless journey.

Why? This is a tricky question to answer. Before we attempt to, I should mention that I am not interested in "early maturity" in children. A seven-year old who acts like an adult (a sight more frequently seen in the movies than in real life) does not really, I think, mean very much at all. I remember one time when I was about thirteen or so, sitting in a Randall's café, talking to my mom about someone we knew who was thinking about dropping everything to move to California to marry a girl he had only ever met online - clearly, a bad idea. I remember Mom saying something to the effect that at thirteen, I knew it was a bad idea, and at thirty-something, she knew it was a bad idea, but that sometimes, when you're in the thick of something, you can't see how bad an idea that thing really is, or else you hope in spite of reality, betting against the odds. The impression I got from Mom was to be very careful about putting yourself into that kind of situation, and that a wise person knows not to get so far in that you can't still tell what the wise thing to do is. I also felt, at thirteen, like a cloud of stupidity must descend on you at about fifteen and not evaporate until about twenty-five.

This, unfortunately (or maybe fortunately), is true. It is not, however, a cloud of stupidity as much as a narrow canyon that suddenly opens up onto a vast plain of new possibilities and freedoms to fail or succeed at, and the only way to understand this plain upon arrival is to take a series of breathtakingly-stupid risks.

I can think of two kinds of people who begin their journey across the ever-changing plain of life without somehow "destroying their lives" at some point or another: those who keep their eyes to the ground, refusing to acknowledge the vastness of possibility, and taking each step slowly and carefully for fear of tripping, and those who are extremely lucky and whose every risky decision works out in their favor. The first situation can only create timid naivety and the second can only create cocky naivety. Neither creates real wisdom. No matter how "together" such a person seems, I do not think that their wisdom lasts. Whether you are careful or lucky, eventually, life trips you up and breaks you down, and those who never learned to fall are the worst for it.

I first fell - really fell - for writing. Specifically, I fell for my idea of what it means to be a writer. I have to admit, by the way, that this is still an idiotic idea that I haven't quite let go of, but I have come to realize that I am not the only one with this idea. I wept to hear Garrison Keillor tell the story of one place this pursuit took him, but then I've become a big sap recently. Basically, I am not of the personality to naturally take risks, but since I was young, I have longed to find a really cool story to tell or an amazing experience or emotion to capture. It seemed to me when I was younger that no real writer could ever come out of a happy, middle-class, suburban, idyllic upbringing, so I spent a long time making myself miserable to I could talk about it down the line somewhere. Yeah, I know. The moment I walked into my first job and saw the strange, addictive community of servers, I thought these people were so much more interesting than anyone else I knew, and immediately wanted to become a part of that group and figure out their story. It wasn't until I started at UT and left home that I found myself in that community, but that search for another experience to write about led me to stupid risks and I finally found my long-lacked immaturity.

After three semesters at UT, I found myself out on my butt, suffering the consequences of my foolishness. I didn't need to do that, and would not recommend it to future college students, but it is a very important part of who I am today. As a side note, I have found that I can tell a lot about a person by the look on their face when I talk about flunking out of school. The people I have the most difficulty relating to are those who look at me confused and a little disgusted and say, "But why?" and the coolest "grown-ups" are the ones who say "No, I didn't go through that, but man, it sure coulda happened."

In the end, I think I prefer the company of fools over the company of our artificially wise friend, Jack. I prefer those who are broken and fallen and hurting over the cocky fool. I am deep awe of those who are healed enough to be truly wise, who tread carefully because they know what it is to fall and be hurt, but also know what can be gained by leaping, so sometimes they still look like fools and sometimes are broken down. These people truly amaze me.

It's not a new idea to praise the value of suffering - the depth and complexity of character created - but I don't think many seem to be lauding the self-inflicted suffering of fools and idiots, the immature and the risk-takers, and this makes no sense to me, because I'd rather learn to fall by leaping than by being pushed. In fact, I hope that I never have it all together until the day I die, that I'm always taking risks everyone tells me are stupid, hoping against hope that the unlikely will happen.

The funny thing is that all the stupid things I know are stupid are things I want to - and have to - fix! To choose not to grow up and mature when you know how to is irresponsible and dangerous. I have a cigarette-burn, cross-shaped scar on my forearm, self-inflicted, from a time when I wanted a visual symbol of a pain and had not yet discovered poetry. (Incidentally, I wrote my first poem around that same time.) My sister and my parents and basically everyone told me that it was a stupid idea. Looking back, I know that it was a colossally-stupid idea. One of those moments mentioned before when you put your head in your hands and think, "What was I thinking? Why on earth would I want to be so dramatic?" And I can tell you. I was being romantic, playing a role, filling someone else's shoes. More significantly, it had recently (finally) gotten through my skull, actually gotten into my head, that I had been very depressed for a very long time, and I wanted to do something - anything - to break through my ice cocoon and remind me that it is okay to hurt. Once I got the image of ice in my head, fire seemed the perfect solution. And wonderfully romantic. Now, a couple of years later, I can tell you that I did not have to do that; I can tell you it was idiotic. But do you know what? It worked. Do I regret it? Well, given the choice, I couldn't do it again, so it's probably good I have no choice, because, really, I wouldn't want it any other way. Now I might have decided to keep burning myself with cigarettes so I don't have to admit it had been a silly mistake. A fool, a real fool, beyond the kind of fool I've been praising, would recognize the idiocy of his actions but keep doing them for whatever reason.

