Elegy for a Bad Hair Cut

Samson,

I really did love you.

Do you believe that?
I destroyed everything that was 'myself' before I could destroy you.
And then you were gone, and I thought, what would I have settled for to keep you by my side?
I was a prostitute Sam! What did you see in me? I didn't believe in your love - how could I? I had already seen too much of love.
When you kept lying to me I was happy, I thought maybe you'd keep it up. I wanted to stay with you forever, but I knew that I couldn't, so I had to leave first. I had to make the best deal I could, and look out for myself.
Can you understand that?
You had parents who loved you, a God who showed you favour, and you gave that up for me. I didn't appreciate that, I despised you for it.
I loved you for your nobility, and yet being with me annulled that. What I wanted most had already ruined you.
How could I keep living with you, knowing it was I who shackled you long before I turned you over to their chains?
And now I sit with a bag of silver and write letters to a blind man.
Tell me, Sam, who really won?

                                                                                           Delilah

esoteric

adjective
1 understood by a select few
2 language specific to a certain topic, jargon

Those are my own definitions, don't take them too seriously. I like to use technical terms metaphorically, like truncated, equilibrium, catalyst, etcetera. (not 'etcetera', etcetera, got it?)

Let me tell you about meeting 'esoteric'. I was in grade 11 at a sweet little country high school. It was either in the reading or in something my eccentric teacher said.
I said, "hello esoteric, where have you been all my life?" and I started applying the word and the concept to everything I saw.
Mr. Romachiauskias, or something like that, was the teacher's name. I don't remember because I called him Romo almost from the start. He was strange and indiscernible and offensive, because people didn't understand what I did, that it was all an act. He didn't care if people's feelings got hurt or he said something ambiguous or his students learned nothing at all. He didn't care because somewhere in his life he'd learned that it really doesn't matter what you say or do. The only effect you have is the perceived one. The one people make up in their heads and take home and file away. So he could have tried very hard to be understood, to be clear and precise and clinical in all that he said. But he chose to be esoteric. He chose to be the legend that students would talk about and shift up their time-table for. But no one knew him. He hid behind his crazy gags and strange methods and frustrating obliqueness. And even though I understood this, I didn't know him either. Knowing that something is a façade doesn't necessarily mean you know what's behind it. I liked to think he was totally normal at home. Well, perhaps not normal, but not purposefully obtuse.
What I learned from him is that good writers never spell out what they want people to learn. Their writings are the soil that they hide the seed of their thought in and what grows in the readers is the fruit. Sometimes their seeds grow different fruit than what they hoped for, but that's the risk of trying to be understood by other people.

Let's start with a quiz. Name the speaker in the following quotations:

1) "...he that breaks a thing to find out what it is has left the path of wisdom."
2)"...and choose to find by not finding rather than by finding fail to find you."
3)"If such a thing as spiteful benevolence existed (which is impossible, of course, but supposing it did), a genuinely and sincerely merciful person would wish others to be miserable so that he could show them mercy!"
4)"I'm four but I'm just little!"

Good luck. winner gets my respect.

I've been reading Augustine and thinking how little the world has changed in 1700 years. And I've been reading Orson Scott Card and thinking how much more realistic characters are when they are flawed and insecure and prejudiced.

I said a really arrogant thing the other day in a conversation and immediately I wanted to take it back, but in my pride I didn't want to contradict myself so I left it. And now this person who doesn't really know me has the data of my arrogance on which to base their judgement of my character, which is upsetting, but doesn't that just show how proud I am, that I wish to appear humble?

voir dire

I respect creativity so much in others because I possess it in no great measure myself. People often call me creative, thinking it synonymous with artistic or because I create things. But it would be more accurate to say that I copy, or recreate.
People who can write books or plays, or invent new tools, or come up with another way of doing things - even they are not truly creative, because it's probably been done before, but they don't know of the previous creation, so for them it is new. These people impress us and inspire us.
God is creative. He can use any materials and circumstances to make whatever he wants. He's never surprised or at a loss of what to do. Now that is impressive.

