great band names:
british sea power
i almost saw god in the metro
death cab for cutie
fugazi
pedro the lion
belle and sebastian
thomas bly (tehe)
12:56am:
my christian aesthetic.
everything i do necessarily has to have some aesthetic appeal. im very much a perfectionist, and it's usually quite difficult for me to live up to te lofty standard i've set myself. even my relationship to God has to have some sort of artistic appeal; this is horrid, i know, but it does. so im very grateful in an artistic sense to jim elliot for his journals. this is all very wrong. but something about his journals draws me in so that i always keep coming back to them. he's given christian faith an artistic pull. the idea of christian discipline, and his "face-to-the-wind" personality always have an uncanny way of getting me motivated. i realize that i'm a sucker. but it's so worth it.
lots of upheaval in my life. seeing your ideals shift is never easy; in fact it's one of the most frightening, disturbing things that can happen to you.
but it's so worth it.
im learning so much. in spite of being unduly difficult at times, life is beautiful. christ is sufficient, and i'm learning to live as though i had really realized it.
finally i'm getting somewhere.
listening:
interpol: turn on the bright lights
phil keaggy: the master and the musician
death cab for cutie: transatlanticism
radiohead: amnesiac
reading:
italo calvino: the baron in the trees
I & II timothy
sign language:
We used to wander far along green footpaths, my friend T. and I. We took care to be far from home when the dinner-bells rang. Sometimes we would chase each other through the tall grass on either side of the paths. Sometimes we would climb trees in the woods and sit together on the branches. Other times we would wade into the creeks and catch crayfish and find rocks to skip. On hot summer days we would sit on the logs that spanned the small creeks and dangle our small bare feet in the water, and I would listen carefully for birds singing, and try very hard not to take them for granted. Then back on the path, racing up the hill and looking down to the woods at the bottom. Far to the left across the fields we could see T.'s house, perhaps his father on the tractor. On rainy days we would go into the woods and wander all afternoon trying to get lost. But we never could.
But most often we would just wander the paths side by side, our tousled heads tilted downward, sometimes speaking in random voices about what we'd like to be one day, sometimes saying nothing for whole afternoons, always alone in the solitariness of our childhood fraternity.
T.'s father was a farmer, quiet and solemn like his son. This made his laughter all the more joyful, his smile the more rewarding when at last you'd evoked it. He was the strongest man I knew, yet the quiet gaze of his gray-green eyes had the quality of soothing me each time they held me in their strong soft gaze. I loved to drive the tractor, as he would let me sometimes, sitting as tall as I could in the huge worn seat holding the wheel in my small white hands, with T.'s father giving occasional advice or rebuke, as the case may be.
T. was in many ways like his father. He was different, it seemed, in one way only: T. was deaf; or nearly so: in order to hear he used to watch my mouth. At first I pitied him, and spoke louder so that he could hear me. But as time wore on I actually began to envy T. his strange affliction. He bore it with such a dignity, a calm acceptance, and an entire lack of self-pity, that it almost seemed a desirable condition. If by being deaf one could be as good a companion and friend, and indeed as good a person as was T., it struck me as a small price to pay. I was proud of my friend. And when other children would taunt him and call him names he would never hear, I was even prouder.
He was awfully mature, T. was, for a boy of eleven. I in my immaturity forever blundered about, speaking when it was best to keep silent, and speaking of things better left unsaid. I was impulsive, blunt and loud. T. taught me the beauty of silence; when I was with him it was easy to keep silent. It was easy to say nothing, to communicate through a glance or a swift silent action, or better yet not at all, better to just walk along and let our quiet footfalls do all the communicating that was needed. I'm contented, they said, to be here with you and be alone together. But also T. knew when to speak: he seemed to know when I needed to hear his voice, slightly distorted with deafness, but reassuring and quiet in its loudness. It was T. who first showed me companionship, and I've never had a friend quite like him since. It was with him that I was myself, not pretending to be someone different as I did with other people.
What frightened and sobered me was that T. in his turn looked up to me. Because I could hear. Sometimes we would listen to music together, very loud in my room, and it was then that T. would long, intensely and silently, to hear. He never said anything, but sometimes as I watched him sitting on my floor his jaw would clench and he would try very hard to hear all the complexities of the music that were forever denied him. His eyes would squint together and he would lean forward slightly toward the radio, and I wept inside for him. Once, only once, he got up off the floor and put his ear to the radio and listened very hard for a long time. It was so unlike him to push the boundaries of his impairment that when he turned back to me I was looking at him with a face twisted in wonder and sadness and pity. We looked at each other for a long moment, and I think I would have wept then if he hadn't suddenly smiled, a quiet understanding smile that was itself next to weeping. Because for all his understanding and maturity, for all that he had accepted of his disability, he still wondered sometimes how it could have happened to him. And he envied me for my hearing, a good wholesome envy as only T. could have. He must have wondered about all that he was missing, all the beautiful sounds that I in my childishness took for granted. I used to wonder how he could ever have looked up to me, in my foolishness and immaturity; but then it was easy to forget that T. was himself still a child. He understood so much, and yet there was much he did not understand, and he yearned to understand it.
It seemed wrong to me that T. should envy me something which neither of us could help. Discontent was to me the worst evil. I saw in T. a certain rightness, as though deafness was the way he was meant to be; I could not imagine T. any other way. That was why I never could pity him. It seemed to me that people should be content with whatever they are.
It was hard, very hard for T. to accept this. I see that now. To me his deafness was almost mundane, it was the way things were. I wasn't thinking about his future, and how much harder life would before him when he left the cornfields and the little woods. It seemed right and good that T. should be deaf. But I think that T. saw what his life was to be more clearly than I did, and he struggled with this.