So we do stupid things, immature things, things we know won't turn out like we want them to (but we have to try anyway). We do them until we see them fail, then we stop, and try something new. We fail, pay the consequences, grow from the experience, deciding not to step on that mousetrap again, then we move on to the next trap hoping (in spite of all the odds) fora day when we've figured it all out.

Now isn't that idiotic?

"Don't be discouraged by a failure. It can be a positive experience. Failure is, in a sense, the highway to success, inasmuch as every discovery of what is false leads us to seek earnestly after what is true, and every fresh experience points out some form of error which we shall afterwards carefully avoid."
~John Keates

"[The young poet] should stay the hell out of writing classes and find out what's happening around the corner. And bad luck for the young poet would be a rich father, an early marriage, an early success or the ability to do anything very well."
~ Charles Bukowski

A New Era

It is crazy and more than a little depressing for me to realize that I checked out of PPD 30 days ago. I have now been out two-thirds of the time that I spent trapped inside, and I have to say that the time outside has flown far far faster than life in the slammer. This is not surprising in the slightest, but looking at the future through an inmate's pace of life led me to establish unrealistic expectations for the month of August.

Given the discrepency between what I wanted and what was, in fact, possible, I guess I actually held to my goals closer than might have been expected. Maria, a friend from my days at Macaroni Grill, was one of the first people to say she wanted to hang out after I got out of PPD, but we only spent time together this past Tuesday, because I have simply had so few free evenings.

For the first week after I got out, I continued my morning ritual that I had wanted to keep up out of PPD, and it was as wonderful as I expected it to me. I got up earlier than I had to, and, after a brief morning run, I walked down to Clementine's where I bought a paper, a bowl of oatmeal, and a cup of coffee, then read the paper and completed the crossword before walking back to my apartment to begin my day in earnest. However, the surprising part is that this two-hour routine held up as long as it did. I think it was the first truly late night out that did me in (3 or 4 in the morning).

Now, here I am, a month later, and I don't know really where the past month has gone. Of course, Sara, my sister, and I went to the Grand Canyon and spent three days hiking to the bottom and back up, which was awesome, but not exactly for the obvious reasons. (More on that later, maybe.)

I remember being extremely unhappy at one point on the drive back from Flagstaff to Austin, thinking, "Why did I just do that if nothing ends up being any different?" I realized that if I just did it for fun, there are many things that would have been funner (in the classic sense of the word). Things like shooting myself in the foot. And I was desperately afraid that after a few days of refining fire, I turned out to be only made of iron after all, and rust was already setting in. It's hard to explain my frustration on that point, so I'll quit trying. Of course, as I explained the trip to friends, I began to realize that it had been a good thing, and more than just entertainment. I turned out to be stronger in ways I never knew and weaker in ways I have always known, but chosen to ignore.

In the end, my relationships with Sara and Katie will be stronger than our squabbles and differences, even if we ended the trip a little more distant than when we started it. I realized that I am a man and remembered that I am still a boy and that will end up being a good thing.

But I've had the same fear about my time in PPD. "Why did I just do that if nothing ends up being different?" If I did it for the money, then I now have no cash to show for my efforts; several bills and debts and a car later and I'm basically where I started. I must have done it for the experience itself - I said so all along - but if a month after checking out, life, and my outlook on it, seems little different than when I checked in, why did I waste 42 precious days of my life?

I cut off my hair a couple of days ago, and saw someone in the mirror that I didn't know. I assumed it must have been me, because I didn't recognize him while everyone else seemed to know him quite well, saying simply, "Whoah, nice haircut," instead of "Who is this strange-looking man before me?" as I said to myself.

I realized in that moment that I am not a child. I saw it, maybe for the first time ever. I saw it in my eyes. As I looked at a face that I wasn't familiar with, nearly hairless, not yet my own, I saw it from a few feet further away then I normally do, and I realized that it was not the face of a boy.

I saw time in my eyes. Pain and exhaustion and joy and peace all existed simultaneously in these orbs that I was slowly realizing were my own. I saw too much worry and brief moments of faith that made it all okay. I saw the energy and excitement of youth (which I hope I am a long way from losing) tempered by the lack of innocence that experience inevitably causes.

And looking at myself, I realized that I really am on a journey, and I am a long way from where I was ten years ago or one year ago or even six months ago, but I'm also an incredibly long way from where I am headed, which - to steal a zen buddhist idea - is nowhere. I am still traveling to nowhere.

So I decided to keep blogging! Because it helps me to write and to imagine that someone is reading. Because I'm not the only one journeying (in fact, we all are). Because I still have to say something. So I'm back on the site. I think I'll try to post about once a week.

Let the race begin!

Day 43 - The Last Post

I am free today. Crazy. It really is crazy. Have you ever heard stories about people who grow up living in the jungles where the trees are so close together you can't see more than 10 feet away from you? Have you heard the story about the ones who come out of the jungle and stand on the savanna where you can see all the way to the horizon? Those people find it impossible to make their eyes see that far. They can't judge distance at all. The beetle on a branch 4 feet away and the elephant 4 miles away are the same size, so - to the jungle-dweller who never learned perspective - they must be the same size and the same distance away from him. I've heard of someone who spent a year in the jungle in the Peace Corp. Just a year. But when he came out, even though he knew from growing up about perspective and vast savannas, his eyes physically found it difficult to process great distances. Focusing on distant objects was difficult for a few days, because his eyes were so used to everything being very very near.

