ideas

ideas, stories

I’m convinced. Nothing convinces me like puking convinces me. Puking convinces me with absolute pure and immutable resolution bigger and more solid than a huge windowless brick building that life always has a base or even baser place waiting just one bad dinner away.

So here I am on my hands and knees on the floor over a half full pan, in that baser place. I think about how some boxers puke before weigh-ins, then next thing I know I’m remembering the club and how everybody talked about the legendary fast food runs that coach treats his fighters too after the weigh in, and this one time when someone’s like “ah man, I’d load up on double macs” and one of the assistant coaches is like “awwwwWWw MAN that stuff’s nasty, you gotta go B-K or the Bell,” which by the way is totally the truth. But that’s mostly aside of the point, except that this thought triggered another one, and in a moment, me on my knees over a pan, pathetically wheezing little breaths because for a reason I don’t understand puking jacks up the respiratory system, every single strategically placed subliminal message of McDonalds’ big and disgusting food came rushing into my nauseous head at once.

I puked again.

ideas, stories

Running down a mountain after the last gray light has begun to fade away, I see a firefly for the first time in my life and stop running, hold out my hand and it lands on my hand like it knows me, this little insect, absolutely nothing at all and at the same time the neatest little beautiful thing, walks on my finger then lifts up again lighting its own way off into the last bit of dimming light. Then they all came out and lit my way as I ran down the mountain.

Exquisite grammar is so far out of the field of question, even words just seem wrong.

ideas, stories

After running halfway up and then back down a mountain’s foothill in hot sun, showering and then eating beef stew exquisite grammar just feels wrong.

ideas, stories

I have always loved to goof off, it’s so great to live the happy go lucky life–I’ve thought of aspiring to be the man who’s whole life is that life.

Almost..but not. Not all the time.

When faced with bad and dark things in this world you’ve gotta let your blood boil sometimes, some days at the end of a week that is lonelier than an empty cave on a rainy day or when a friend dies, you’ve gotta cry.

Sometimes. And the rest of the time I’ll be the leprechaun on the pogo stick.

———–

This was written about a week ago, here’s what happened yesterday, a conveniently timed epilogue:

I’ve been sick for two weeks now, it started with a nasty fever and sore throat, muscle aches and all, dropped down to a mild sore throat, now it’s a runny nose and cough. So I haven’t been sleeping all that well. When I’m tired, I actually usually fare well with controlling my temper.

Yesterday was valentines day. I didn’t get to sleep till late, and at three in the morning a ****-*** *** ****-**** ***-**-*-***** ****-**** weak excuse of a man pulled up at the window of one of my housemates (whose room is adjacent to mine), and proceeded to serenade her with one abominable pop song in spanish and then another, at full volume from his Landrover with the windows down.

I woke  up. Not only did I wake up, I woke up from a good dream. You know that feeling, when you don’t really remember the dream, but you know it was a good one, and you just woke up from it? Yeah, it was that. The songs finished, finally, and the (insert a lot of asterisks here) drove away. Puchiga mucha.

So rolled to my other side and closed my eyes and tried to go back to sleep. And started to cough. And coughed more. Legit, abs-hurting real coughing.

So, at this point I’m not only utterly indignantly disgusted at this pathetic excuse of a man that doesn’t have a pair to just knock on the door to tell a girl he likes her (ok, not gonna lie, when I’m tired and sick and it’s 3am, my temper isn’t too tempered) but also mad, because I have to get up at 6 o’clock and wolf down breakfast so I can get to the office because there’s a whole bucket load of work waiting for me that I’m not entirely convinced ought to be as so.

Easy Dave..chill. It’s their way of celebrating Valentines day. Yeah it seems really weird and offensive and…well, weird, but get over yourself already. He’s probably a good guy, likely not worthy of half that many asterisk-words. You just need to stop being a judgmental gringo and go get a nice cup of tea to settle your throat and go back to sleep.

