mccarthyism

i've got class in an hour, the first class period of my last semester. i spent the morning running around, doing errands. i went to the bank, the library, bought gas, dropped off my drums at our practice space, lined up some hours for myself on the grounds crew for this semester. i feel fairly productive and also happy, knowing it's an light semester for me this spring. i've been feeling like a senior, with so much more to look forward to, with plans elsewhere - just finishing up here. and yet i still like it here very much; i'm still taking comfort from the familiarity of these surroundings, this school where i've spent the last four years. i'm not in such a rush to get out - i'll be out soon enough; i'm already on my way out the door. just a few more classes to pass, a calm semester and a chance hopefully to pull myself together before everything that happens next. so it's a good place. i have burris this afternoon, and i like burris. i like his attitude.

a couple of nights ago as i was trying to say some prayers before bed it occurred to me again that life would be a great deal less complicated if we paid less attention to how we feel, or even what we think, and just concentrated on what needed to be done. its the american habit, i guess, to be preoccupied with feelings. you can get to the end of the day and feel completely shitty because of something that was told you, or for having seen yourself in some negative light, but if you look back at what you've done that day, how you've been faithful, the kind things you may have said or done, you can still be pleased. the christian life is not preoccupied with subjectivities but with actualities, with realities. the modern world concerns itself so much with the subjective and can do no better than doubt the real, the objective; the plane where our lives actually take place. for the apostle, it was "that which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked at and our hands have touched—this we proclaim concerning the Word of life...if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, his son, purifies us from all sin." i'm going to try and keep that in my mind today as i go to class and tomorrow, and the day after. and the day after that.

listening:
saxon shore: four months of darkness
interpol: turn on the bright lights
jesus and mary chain: psychocandy

reading:
wendell berry: a place on earth