Well, PPD wasn't quite like a jungle where one could only see ten feet, and I was there for (comparatively) very little time, but I was surprised today to find that, in some small way, I could identify with that difficulty with perspective like the jungle-dwellers in the savanna. Driving from my parents' house to the bank, I couldn't concentrate for a few minutes on the cars in front of me! The curb would be in focus or something lying on the dashboard while the objects I was actually staring at, the ones moving quickly, were blurry, like they were in the background. A few times, the part of the scene in focus bounced around, like my brain was trying to figure out what of the myriad things around me was important enough to focus on and couldn't decide on one value.

I would hardly call this physiological as much as psychological: I was just overjoyed to be in the great big world and uninterested in the intense focus required while driving. However, the sense that the world is actually very very enormous was definitely awe-inspiring. To see down a straight road until the hill's horizon, to see clouds before me larger than mountains, to see the river, sharper than the most expensive TV... All this forced itself on my scattered attention, impressing on me the immense and amazing nature of our world.

Eventually, this too became normal, and I was able to focus more easily on the traffic around me, zooming in on the things that "mattered". That's safer, I guess, but if there ever were an "oceanic feeling" of being part of something much much bigger than the material and human and mundane world, it was in that moment of realizing how much bigger our material world is than we mundane humans ever give it credit for. It's probably a good thing that the feeling would fade, because it's not a bad thing to know that the world is bigger and more important than I perceive it right now to be. To remember a time when everything was grander. If I did not come out of it, I might think that I finally understood nature and mankind, but even then, it would be a long way from true. I would be in the same place as I had been in before: sure of myself and my relation to the world. But I know that the world is bigger than I think it is, because I remember perceiving it as bigger than I think it is, so I know that there's a good chance it (and therefore me, as part of the living ocean of spirit) is even bigger than that experience of grandeur.

While he was driving me home from PPD, I told my dad that I felt a little bit like the people coming out of Plato's cave, sensing a big world full of light and colors and more than shadows. It was sort of a joke, but also how I felt. By the evening, I had fallen back into normal life. But then it is the job of Plato's cave-dwellers - the ones who find the light - to come back into the cave and try to explain the light to those still trapped.

I fervently believe that the real world, the world of perceivable material and invisible spirit, is to the world which I perceive as the small world of PPD is to the outside world. If not larger.

And now I am done! I'm tired. I am in my own apartment about to sleep on my own bed. I could talk a little bit more about what the past 42 days have meant to me, but I won't. I can say easily that it meant more to me than money. I'm not sure how to express exactly what I have gained from 42 days of separation and near isolation, but it is certainly more than a paycheck. And now, I have to become normal again. Or something like it. I have to go through six weeks of piled mail. Pay bills. Try to save my nearly dead lily. Because that's life. And I kind of like it.

Whoever you are, if you have been following my daily posts for the whole of my study, thank you very much. I've never been very sure who - if anyone - was reading, so I tried as often as possible to act as though this blog would be read by no one except me but could be read by anyone with a computer. I appreciate you hanging in there with me through the lonely days and judgmental days and exciting days. I'm eager to see you soon and talk to you face to face, in person. If you've been reading, call me up or send me and email and let me know!

Take it easy, friends.

Day 42

Last Night!

Yes, yes, this is my last night in PPD... until my next study anyway. The hours have crawled more than I hoped they would, but the day is, in fact, almost over, and I will soon breathe air again.

So here's the rest of my schedule with PPD:
6:29 pm - Dinner
9:24 pm - Blood draw
20:29 pm - Snack
1:24 am - Blood draw
8:54 am - Feel check
9:04 am - 3 minute sit
9:07 am - Vital signs
9:24 am - Blood draw
10:54 am - Urine collection
11:04 am - 5-minute supine
11:09 am - 12 lead ECG
11:24 am - Blood draw
11:39 am - Physical
11:45 am - Collect subject's weight
11:46 am - Exit search
12:00 pm - Check out

So there's that.

I somehow managed to get into my first real religious argument in 42 days on today, the forty-second day. And then there was a second one an hour later. I'm not sure argument is the right word, because arguments require two people, but it was definitely a discussion I had wanted to avoid. Oh well though, it wasn't entirely a bad thing.

I was sitting there with a guy who very strongly anti-religion. He and I have talked about religion several times, and I have strongly held the opinion that religion can definitely be dangerous because it is often misused and misunderstood, but that I didn't think that made the whole thing "evil". However, because of the guy's personality, I had felt it would be better not to make the argument too personal, so I had never admitted to having any faith of my own and he never asked. The argument never got anywhere because his grudge is neither personal enough to be sympathized with or intellectual enough to be argued against. Just... acquired, picked up along the way, and never doubted.