Ok, a cup of hot green tea with panela (pre-sugar sugar-cane extract. Mmmm) sounds really great. So I went to the kitchen for my mug. Now, I’m not sure if it’s a USA thing, or maybe just a Dave thing, but I have MY mug. I like MY mug, it’s from the Marine Hardware Supply store in Anacortes, one of my favorite shops in one of my favorite places in the world. I miss that shop and that town and I like my mug. Every time I use my mug, I wash it out and set it by the coffee machine; creature of habit, I like my mug. So I was alright, calm cool and collected. I’m just going to have some nice tea and go back to sleep.

I hobbled tired halfway to the kitchen–then walked back to my room and put on my hoodie, then went to the kitchen for my mug. It wasn’t there, so I looked around for it. There sat my mug dirty on the table half full with cold coffee and with sticky sugar residue on the inside and on the outside too.

So much for calm, cool and collected.

Two cups of tea and something like two hours later I fell asleep on the couch.

(insert a lot of asterisks here).

That all may not be a bad and dark thing in the world, but it takes the (asterisks) silver medal.

ideas

So as I was eating a really delicious bowl of beef stew (to avoid “bragging,” per se, I’ll say that I have about perfected making beef stew to my taste) and a piece of french bread, a thought came to me. I could live off of this.

Then another thought came to me.

I think I will.

ideas

Take a look at the first before you read this second one,
http://wp.me/p14q4r-Rx

Also, I’m not sure whether or not I think the word god, as used here, should be capitalized or not. Thankfully the word Christian is a straight up syntax question without baggage, so it stays normal.

I don’t like to write something that’s not a story; I’m not very good at it and it feels stuffy.That said, here she goes.

The churches here in Guatemala have given me some problems, of them there’s one whopper. They made me realize something: I feel that god is for people who have good education and read lots of good books. If you don’t wonder deeply about redemption and covenant and all that and then go have a scotch and cigar and talk about all that with another  well educated book reader, if you don’t ponder infinity or make philosophical jokes about god…I feel you’re pretty much screwed.

When I first arrived here I first noticed that the churches are loud–the one across the street from my house is unfortunately very exemplary. They sing a lot of songs that sound much like what I imagine pagan chants sound like. They don’t sing the worship songs I know, like and am moved by. Then, when I began to visit churches and hear radio sermons, I noticed that they always preach very topically*. That’s not all, the topic almost every time hits hard on prosperity doctrine. Also, when someone prays it does not sound to me like a boy talking to his father or a woman to her mentor, what I feel prayer should be closest to. Instead it sounds like a screenplay being exagerated by an unskilled actor.

All these things together in my mind made for a single mental swing of ego and judgement: “wait-all these people are fake Christians. What’s all that   about?” If you want to duke it out with me for having thought that thought, take your best shot and see what happens.
So I notice all these things that are so different, and I am really bothered. I think to myself that I’m not like them. The next thing I think is “why?”

Why am I not like them?

I’ve come to the place I am at with respect to god by four things: (1) praying, (2) arguing about god and man, (3) thinking and (4) reading. So then I think to myself “of these four things, what makes me not like them?”

They pray here; they pray really differently, but prayer is such a complicated and peculiar thing I’m just going to leave it at “they pray here,” and so rule out number one. I’ll smoosh 2 into 3: arguing about god and man only counted when the arguement made me think, and what counted was the thinking, not the arguing. I know that the major part of how I think came from my studies at the university, and I know that very few here have had an education like mine. I’ll keep number three, with smooshed-in 2, and rename it “education.” Lastly there is reading. I’ve simply read more substantial books than the majority of churchgoers here. Through these books I’ve seen so many crazy different ideas and wild created worlds. Without doubt what I’ve read is key to how I think and a not-insignificant part of how I’ve come to where I am with respect to god. So I’ll keep number four.

So the result is that I threw out number one (prayer), smooshed number two (talking) into number three (thinking), and kept number four (reading). Education and books. So I look at these people and think to myself, they are spiritually fake and I am the real deal because of a degree I earned and the weekends and evenings I’ve whittled away reading books.