I'm glad I had no sisters growing up (I'm okay with having them now).

This was supposed to be a bit more focused on me.

debris

huge squash

mushy

LOTS of soup.

very disappointing, didn't taste like my mom's.

Legumocentric

Definition: a theory where the centre of the universe is a bean, compare heliocentric, geocentric.

Leguminotes: the followers of aforementioned theory. Also the children of said bean.

Purgatory?

A balding man mops up yellow liquid with insufficient tissue...
An elderly woman needing to get to the hospital is 2 hours late for her bus...
3 teens straighten their hair at a public outlet and discuss club life in Kingston.

Someone once told me that there is only ever one attractive person on a greyhound bus. I don't think the ratio of attractive to unattractive is so extreme in total, but in this cross section it is. I should have remembered sitting for 7 hours in the middle night next to a paranoid junkie, but then I thought, it couldn't ever be that bad again, could it?

Sups in the scriptures

Old Testament

Joseph and Asenath

New Testament

Zechariah and Elizabeth

Joseph and Mary

Prisca and Aquila

Just a bit of rhetoric

I was thinking back to when I was four or five, learning to read and looking in the library for books. I hated kids books pretty early, I would head for the chapter books. There was one I remember always going back to look at. It had perfect pink satin ballet shoes on the spine, and on the front a beautiful ballerina. I was certain that the illegible text revealed untold mysteries, as beautiful and entrancing as the cover illustration. Mom wouldn't let me get it for a while, but eventually, whether it was years later or what I don't remember, I got that book home. I remember starting to read it, and learning the painful lesson, Never judge a book by its cover. It was a trite tale of a teenager who was trying to balance school, boys and ballet. I soon closed the book on my deep disappointments.
There were other books that I loved though, authors that I craved for their stories, Korman, Lewis and later Rowling. But it was not until long after that that early awakened fascination for beauty in literary form found satisfaction. The first taste was when a friend lent me Dorian Gray and I discovered a book that was not made to tell a story, nor was it allegorical, but was basically a treatise on the purpose of art, beauty and the soul. And thus began my addiction to dead authors, which I scarcely stray from. I think the book that most expressed the beauty I'd been looking for was Anna Karenina. I've described it as a solid, many coursed meal of a book. And my love of Tolkien's Middle Earth can be tied to this as well. He was motivated by  "the desire of the tale-teller to try his hand at a really long story that would hold the attention of readers, amuse them, delight them, and at times maybe excite them or deeply move them." (Tolkien, Foreword to the Second Edition) Certainly in my case he has achieved all those goals. But the real thing I love about him and others, the thing that typifies this longing for beauty, is found in the author's ability to use words in a way that is so complete and deft that it leaves me thinking differently. And that is the purpose of art - is it not? - to impact a person on an emotional level.
I don't know, I'll ask Oscar Wilde.
"All art is quite useless." Oscar Wilde, Foreword to Dorian Gray

Anatomy of a Flying Bed Story

Characters: the children that the story is being presented to are the key characters. you may bring fictional or real world people into the story for comedic and dramatic effect.
Take-off: The bed must first shake, then quiver, than rise a few inches off the ground and shoot through the window (without breaking the glass). Interesting details of the travel should be inserted while they fly (this gives you time to come up with a destination and a conflict).
Conflict: This must be dire and exciting, possibly stolen from a movie or book. The Conflict will result in heroic gestures and input from all key characters, and be concluded by an epic escape/defeat/reunion.
Denouement: The key characters return to the flying bed and go home. Each of them gets a souvenir to put into their flying-bed-adventure chest.

I finally have material for a post...

I started my new job today, and now I can call myself a seamstress in more than just an informal, cutsie-little-girl sense. It's actually my job title. I'm in shock that I'm getting paid to do this.
Not that it's all amazingly fun jobs, but the time flies by and everything is engaging and challenging and satisfying. I mostly did hems today and got familiar with the machines. The Wellington store is inhumanly hot, as it has all the dry-cleaning equipment, all the irons, all the employees... I burned my arm by leaning on superheated iron. Later I burned my ankle on a boiling-water-pipe. I'm glad that won't be my permanent location.