I'm playing a board game with that guy when another guy, who I haven't talked to very much, walks up and randomly asks, "Seth, do you believe in God?" Now, the people who I do talk to regularly (neither of the two I was with at the time) do know my beliefs a little. They know my father is a pastor (which I have found to be the easiest route into a talk on faith because so much of my story is then assumed, and largely right) and when they asked what denomination of Christian I claim to be I told them: "Just Christian." Response: "So, non-denominational?" Me: "Eh, if you have to put me somewhere, maybe. I prefer the term a-denominational. Or all-denominational." response: "Protestant?" me: "Mostly." Those conversations have always been pretty open-minded and cool.

But this guy today, without any larger context in which to discuss faith, asks me if I believe in God. So, I look him in the eye and say: "Yes, I do." Then he asks, "Do you believe Jesus died on the cross to save us from our sins?" This is where I may have made a mistake. I'm not sure. I answered, "I believe Jesus died on the cross." He answers, "But you don't believe he died to save us from our sins?" I answered truthfully, "Levonte, I don't know why Jesus died on the cross exactly. It's very confusing to me, and I don't think anyone actually has a clear idea of why he died. I kind of think his death wasn't nearly significant as his life or resurrection." Anyway, things kind of degenerated from there. As soon as I realized that he was offended by this statement, I was quick to explain that the fact is that I don't know the truth any better than he does, so he could definitely be right and I could be wrong, but that I didn't think the why matters as much as the result. There was at this point a crowd of people standing around listening to the argument, but not joining in. They were more okay with my answers than Levonte was. Eventually, Levonte walked off, unsatisfied, and looking a little betrayed, I think. I was sorry to see that.

Immediately, several of the more anti-religious people in the audience, including the guy I mentioned earlier, started bad-mouthing Levonte and explaining that he was an example of the problem with religion, that his blind adherence to doctrine was idiocy and blah blah blah. I kept defending him, saying that his faith is simple, maybe immature, but that Levonte is still a young guy and he has a passion and drive that I admire. I said that his faith means a lot to him and they should take it seriously for his sake, even if they don't believe it. Eventually, as they got further down the path of religion-bashing, I just said, "Look guys, I believe almost everything that Levonte does, and we probably agree on everything that really matters. When you talk about his belief, you're talking about my belief." This shut them up, and there weren't even - I think - any hard feelings. If anything, they seemed maybe impressed by my resolve. I dunno; I'm not interested in proselytizing or making them like me.

Anyway, maybe two hours later, over lunch, someone started it up on evolution with a guy in here who he knew didn't believe in evolution. Actually, the conversation started over something Tito said about how some seeds can fertilize and grow into plants in your stomach, which everyone disagreed with completely and then he said that cockroach eggs can hatch in your body and kill you. Everyone thought that was ridiculous too, and he eventually claimed that it was science that he had seen for himself on some tv show, and all we had to do was go find the science ourselves. Then Wallace launched into Tito, saying that how could Tito (who doesn't believe in evolution) believe in one part of science and not in another. They all went at it for a while. I was sitting right across from Wallace, and I told him it had not been right to bring that up in this setting, that he was just stirring trouble. After a few minutes, Tito left, and Wallace stirred it up again! Asking everyone, "I was right, wasn't I? How could he?" And once again I found myself defending someone I didn't agree with. I said that Tito wasn't stupid or illogical, just misinformed. He had never really been taught, probably, the overwhelming evidence for evolution, and people - probably his parents - told him that it was just a theory. I told them that they were right: it is just a theory. It's a good theory that observation backs up, and that I believe it, but that they should all understand that they could all be wrong, and maybe Tito was closer to right than any of us. I said that a lot of men much smarter than me believed for a long time that the earth was the center of the universe because that is what they observed. I also argued that Tito had been taught that he had to either choose religion or science, faith or reason, and never both. That if evolution was right, that the whole Bible would crumble, and his faith would be meaningless. One guy nodded his head and talked about long-earth creationism.

After a few minutes, the talk turns from evolution and religion to the real heart of the matter, which was the ways in which several guys had been hurt by the church. One guy said that his mother was kicked out of the Catholic church because her parents divorced then she was kicked out of the Methodist church because she was hanging out with a married man that she didn't was married. Guilty by association, he called it.

At this point, I had to leave anyway, for a blood draw, so I just said. "Man, that sucks. I'm sorry about that. It's crazy how many people from the men who flew the plane into the World Trade Center to the people in those churches really don't get the whole point of their religion, what's in their book. Really sad." Then I had to go.

I guess I'm glad these conversations happened. I'm glad they happened on the last day, because I've never wanted to be defined by what I believe as much as by how I believe it. While I wouldn't lie about my beliefs or hide them, if my 'christian' label makes it hard for someone to hear me, I'd rather talk to them as just co-people discussing something that matters to us both, because that's what we are. Just two people.

Whew... 16 hours left!

Day 41

Well, tonight was The Last Supper. Not the last supper but The Last Supper. We eat tomorrow night, of course, but today is the last normal day, and there was a definite sense of things winding down and ending over dinner. A lot of laughter, and I wasn't the only one to hang around the table until long after I had finished eating. And, as Tai put it, "Boys, it's been real. And it's been fun. But it hasn't been real fun." Another round of laughter.