And worst of all, I have neither scotch nor cigar nor another “educated” book-reader to go argue, banter and joke about this with.

…maybe for now that’s best.

The end

———-

PS:
I implicitly cursed once. If you spotted it on the first pass, come visit me and I will make you a complex three course meal in 2 minutes flat and then give it to you.

*If you’re not familiar with preaching, there are two general ways to make a sermon. Exegesis is exposition using something resembling the “when did who say what to whom, where were they, and so why they say it like that at that moment?” It’s like this: imagine you were my boss’s coworker and needed to completely understand a very quickly-written incomplete email I’d written to him. You’d first need some knowledge of me and my job. You’d need some feel for the context of the email: was I pointing out a problem, clarifying a detail of an in-progress design job or maybe poking fun at the CEO with an inside joke? This is a good way to preach: good exegesis leaves little room for subjective error. Obviously there must still be a personal element-a preacher can’t just spew facts. But without the presence of rigorous reason and fact, sermons are at best lukewarm and at worst extremely decieving. Topical preaching is exactly what it sounds like: an arbitrary topic and an arbitrary batch of bible verses, almost always clipped out of context, that “talk” about it, where the definition of “talk” is up to the preacher’s whim. It is, at the core, the preacher expressing an idea or viewpoint in terms of phrases from the bible. If the idea or viewpoint is good, then often no harm is done.
ideas

I love stories–I love to tell them, to hear them, to think about them. Huge bonus points for stories told around a campfire or while having beers with good friends. That’s the majority of what goes up here on my blog, stories.

To me, storytelling is a pure and unique thing. It’s an act, but really it’s not acting at all; all stories are always stretched, but yet somehow within nearly every story is more truth than a old veteran mathematician can shake a stick at.

This isn’t storytelling though, this is a personal note; there won’t be a “this may or may not be” statements at the end.

A few quick and relevant facts:
-I believe in god; to label myself, “christian” fits best. Important note: Jesus wasn’t a Christian! Oh snap.
-If my faith was just a little bit less puny, I could tell a tree to walk and it would. I could probably levitate, too. Yeah-huh, levitate. But my faith is really, really really small, so I can’t do that stuff–but I think that’s ok for now.
-Jesus is important regardless of what one thinks of what he said. He changed the entire world for all foreseeable time in less time than Obama will have for his first term.

Note 1
Why the do we Christians always pray for bad things to not happen? From all I’ve seen and known, we predominately pray for bad things to not happen. Sure, we pray for good things, for safe travels and…wait…that’s actually praying for a bad thing to not happen. How about for financial stability–oh nevermind, that too. Dear god in heaven above, I pray that you would help my marriage continue strong and health–oh yup, there it is again. What about cancer? We always pray for cancer to be cured. Same thing again…but who am I to look at a man in the middle of life’s journey and tell him it’s silly to pray that his wife doesn’t die this weekend? I’m confused.

What’s a good thing to pray for then? What’s an honest and good thing to talk to god about?

Where’s my treasure, and where’s yours?

That’s what I’m going to pray for, for now.

Note #2 coming shortly.

ideas, other

I’m moving to a little town out in the sticks..of Central America.

Book list, in the order the stack sits in on my bedroom floor, with little notes when fitting