It's better 'cause it's real

            There was once a boy. He made some mistakes in his youth and thereafter was haunted by them; always measuring his accomplishments by his guilt and falling short. His mistakes were, to be honest, quite bad, but the forgiveness he had received was total. What he had done had put a stain on his conscience, and all the scrubbing in the world could not purge it.

            There was then, a lady. She was especially lovely. Her youthful mistakes consisted of some improprieties with boys. She succumbed to the herd instincts of high school-ers and made decisions she quickly regretted. Her mistakes were of a more common breed than the boy's, but she judged herself just as harshly.

            Both these youths had a time of repentance. His, a summer of unemployment, her's a year of boarding school. What he learned from this time was that his large intelligence and gregarious nature was a façade for a broken and filthy human being. His analytical mind became consumed with seeking out and eradicating his pride. Pride was the enemy, because the evidence showed his guilt, and anything denying that was folly. He was a better man for this, but he was also more cautious and more self-deprecating than was wholly necessary.

            Now the lady. Her boarding school time taught her that she could be the leader of herds and not just the follower. She had the skills and personality to teach and to lead, and (had she only known it sooner) the logic to see a better way. Unfortunately her dalliances had cost her. She knew she had caused many men pain because of her disinterest. She resolved to be more distant in the future. It was still years before she would be reunited with her heart. (You see, as a young girl her heart had been broken by pain that she could not comprehend. She dealt with it the only way she knew, which was suppression. Thus as a high school graduate she was so successful in her task that she didn't even know there was, or had ever been, this thing called "pain". She didn't know, and yet, she was constantly aware of it.)

            This is why, when they met, and the younger, handsome, outwardly-innocent boy fell for the unattainable beauty, she sat him down and said, "No."

            She felt he would be tainted by her impurity, that he would not have liked her had he known. Perhaps he knew he would be shot down and it was an exercise in humility. It was the first in a string of rejections for him, not the first for her (him being rejected and her doing the rejecting). He had what will one day be known as the "Destroyer Complex", that is, a methodology wherein the individual constantly sets themselves up to be ripped to shreds by the one on whom they have bestowed love.

            And so, after many years, while he was barking up many wrong trees, she began to feel again. She finally cried for the brother she had lost so many years before. Grief bubbled up from places she hadn't known existed. She came into her own then, she realized the potential she had to help others. But when does a great leader or helper stop leading and helping and let themselves be led and helped? Her consciousness of all the hearts she had broken humbled her. She tried to ask herself if she would have answered them differently if she had a do-over, and she tried to answer herself with "no." But I think she regretted one or two. Certainly at least one.

            This questioning and regret led to one important action. when our not-so-young, still quite handsome boy let loose his destroyer complex on her for a second time, she hesitated with her "no." She came up with lots of reasons why it was unreal, and it mightn't work and the logic was unsound. And yet she hesitated.

            In reality the great guy and girl rarely get together. Sometimes the good guy and girl do, often the bad guy and girl unite their inadequacies, But the Greats tend not to. People are like gems. The purest have been through fire, they have had all their ore chipped away quite painfully. If a jewel were animate, would it be grateful for the cleansing, or only embarrassed of it's previous state? Would it realize it's current beauty or only remember how it began? And would the hardest diamond believe that a pairing with malleable gold could be anything more than a dream?

          Apparently, yes.

favourites

What I like most about the concept of marriage - and this is purely theoretical - is the idea that someone would know another person enough to point out their failings, and love them enough to believe they could improve on those things.

C'est beau, n'est pas?

Nouns

These girls. Man oh man. When they hit their teens the detritus will hit the fan. Way, way too much beauty in one family. Maddie is looking down because she dropped her headband. This is right after an amazing sushi dinner. Makayla on the left is so intelligent and wise and I worry for how smart she will be. It will be hard for her to find intellectual peers, but she is so kind it won't bother her. Mackenzie has the flower in her hair. She is pure precocious, sweetness, great manipulation. Kalia, on the right, is the Steve. She is wonderful in lots of diverse ways, great singer. I told Makayla that I want my daughter to be like her, she had the funniest expression of shock and sweet flattery. I want my daughters to be like all of them. AMAZING FAMILY.