Tomorrow is a Kinetics Day, which means lots of blood draws. The consensus is that tomorrow will fly by pretty fast, because we are kept relatively busy. That's why today, the last of our once seemingly-endlessly monotonous days, has seemed a bit like our last day in here.

The downside, of course, is that I don't get to leave when I wake up, but have another day. Still, it should go by pretty quickly.

I spent most of my day today writing a story. I guess I wrote and rewrote about 6 pages before giving up in disgust. The file is still on my computer, in my "incomplete projects" folder, but I doubt I touch it again. I wish I could explain to myself what is missing from the story that made it so inflexible until I gave up, but I can't. I am in a little bit of a funk right now, writing-wise: I feel pretentious messing with poetry and can't find a natural rhythm but when I try to write prose, words seem inflexible, cold, and lifeless. If that makes any sense. I'm really hoping that it comes from being in here. In fact, today was the first day since shortly after I came to PPD that I had even a sense for writing something, and it was while I was feeling how close freedom is. I think (and hope) that the sterile monotony of this place stifles any creative impulses in me. Which is sort of a shame, because I had hoped that having 40 days with nothing to do would be a perfect dedicated time for writing. As long as I am able to write, which is an act of creation that I really enjoy, when I get out, I'm okay with it.

The past six weeks have served a different purpose than writing.

And now? And now I think I will... I dunno... read a book or something. See if I can will myself to concentrate on it.

Day 40

So the chess champ that I thought yesterday I could beat? Yeah.. no. We played two games, and the second was much closer than the first. I think with a few more games, I could beat him, but for now I am defeated. I'm playing with someone else in a few minutes, as soon as he finishes his dinner.

This afternoon, it was remarkably difficult to concentrate. I was trying to read, but my mind would be anywhere except in the book. Well, not anywhere. Specifically, my mind was on stuck in Wednesday. Next Wednesday. I am a flitting bee trapped in a mammoth's frozen body, sensing the signs of global warming and freedom. Haha... whatever that means.

I want to smell a campfire. In fact, in my dreams, I keep smelling a campfire. But then, my dreams have been weird lately. I can't often exactly remember them, so I can't describe them, but the fact that I am dreaming consistently (and remembering that I am dreaming) is unusual enough. When I do remember the dreams, they're highly emotional dreams about the absolutely most mundane things possible. A nightmare where I find out that I forgot to pay a bill. Every night for a week, I have dreamed about the day I get out, and it's never actually a good dream. Something always goes wrong. They decide I have to stay an extra month. Or I go straight from here to waiting tables at Macaroni Grill and have a generally miserable shift. Or I walk out of here and no one picks me up, so I wander Austin aimlessly for hours and hours. Like I said weird... in a completely everyday kind of way.

I don't think I've slept very well a single night I've been in here, but it's getting worse. I woke up at 4 this morning (after going to bed at midnight) and didn't ever really fall asleep again until I gave up at 9. The funny thing is though that I'm not tired either. I used to take an afternoon nap religiously to pass the time, but I don't anymore, because I can't fall asleep. There's only so much lazing around a body can do.

All good though. Restless nights and weird dreams and all, I still like going to bed. I drift in and out of sleep thinking, "When I get up, I'll be one day closer to the last day." So all's good.

Day 39

So I won a game of poker today, and I have to admit that I am proud of myself for that. This is the first game I can think of that I won completely by skill (instead of luck) against people who play poker a lot and well. I exercised patience and folded most of my hands. I bit the bullet when I had to and let go of hands that I wanted to win. I bought the pot when I could tell they wanted an excuse to leave. I bullied when I had to, and after big wins, when I would normally get impatient and start throwing money around, I kept playing as cautiously as I did at the beginning. Normally I get one big win and then I go all in on the next marginally good hand, sure of my luck, and lose everything. Patience has never been a virtue I've excelled at, but PPD teaches patience pretty well.

Anyway, I played hard because the prize was a DVD I wanted, which I won. So I spent the afternoon watching all three and a half hours of The Godfather, Part II.

So between poker and the movie and a little bit of reading this morning, my day went by pretty fast.

The took us on a walk this evening, which was nice. I saw the moon - kissing the horizon - for the first time in 39 days. Now, I've promised someone I would play him at chess. He's the ruling champion right now, and I think I might be able to beat him. After that, it's Risk!

You stay classy, Austin!

Day 38

Plenty of drama today. The guy I mentioned a week or so ago who got docked almost a thousand dollars for being late was kicked out today. With 4 days left. The rumor is that he continued to consistently be late, gave a lot of lip, and got in trouble for talking on the phone last night after lights-out, which he has gotten in trouble for before. Poor idiot. Anyway, so... he was yanked out of bed this morning and a couple of the larger, more masculine techs held the door to his room open and watched him pack, then escorted him out of the facility. He emailed someone today to say that he was paid $2 a night for the past 37 nights, which is PPD's worst punishment. He was a little lucky that we had already been given one check for $2500, because - even though he won't get any more money - that's still much more than the $2/night that they want to pay him. So, 4 days left out of 42, the guy gets 2500 dollars.

They also kicked out someone in the redshirts for being late, and I hear they kicked out 3 teal shirts (who are in a different wing than us, but we can see them through the one window that connects their wing to ours), also for being late. I guess they're cracking down. I think that may be the fault of the guy in our study. He was throwing fits and met with the "Subject Advocate" to complain that the docking system is unethical. I have a feeling he stirred the fire a bit.