1. Scarne on Cards (my late Grandpa P.’s copy, with his notes. He was a poker boss), Scarne
2. Surprised by Joy, C.S. Lewis
3. The Weight of Glory, C.S. Lewis (yes..Lewis again)
4. A Severe Mercy, Sheldon Vanauken
5. The Applications of Elliptic Functions, Alfred Greenhill (I will go nuts, guaranteed, if I don’t have a math book on my shelf to study once in a while)
6. The World’s Last Night, C.S. Lewis (and again)
7. The Signature Classics (seven of his most popular books), C.S. Lewis (yeeeeah…)
8. Still Life with Oysters and Lemon, Mark Doty
9. The Short Stories, Ernest Hemingway
10. Jesus and the Victory of God, N.T. Wright (Big thank-you to my friend Grant V. for the recommendation)
11. Bible, NKJV
12. Bible, Spanish (I have no clue what “translation.” It fits in my pocket though..win.)
13. The Old Man and the Sea, Ernest Hemingway
14. All the Pretty Horses, Cormac McCarthy (read it this summer, holy crap incredible. It’s actually a funny story, it’s my Christmas gift from Mom, and I wasn’t supposed to know she was sending it with me. I came across it in a used bookstore, and got very excited. You can figure out the rest)
15. The Blue Valleys, Robert Morgan
16. The Mountains Won’t Remember Us, Robert Morgan

ideas, other

It seems that in Western culture (well–Seattle culture, the only culture I’ve lived in) that us people–humans–we define ourselves by three main things, in varying proportions:

1. What we do (hobbies/sports maybe)
2. What we make/contribute (could be nine-to-five?)
3. What we own

I’m not sure what to think about that, more will follow. I have this knee jerk reaction that I’m either missing something, or that there’s some wrinkle in the way things work, and there should be something more to how folks..ah..well…are.

ideas

“There’s always that one guy [in the boxing club] who’s willin’ to run..willin’ to run hard. That guy’s gonna win.”
-Coach B.

Note: you don’t have to watch out for that guy if you are that guy.

ideas

What is it they say–a bird in the hand beats two in the bush, right?

Well, if I have a bird in my hand, I’m going to go after the two in the bush anyways and I’ll come out with three birds in hand.

–little bit of gold from a wise man I know

ideas, photography

Where your treasure is, there your heart will be too; home is where the heart is.

Letting a thing be your treasure makes for a shabby home for the heart.

That’s something to not forget, especially when buying things.

Especially especially when buying things like a Nikon D200.

So..ah..on that note, I bought a Nikon D200.

Side note: it is unbelievably hard to not spend a lot of time looking at more stuff to buy right after buying a really, really really cool camera:

“Ah that lens isn’t all so expensive, considering I’ll be shooting for National Geographic as soon as they see some of my work and realize I’d be a positively stellar staff photographer. Heck, may as well spring for a Nikon 200mm/2.0 IS, one of their 17-35/2.8 deals and one or two of the Carl Zeiss primes, while I’m at it..just for the sake of being ready to travel to foreign exotic places and do crazy work at the moment that National Geographic calls. Oh gees, I hadn’t even thought about a tripod. Maybe I’ll look at those basalt fiber ones as soon as I finish picking out my flash setup…”

ideas

Overheard at the boxing gym today, coach to a newcomer who was struggling to get good power in his left jab:

“Don’t reach in man, step in. You got nothin’ if you just reachin’.”

ideas, stories

The way a soccer player celebrates a game-winning goal has to be one of the greatest things ever, whether Saturday morning pickup or the World Cup final. Iniesta looked like a little kid after he scored the goal today*. Picture a child one sunny afternoon celebrating a backyard goal in London or Guatemala or Seattle or wherever else; it’s just so honest, pure and joyful.

The same goes for the moment of a loss–a missed shot or a bumbled save. Straight up pure sadness, dejection and disappointment show their full colors. Again in that moment the pro athlete is no different than the little heartbroken child.

In these greatest moments we’re all like children in wonder and feeling. That means something and is not small.

We all should take this to heart more often.

—

*For when I can’t remember why that means anything special: the ’10 World Cup final was today, Spain vs. Netherlands, and Iniesta put the ball in the net in the 26th minute of stoppage time for the win for Spain. VIVA ESPANA VIVA VIVA LA FURIA ROJA!!!!

By the way, Iniesta’s tank top writing is a tribute to a fellow Spanish soccer player who died of a heart attack not too long ago.

Andres Iniesta celebrating his goal