The guy below the deck is perfect. He is a handyman/construction guy. He probably was the single most effective person at the camp. He told great riddles. The guy above is George, he has basically built the lodge single-handedly.

This is the best person at the camp 

She is my kindred spirit. Our meeting and subsequent friendship were forged in such an intense environment that we will probably be connected forever. 

this is the lodge that has been under construction for the better part of 10 years. it's amazing, the inside is basically gutted, but it's getting there.

this is the left twin fall of the Twin Falls in Smithers.

this is archery. my best score was 48, so 3 bull's eyes and 2 in the next ring. One of my friends got 5 bull's eyes, the only one this summer.

(left to right) Hannah (who got the perfect score), Spiderman (Travis, but I can only call him his camp name), Chandra, Monster (i forget her first name. very talented manipulator), Kimberley, Malee, Taylor, Michael

these are my knees while laying on the trampoline.

this is the lake and floating dock. the lake was always worth a picture. gorgeous.

see?

this is in Telkwa, huge raging river. 

120,000 pennies

I'm at the airport in Smithers wondering how I'm going to get myself onto that plane. This place is so pure and unadulterated. I think the mountains will register when I get back to Ontario.

I have learned that travelling is amazing for showing how little I know. Every spot visited increases the unknown percentage. It is hard to realize the limits to my comprehension. But it humbles me and gives me joy that my Father wants me to know him.

I miss my mom and dad. I'm so excited to rehash everything with them and share a million stories. Most packed month of my life.

Anyways, my flight is leaving soon, and I just wanted to say, worth every penny.

A series of disturbing occurrences

This week was extremely discouraging. I allowed sickness and frustration to distract me and I had a bad time of it. It is so hard to allow yourself to care for the hurts of so many people. No human has the strength for that. I don't know what I expect from life, but I'm very selfish in my desires. I don't even have my own vision, but I don't want someone else's vision for me.
A guy fell full on his face last week and got a forehead full of gravel. 2 of my campers had lice. There was a bully beating up half the kids here. And then, at the end of the week I saw the toughest guys getting hugs, weeping, staying after chapel, and I thought, "who am I?" Who am I to think this is hopeless and useless and worthless? (Syntactical parallelism) Who I am gets sick and grumpy and frustrated and yells at kids? Who I am is not who is working here. I Am That I Am is running this camp, and he's got me here for the same reason he brought these kids here- to know him more. I'm finally writing and thinking truth as I write it down, I've just been wallowing all week. But I'm not sick anymore and I have a feeling that's why. Give me a cold and God stops being Lord in my life.

Awesome.

My mom doesn't like when people use "awesome" colloquially. She thinks it devalues the abundance of meaning it is imbued with. She is correct. Awesome. God is awesome. Nothing else is except what he does.
I told this to a girl last night, and a smile crept across her face, "I'll never think of it the same."

God is so awesome. I cannot comprehend the sequence of events that have been woven to bring me here. I am in awe. O that I would know the love that passes understanding. The paradox. The perfection of what is being sanctified.

O my God. O that you would make yourself known to the nations.

What I've been doing

 This is a mountain climbing expedition. I am photographing Kalia. Behind me are Kim and Hannah and to the right is Trish. The epic panorama is to the left...out of frame.

This is the idiot. I haven't had too much time to read but I think I'll really like it.

Purple

I see mountains when I close my eyes. Snow articulates the texture of their peaks. They stretch on in ranges for miles, farmland interspersed. Roads trace meandering lines through the farms, which sit above and below like crooked teeth on the goofy grin of the highway.

I think this is too flowery, but as I flew over this view I couldn't help but form comparisons that sound like a third grade assignment.

I'm tired. I feel less than useful. It is wonderful here, but they have a lot of people who know what they're doing. I feel like Anne, knowing that Marilla wanted a boy.