Also, the guy I mentioned a while back - the one who has a wife with two kids and a girlfriend who he loves - has been fooling around with this girl in here for the past three days or so in ways that should get him kicked out of the study. Probably would get him banned from future studies, but I'm definitely not going to interfere there. Anyway, it doesn't matter now, because that girl left her study today. The guy and the girl were both chastised and docked for being too close physically and messing around in public, etc. Apparently someone in another study who knew of the misbehavior (everyone knows of the misbehavior) was also threatening the girl, threatening to report her, so the girl just left the study.

The girl is exactly the kind of woman every father should warn every son against as strongly as possible. The man is the kind of man every father should warn every daughter against as strongly as possible.

Too much drama, my friends. Way too much drama. All's good though. I'm not getting paid $2 a night. I'm a few days from freedom.

Day 37

You know, some days seem to be so filled. Like yesterday, it was as if the day was one long movie, as I read one long book. Which, by the way, was excellent. Today, I did more individual things, but it seems like I accomplished so little! A couple hours here and a couple hours there and then I'm sitting at the end of the day, dinner is over, and I'm wondering where my day went.

I spent the morning reading the second half of Genesis, finishing just before lunch. After lunch, I listened to more of "The Great Transformation". I actually took notes while listening, because - as interesting as I find the material - I have found it nearly impossible to stay focused, and have grown increasingly lost in all the names and terminology. So I have about 10 pages of notes from about three hours of book-listening. Somewhere in the middle of that, I took an hour and a half nap.

I guess it's a good thing that these last few days are speeding by so quickly, but I hate to end this little sojourn with a feeling of incompleteness. Then again, maybe that's the best way to leave my isolation. I think Confucius was right: spiritual growth is only possible in community, when altruism is possible. "How can one serve the gods until one can serve mankind? How can one know of the dead until one knows of the living?" So maybe walking out of PPD with a stack of books left to read and a million concepts I wish I understood better is not only inevitable, but completely desirable. Hmm...

I have to say that I'm hardly in a condition of isolation now, but this is nothing like community. I made one guy mad at me this morning by insisting that he's being a conspiracy theorist to think that the authorities here at PPD are intentionally lying to us for no obvious reason. Another guy has been hounding me with "an incredible cash making opportunity" and I don't have the heart to tell him to leave me alone, so I try to avoid him when I can. Speaking of him, I told him i would look at his online presentation tonight and tell him what I think. Once I look at it, I'll tell him I'm not interested.

Speaking of the guy who got mad at me this morning... he is ridiculously on edge these days. He's not the only one, but he's definitely exemplary. While we were standing in line to dose this morning, we had the little argument described above, where I and another guy both wanted to know why PPD would lie to us, and the first guy yelled at me right as I walked into the dosing room.

While I was in there, someone ran in and used the phone to call Kelly, our coordinator, saying "Can you get down here? Just come now. We've got a big situation with T-F," which is the man previously described (as if I didn't know his initials by this point). I was sure he had his someone and was about to get sent home. After I dosed, I saw Kelly and T-F and a paramedic go into a room and shut the door.

Turns out after I left, the paramedic came out and told everyone to quiet down, and the other guys nodded and said "we're cool, we're cool," but our friend got up in his face and told the paramedic to chill and stay out of it.

The guys who told me this story were laughing about it, but agreed to all be somewhere else by the time T-F came out. So I don't know what ended up happening in the room with the paramedic, and I don't intend to find out.

Besides that little explosion today, everyone has been pretty cool, but not out of camaraderie, but rather a sense that everyone's nerves are a bit on edge, and you don't know who might snap next. Everyone walks on eggshells. Oh, I forgot about another funny incident. Nothing really except that over lunch one guy passionately certain that beef is a meat that absolutely cannot - for health reasons - be served less than completely brown, and some of us were passionately certain that he had no idea what he was talking about and often says things he knows nothing about. Nothing happened there, because everyone silently realized we were arguing about the doneness of meat and we shut up. There was no laughing at the ridiculous nature of the argument though.

Disagreements between the picky eaters and the ones who are tired of hearing from the picky eaters are fairly easily settled by just saying, "well, you know, you don't have to eat a hamburger here after this meal." Which is true: every meal we eat is our last time for that meal."

Standard hallway greeting:
"What's up, Joe?"
"5 days, Seth."
"5 days."

So, in the name PPD, I bid you 5 days!

Day 36

I spent almost the entire day reading Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows and I have about two hundred pages left. Since I started reading it this morning and it's over 750 pages long, I think that's good. I was never one to revel in an ice cream cone or a book, but suck it down whole, reveling in the speed with which that pleasure became only a memory. I read the 1st through 3rd Harry Potter books in one overnight session.

I wasn't actually planning on reading this book, honestly. I didn't read the 6th book, and as I have read this one, I don't think I ever finished reading the 5th book either. However, my dad was kind enough to surprise me with it during visitation on Saturday. So last night, I found book notes for the 6th book to get caught up and plunged into the 7th book this morning. Even then, I had to find the "Harry Potter Lingo" website and refer many times to it for forgotten creatures, curses, and people.

Considering the pile of books in my room and on my iPod, I don't regret my avoidance of Harry Potter, even though I have very much enjoyed the book so far. I think the problem is that Harry Potter is best read at a dead sprint without stopping for anything except breath and food (when necessary). I guess that's what makes it good children's literature: it instills a love of reading. An addiction to literature. A complete NEED to keep flipping the pages, waiting to see what will happen next. When you're a kid, and it's summer, Harry Potter is the kind of book that offers a compelling argument that TV is not the best form of entertainment.

However, if you're not young and it's not summer, Harry Potter is a little daunting! This is my experience at least. I read the first three books in one go. I read the fourth in a few long evenings, between homework and everything else. I may have had a job at that point; I don't remember. It was definitely worth it, but it was exhausting to be swept up in something that stands in complete contrast to things like responsibilities. (Which is not to say that the imaginary doesn't matter.)

By the fifth book, my schedule was even more packed, and the book was substantially thicker, and so I started it, but an hour here and an hour there is not really enough to get into it and stay in it, so I didn't finish the book! The 6th book was even thicker than the fifth, so I just shrugged and kept thinking I would read it next time I had a couple of days with nothing to do and nothing better to read. Which, of course, never happens. Before the 7th book came out, I assumed it would be even thicker than the 6th (which I think was right) and figured I wouldn't read it.

Well, I did get a few days with nothing else to do (42 days, to be precise), and I got a copy of the 7th book, and now, after 12 solid hours of reading, I have to say I am really enjoying this book! But if I wasn't in here, I don't think it would be very good.

And yet... I am the one who grew up with Harry Potter, who read the first books when the paper was still warm from the printer! The kids who made Harry Potter a celebrity are now in their late years in college or older. I wonder how many of them stood in line at midnight for a copy of this book? And if there were many, I wonder when they sat down and read the whole thing cover-to-cover... I wonder if it was unavoidable that the first Harry Potter fans would grow into muggles before Harry defeated Voldemort, grow into adults while their childhood symbol of evil is still alive, still undefeated.

I was 11 when the first Harry Potter came out.

Speaking of Harry defeating Voldemort, I still haven't finished the book, so possibly he doesn't...? I think I will go see if I can read 200 pages in the next 3 hours or so.

Day 35

Monday. July 23. 2007. Seth is 21.

I have a pounding headache that stretches down my neck and into my shoulders. I spent too much time today laying on my bed, on my back, listening to my iPod. Each thing that I do creates a different pain in excess. Too much typing created a pain in my wrists. Too much slouching in straight-backed chairs made my lower back hurt. And now I have laid on my head wrong and my neck is killing me.

There is little to say today. One week left. Tomorrow starts the last downhill stretch, which is exciting. Maybe I will have more to say tomorrow...

Day 34

Blues music, crossword puzzles, and the taste of marginally good food still in the mouth. Possibly, but this is good enough for me now.

So today I listened to several of the podcasts that I had fallen behind on: CarTalk and two episodes of Speaking of Faith. The first episode was called "The Ethics of Eating" and was an argument in favor of buying locally and only buying what's in season. Pretty interesting stuff. The second was the history of Abraham and his two sons in the three religions that claim Abraham as father. The speaker talked about the various explanations that the different groups give for Abraham's thwarted sacrifice of Isaac. I kind of wonder if the story could be viewed as a turning point in the development of the religion when Abraham assumed that Jehova wanted a human sacrifice of the first born son, since that was fairly common practice in the day, and had a revelation on the way to the mountain, and thought, "Wait a minute... this is stupid. God should be good," and decided that Jehova did not demand blood. Dunno, I didn't hear that interpretation. That the part where the Bible says that God told Abraham to sacrifice Isaac is wrong, because God didn't say that. Either way, it's still an important story because it shows the development of a good God who values morality over sacrifice. By the way, I'm kind of getting this out of The Great Transformation by Karen Armstrong. She never mentions the Abraham story, or hasn't at the point in the book where I am, but it is about the transition from tribal gods to gods of morality around the world.

I'm also about halfway through The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger, which has sucked me in. Definitely a fascinating book, and I can't make time for my other books (Like the Armstrong book) until I finish this one. I made myself stop and listen to a few podcasts because they looked interesting and they've sat untouched for a week now, and the next week's were starting to download.

Anyway, Sundays have typically been pretty lonely days, because I imagine my family and friends living it up together as is normal on Sundays, and feel left out. Today, however, went by pretty quickly and wasn't too bad. Part of that was probably that I went the first half of the day thinking that this is the last Sunday that I will be in here. It's not true; I have one more, but it was after lunch by the time I figured that out, but one more Sunday is still not that big a deal. The fact is that I have one more week of things being normal and dull, then next Monday is another kinetics day (lots of blood draws) which will fly by pretty fast, then we leave Tuesday!

I can taste it. But for now, I think I will try not to think about that too much, and focus on my crosswords. Speaking of which, I've decided that I want to get good at crossword puzzles. This is after watching the documentary, Word Play, about a crossword puzzlers, and the scenes of Bill Clinton and Jon Stewart and some songwriters doing crossword puzzles made me want to be that smart. I had the admittedly-judgmental thought while watching Clinton do a New York Times crossword: "I don't think our current president could do a crossword puzzle." So I would love to feel smarter than the president of the United States, so I'm doing crosswords these days to fill the time while I listen to my books or podcasts.