Just you wait

I'm going to be working on something big soon that will hopefully circulate.

British Columbia has been beautiful. It's hard to grasp the distance I've travelled or the size of things I'm seeing. It's humbling and awful (in its original definition). Canada is huge. To think most of my life has been spent in the population/culture bubble of the GTA while most of the people I'm meeting have never left northern BC makes me wonder how this country has stayed united. I'm seeing God's hand in this trip already. Stepping outside of one's chartered existence is monumental. So few people know anything of more than a couple cultures.
My mind's eye is sore from staring.
Pray that God is softening hearts.
Pray that the enemy would have absolutely no foothold. I want To see God unhindered.

How to make a wedding dress in 6-300 easy-difficult steps

design

 pattern test

 lining

 draping

 hand ruching

wedding dress

Parenting and why I have not yet achieved it

Ponder this: Imagine some man or woman, before becoming a parent, got on their knees before the Lord of Hosts and submitted everything. And continue imagining that they kept submitting, when it was hard, easy, painful, gleeful. They submit so much of themselves that they forgot a lot of their previous behaviour, remembered as a dream perhaps. If you charted the percentage of their decisions made by their own spirit compared with those made by the Spirit of God, their Spirit would rank below 50%. If that was too convoluted try this, God makes more decisions than they make for themselves. Ideally 100% of decisions would be made by God, but I'm trying to be realistic.
Now, in this imaginary world, two such people meet and fall in love, get married. They are fully honest with each other, their pasts are open and their futures are fused. Their humility is centred on their love for God and each other. In the natural course of time they have a child. They make mistakes. They laugh, cry, argue, cuddle, encourage, discipline and teach their child. They explain everything they've learned, to the best of their ability and the capacity of the child's progressing intellect. Can you imagine that it would be easier for their child to imitate their lifestyle, than for some of their peers? I really do, and I imagine it getting easier and easier each consecutive generation.

I'm realizing why I dislike pets (specifically dogs) through this. People want cuddly companionship, but not so difficult and time consuming as raising a child. And I`m glad they realize they`re not ready for children. But then they under-estimate how much money and work a ``simple`` pet dog is. Or they go to the other extreme and over-estimate the value of a dog`s life and elevate it above that of humans. There are some people that fill the centre of the pendulum-swing, I don`t know many of them (they probably all have kids in addition).

There are so many desires that wrestle with my love for God for the paramount position. This frustrates me in myself, but I try not to dwell on the frustration and instead focus on the means and the ends. Thought experiments like this remind me of what I most want: to glorify God, and to bless with every breath in me.

Extending the metaphor

Someone brought up the fact that some people can't throw the ring away on their own, but unlike Frodo they haven't put it on. They are standing at the precipice saying, ``I can`t ... I can`t ... I can`t...`` These people might not need to lose a finger. they just need the ring gently wrested from their unhappy grip.

How Lord of the Rings Can Be Related to Every Situation in Life: Part XVII

I was trying to describe the weight of temptation to some people and I came out with this analogy, which I'm sure has been considered before. When we watch or read Lord of the Rings we tend to think, Frodo is a bit of a twit, why doesn't he just huck the ring and be done with it? But I don't think it is possible for us to understand the allure of the ring. We read that it's evil and we say, "okay, Gimli axe it." But it is not easy to axe and it is not easy to drop. People don't really catch that Frodo would not have let go of the ring. He was turning to Sam and saying, "why should I?" He was intending to keep it. If Gollum hadn't bit off his finger and accidentally fallen the ring would never have been destroyed. And if it had been me instead of Frodo that was chosen as ring bearer I would have fared no better. I would have failed. Thank Illuvatar that Gollum bit off that festering finger.

algebra

      I just learned that there are studies that show that animals cling tighter/form stronger attachments when the one they love pushes them away or gives them unreliable affection. I think this is true for humans as well. Children abandoned by their parents want desperately to earn their love, while they may be in a loving environment, they prefer the uncertain love of their parents.
      My point is this: we are programmed to cling. If we cling to the wrong thing for the wrong reasons we will get shafted over and over. If we cling to a false god, it will be hard to direct that attachment to something else. The more uncertain the god, the tighter we cling, right? So if there where a God that was true, and certain, and pursued us instead of ignoring, it would not be our primary inclination to love him. We would find ourselves on the other side, pushing away a lover and having them hold on. I think this is why we have that tendency, and I think this is the solution.

If u is uncertain love and d is our desire for it, and if w represents us then an equation might look like:
w+u=d but if we add P (perfect love) to both sides
 P+w+u=d+P and them subtract our desire for imperfect love
 P+w+u-d=P
Therefore, Perfect love plus us plus imperfect love minus the desire for imperfect love equals Perfect love. OR Perfect love displaces the desire for imperfect love and creates in us the ability to love perfectly (though we still also love imperfectly) Thus the equation is balanced.

I worked at a greenhouse for a summer. It was a bunch of women that worked there, all different backgrounds and ages. One girl named Chelsea trained me. She had epilepsy. It started in high school, out of the blue, and once it started she had seizures almost daily for the next several years. I met her when she had been seizure-free for almost a year, having finally found some drugs that were effective with her particular ailment. She had just finished an undergrad, and from what I could piece together had just come out of a several year long relationship. She mentioned the ex a lot. It seemed they had stayed friends, which hadn't really worked, and she was pretty hurt by it. She was only 25, but I think she felt pressure being back in her parents house, working the job she'd done every summer through school and single to boot. Because of the epilepsy she couldn't get her license, couldn't even really ride a bike.
We got to know each other and I was proud to call her a friend. I made her a dress. She was one of my first paying clients. At our job we had to work every fourth Sunday packing herbs. There were some Mexican migrant workers who joined us on weekends, and among them two Irish men. (When the migrant workers first started we were told that none of them spoke English so we shouldn't talk to them. Imagine our surprise when we finally heard the two Irish guys speaking in their thick brogues. [the Mexicans spoke English fine for the record.]) So on one of these Sundays we were packing away, the two of us and the two Irish at a table, and to entertain I started telling a story. It was about David (one of the Irish guys) moving to New Zealand and meeting a down-on-her-luck farmer's daughter. She had golden ringlets and a very sad back story, but they fell in love and married. Chelsea told me later that they had all thought it was so obvious she was the girl in the story. It hadn't been intentional. Shortly afterwards Dave got the courage to ask her out. Their relationship was sweet and like a storybook. It was just what she needed to get over the ex. David was a precious guy. I never knew him too well, but I heard tidbits about how he cared for her, worried about her health, came by when she was ill just to be with her.
I lost touch after the summer we worked together. We would check in from time to time, but without that job we didn't have a lot in common. The last I heard she was going to Ireland with David to meet his family. I wouldn't be surprised if they were married by now.

I was just thinking about her today. I sometimes remember these amazing women, and some men, that have been in my life for a season. There are some incredible people I've had the blessing of crossing paths with. They've opened my eyes, educated me, humbled me, helped me mature. A girl at my current job just asked me the other day how I know people in so many countries. I said it just happens when you grow up. I said one day you'll be talking about the girl you know in some other country, and you'll be talking about me.

Ephesians 5

¹⁴ for anything that becomes visible is light. Therefore it says,

“Awake, O sleeper,
    and arise from the dead,
and Christ will shine on you.”

¹⁵ Look carefully then how you walk, not as unwise but as wise, ¹⁶ making the best use of the time, because the days are evil. ¹⁷ Therefore do not be foolish, but understand what the will of the Lord is.

I love this passage, but I've struggled with the phrasing and the application. I get excited, thinking, yes, I'd love to arise from the dead and have Christ's light shine and then live in this way... "Do not be foolish, but understand what the will of the Lord is." Then I get here and it's sort of a let-down. Just understand? If I don't understand how do I start to? This has been my block for the past few years, knowing this is pivotal and not being able to get past it. But just recently it has been revealed at least partly. He gives the practice in the previous verses: watch your walk, be wise, use time well. Therefore, when you act like this, you will be able to understand what the will of the Lord is.