Day 33

My parents visited today, which was awesome. At the same time, it was a little hard to concentrate. Hard to make eye contact. Basically, it was hard to actually be there, in that room, in the present, because their presence had me imagining the future when we won't see each other across a table in a sterile room, but we can actually sit down and talk. And at the same time, that reminded me that - in fact - I was still in PPD, in my faded violet shirt and scrubs. We talked about the future, about when I get out, about the Renaissance School next year. It was good, and I'm glad they came, and I was definitely in a good mood when they left. I just... was distracted. Too much going on to stay focused on anything for more than 10 seconds. Maybe I'm just ADD.

Lets see, I also read If Grace is True today, which I'm still thinking about quite a bit. I won't write about it though.

At my request, my parents brought me a notebook. I think I can easily incapsulate my recent struggle over the source of beautiful writing (which I pursued by trying to figure out what made beautiful writing different from practical writing) by describing where I write stuff. For most of my college experience, most anything I have written "creatively" I have started in a spiral-bound notebook and eventually transfered to a computer to be finished and polished. By the way, when I say "creatively", I mean created with a hope for and intentional pursuit of beauty over functionality. Most of my stories and poems were written in the margins around lecture notes and my notebooks are always very messy. A few pages of lecture notes, a few pages of sketches and doodles, an incomplete story, a few pages of personal reflection about something that was bothering me at the time. Studying lecture notes for a test was as much a review of everything that had happened to me and mattered to me in the past semester as it was a review of the important information, because my class information was tough to separate from everything else that I wrote. And every time I studied I found a story idea or poem prompt that I liked.

In the past year or so, as I have become more serious about the intentionality of that creation, I've tried to move away from that messy setup. For one thing, I have always wanted to write a journal so that I can look back on it later and know what an idiot I was then and how much wiser I am now. I also like to write because the act of writing about my day seems to focus my thoughts excellently, but I wanted an actual journal I could save and refer back to, and my messy spiral notebooks were not the austere image I wanted to present to my future self. Not to mention the educational value of only taking notes when I should be taking notes, and only reviewing those notes when I should be reviewing those notes. Also, I wanted a place to write creatively, intentionally, putting aside my school and inner dramas and writing something separate.

So, I've had journals for years, mostly blank, gifts from someone who thought I should be writing, but in the past year, I started writing quite a bit in my spirals, and maybe 4 months ago, I picked up one of my old journals and have gradually tried to get in the habit of writing in that instead of in my spiral notebook. I also bought a little unlined notebook that says "The Poet's Notebook" on the front, which looked cool, so I bought it. Inside the front cover of the "Poet's Notebook" it says, "Carry this around with you everywhere. Never have it out of reach, so that when you have something to write, you can write it immediately. When you can't think of anything to write, go back through your Poet's Notebook and find something you started but couldn't finish at the time and see if it strikes you now."

I got to the point near the end of last semester when I would sit in class during the 10 minutes after I had sat down but before the professor would arrive with three, count them, three, notebooks in front of me. My spiral, my journal, and my poetry book. I would be writing in my journal, then jump over to my poetry book for a while before the professor walked in and I would switch to my spiral. Now besides looking ridiculous, that works pretty good sometimes. But most of the time, I open up my journal with the thought, "Right now, I am going to write journal stuff," but that stuff didn't really interest me at the time. Or, what happens even more, I open up my poetry book with the thought, "Right now, I am going to write something... pretty."

A week ago, I was talking on the phone, and someone was giving me phone numbers, so I clicked my pen to write. Then I looked back and forth between my poetry book and my journal (the only two books I brought with me into PPD) with a little bit of alarm, wondering where I should write down phone numbers! I ended up opening Microsoft Word on the computer and typing them there.

This is what happens inevitably. I quit writing poetry or journal because I'm not sure what fits into each category and end up getting on the computer, ideally to write, but actually to browse the internet, and whatever I might write doesn't actually come from me, flowing through my fingers. (Yes, I'm old-fashioned about pen and paper. More old-fashioned than my parents.)

So now, wonderfully, I have a thick spiral-bound notebook. And do you know what I'm going to do with it? Everything. It's going to be wonderful. When someone gives a number, I'm going to write it there. When I listen to audiobooks, I will doodle on the pages and write down words I hear that sound cool or I don't know. (I hate to admit that most of my college notes consist of words I hear that sound cool or I don't know.) If, while I am doodling, one of those cool-sounding new words lends itself easily to another word that pops into my head and something starts to form itself on the page, I will make space for it and see what happens. And this notebook will be butt-ugly: smeared and torn and ragged and completely unorganized.

I know I'm only 21, but maybe I'm already too old a dog to learn this new trick. I'm coming into my senior year at UT, I guess how I've taken notes - how I have interacted with the world around me - for the past three years is just going to have to work. Like I said earlier, maybe I'm just a little ADD. I have heard more than once that my notebooks look like the work of someone who doesn't concentrate all too well.

So, it's 9:17 now. I have an hour and twelve minutes until snack and then a little over an hour until bedtime. I think I'm going to go listen to an audiobook and doodle in my notebook.