Secondly, "the days are evil". this is the 'because' that leads to the 'therefore'. I think it has 2 reasons for the particular wording. We live in evil days, and some translations just write it that way because it seems simpler. I think the other aspect here is that the days are literally evil. and this is a little hazier, but I think time is a characteristic of the fallen world. So the days and the time is working against us as Christians, in the hands of the evil one. There is never enough time to study, to work, to see friends, so Sunday is for God, if that. In other translations it says "redeeming the time..." which is good because it makes the implication that time is not good in itself, it needs to be redeemed... because the days are evil. Therefore the will of the Lord is that you would walk carefully in his ways and redeem time, all time, every day, so that Christ will not only shine on you, but in you and through you, so that all that is darkness can be made light.

¹⁸ And do not get drunk with wine, for that is debauchery, but be filled with the Spirit, ¹⁹ addressing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody to the Lord with your heart, ²⁰ giving thanks always and for everything to God the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ,²¹ submitting to one another out of reverence for Christ.

Give thanks ALWAYS and for EVERYTHING?!! (emphasis added) that's a lot of the time and things to be thanking God for. I'm pretty sure that's all of both actually. Praise be to God.

I don't know if everyone experiences this and they just don't talk about it, but when I look at a person and talk to them, I am overwhelmed by grief for the pain in their souls. Take Alice for example, she is devastated because she's had a string of boyfriends- she's only 17- and none of them have wanted to stick around. So she's wondering what's wrong with her to make them all leave. Meanwhile, all her friends are "dating". They all seem happy. Thing is, they all feel the same way. Their looking at her thinking, boy is she lucky, 'cause all they can think is "when's this guy gonna leave me too?" And they are trying to find a way to make him stay, but they've already given him everything they have, so then maybe they use guilt and manipulation, and they are desperately unhappy but at least they're not single. Because two is better than one. Now Buddy over here's girlfriend is going crazy, and he doesn't know why, and the itch to leave is killing him, but he doesn't want to be like his dad. See his dad left too, and he wants to be different, but he doesn't know why his girl's acting like this, and there's another girl throwing herself at him, 'cause she's jealous of what that girl seems to have and she thinks he deserves better. She could be better for him, if only she could get his attention... I see all this pain when I look at Alice, and others, and just want to cry, and hug her and tell her she's worth more and there is more to life. And I want so, so badly to be right about that.

I was once in love. He was relatively tall, relatively blonde and completely perfect. He was quiet and it took him a long time to open up to me. He told me some of his dreams and hopes, likes and dislikes. We laughed together. He occupied 90% of my thoughts. He made me want to be better, to deserve him. It all ended like a car wreck, on a picturesque bridge. I told him I loved him, he told me he was sorry. and then he drove off into the sunset alone, in his absurdly cool car.

            I was on tenterhooks for a while. It took a very, very long time to recover. I had thought it wasn't possible for someone to feel as strongly as I did and the other person to feel nothing. Romantic love is dangerously over-rated. How long has it been popular for people to choose their own partner? maybe 2 centuries at the outside. What has it done for us? Adults are always explaining that the passion fades, yet the youth and the culture still want to believe in the happily ever after of love. Young, nubile humans are the least equipped to choose a life partner, and we are leaving it in their incapable hands, when all the evidence points to this being folly.

            Arranged marriages can be awful, but they often have more love 10 years in than that of their contemporaries. The fact is, when the expectation is set for love to last forever, the lovers will be constantly disappointed. When you start out in fear and with hopes but no expectations, you are probably not going to be taking anything for granted. You might even feel blessed for whatever good you can find in the person, and them in you.

            Besides, now we are having to invent new ways to match-make ourselves, bars and clubs, online dating, Christian youth conferences, etc. It's extremely difficult to meet someone of your age and interests, just going about daily life. And when one does meet someone, they are not in a environment or situation for their friends and family to effectively judge and weigh in on the couples compatibility. Most married people would admit that their parents and friends were better judges of their spouse in the dating phase. Yet it is frowned upon to try to share your feelings with the young fools. They have no idea what they're in for. They've been happily hanging out, making out, and fighting it out, and they think the next 50 years will go likewise. But dating is the most fake situation you can be in. Other than maybe LARPing. Do yourself a favour and let someone else pick your spouse for you. And honestly, ask your parents, or some adult you trust what they think about your relationship, because they probably have a more accurate picture of it than you.

stunters

I have been thinking about the human capacity for change. Humans live a dichotomous life, of both needing and embracing change, as well as hating and ignoring it, sometimes at the same time. It is necessary for us to make constant adjustments to our characters as we learn and age. Often we change our behaviour in some areas to allow ease to ourselves or others, or to disallow it. Occasionally, because we judge the change too great, we isolate ourselves from our consciences and make excuse to allow us to stay the same. We all know some extreme cases of these, their families are embarrassed of them, their colleagues laugh behind their hands, even strangers see the unease they feel. But they themselves live behind a shoddily constructed myth. They will often self-deprecatingly bring up the things people say about them, to show their condescension of that view. If they admitted what they are aware of, they would have to change everything. If we don't make the small changes in ourselves everyday, we will become a stunted person, a parody of personality, because personalities that don't change are just fiction, a person in a story is the only one that doesn't change.
This might be quite harsh, I'm actually inspired by a book character, so maybe I shouldn't be so hard on her for being immature.

28 weeks

After 8 months of singleness (I use singleness here in its more precise definition, of neither married nor seeking relationships) I have come to some realizations.
First, I no longer remember what it is to seek after that connection. I still remember what I did, and a shadow of how it felt, but the acute longing that forced me time and again to put my heart on the line is gone.
Second, when I think logically about why I would want to be in a relationship, beyond wanting a family of my own, I see that it offers very little. Having a boyfriend would make it no easier to deal with my B.B. Problem, nor would it add purpose to my mundane employment.
Thirdly, relationships are very messy and never a one was ideal. They are painful as any operation, though hopefully under the anaesthesia of endorphins and googly-eyes. At the same time knowing that bitterness, whether alone or married, can eat away at one's contentedness. Each person must think their marriage ideal, and work to make it so.
In conclusion I would like to say, if you had a year to live, would you spend it the way I would?

My point exactly.

I insinuated in "One last Tolstoy" that it would be the final post about Tolstoy. I apologize since that is not the case.
Last night I finally got up the courage to watch Anna Karenina, with my hopes as low as possible. I think that was a good choice, because I loved it. I will probably never watch it again (it's extremely depressing) but it was an excellent adaptation of the book. It captured Tolstoy's themes in an film almost entirely composed of dancing. It was made to look like a play, with some really bizarre scene changes, that helped the movie get in as much of the plot as possible.
It reminded me that nothing is ideal. Everyone has to live with their lots, or try to change like Anna, and get something worse than what they had originally.

A better way

Disclaimer: I didn't plan this I just started writing, I'll probably edit it later.

This is the most logical argument I can think of. Being a Christian won't make your life easy, or happy, or rich or satisfied. What it will do is make it better than it would have been without Jesus.
Happiness seems to be the goal for so many people. I try to think of something comparable to this, it's sort of like always wanting to be laughing, or be angry. Happiness is an emotion, and no emotion is always sustainable, or appropriate for that matter. I think what people mean when they say "happy" is content. Contentedness is not emotional. It is logical, and it is a choice, like love. (infatuation and attraction are emotional, true Love is a choice.) It is looking at whatever situation you are in and saying, "I can live with this." or, short of that, saying, "I cannot live like this, therefore I will do something to change these circumstances or my attitude so that I can."
Real Contentedness, like real Love, is not possible without Jesus. All the logic in Vulcan cannot explain some of the awful things in life. Sometimes it takes Jesus saying, "this is the best way" before we do something. and in hindsight it does turn out to be the best way. In true hindsight, when we are all dead, we will see our lives and say, "shoot, that would have been better." because none of us does what is right all the time.