Have you ever had one of those moments? The kind where you're doing fine, everything is normal, and the next thing you know you are absolutly terrified. I did that last night. Maybe it was coming back from Flordia, maybe it was being tired, possibly a hundered other things combined into one; I don't have a clue what triggered it. I was in my room getting ready for bed and all of a sudden I felt trapped: scared. It's the kind of emotion where I could rationalize things in my head if i really put my mind to it. I could think things through and find that it really wasn't that bad. But at the moment it didn't matter. I was claustraphobic in my wide room and homesick for something.... not exactly Atlanta or my family.

I think, actually, that it was just coming back from vacation and finding reality still here was crushing. And the homesickness was for the utter ease of mind that comes with home. There is a complete forgiveness at home that is impossible to find anywhere else. Something about where everything was once easy and trivial has a pull when things are all of a sudden important and dire. I think I just needed to be consoled. It sounds kind of corny and weird, but there it was, last night; the time where I needed a friend. I'm not talking about wanting a friend, I'm talking about needing one. Not really to talk to or see or listen to, or anything like that. What I did was get up and look at my pictures, and just have friends. It is something that people tell you all the time. I can't even begin to count how many times I've heard songs like "That's What Friends Are For". But it's different when you don't want or enjoy your friends. You need and use them.

Just Ask Dante

i really don't know what the world would
be like without women.

and i know i sometimes have my chauvinistic prejudices
but i apologize, and i don't really mean it.

there's this girl.
and i can't stop thinking about her.
sleep is no escape, she invades my dreams
it's for her i roll out of bed
to face the barrage of the coming day.

she loves me
and i love her.

that is real.

and even if she doesn't know i exist
there's always that Beatrice that I follow
through hell.

she's why i get up

why every guy gets up.

i'm telling you, nothing would get done without women.

i look back and see what i've done because of her.

always remember her
and honor her--
whether she belongs to you
or doesn't know you exist.


Mad props to Mike for writing that. I was looking through back issues of Etcetera today. Some really good poetry in there, some stuff that I remeber hearing at the time and almost dismissing off hand, but now I think I might actually get some of it. Some of the fun is in trying to discern which poems come from real thoughts and emotions, and which are just a retelling of cliches. I think this one is a real poem. Everyone has their own personal Beatrice, that one person who they would do anything for. Those of us who are lucky get to have their heroine know who they are, and the rest of us just get to keep on living each day in constant want for that one moment of perfection. Perfection is only that moment, you see. Perfection is a single instant and is not repeatable, and it is this that seperates perfection from mere excellence.

No bitterness, here, truly. I've seen perfection once or twice. In real love... In absolute joy.... Never anything carnal or in any other way tainted, but that state of bliss that comes from the even mix of wisdom, purity, helplessness, and awareness.

Went to Christmount this weekend. It was supposed to be a retreat to get away from Athens and college and classes and worry, and basically to rest. All except for the rest. I swear I haven't had that much good conversation about absolutly nothing important in a long long time. Didn't sleep much, didn't get at all rested for the next couple weeks, but had a heck of a time.

I heard a piece of the Bible read this weekend that I had never heard before. It fits my theology so perfectly that I can't understand how I've missed it. Romans 14. What Paul is literally talking about is not persecuting other Christians based on dietary habits (e.g. It doesn't matter if one follows the kosher laws of the Old Testament or not). But the entire chapter is full of double meanings that amount to "If what you do is for God, then it is right for you." The passage that I find particularly strong here is verse 4: "Who are you to pass judgement on the servents of another? It is before their own lord that they will stand or fall. And they will be upheld, for the Lord is able to make them stand." That whole passage basically says that no one on Earth has the knowledge or right to tell someone else that what they believe is silly or wrong. If they believe what they believe because of their faith, then God smiles on that.

I wish that I felt. I have so many friends who feel things so deeply. Most of their emotion is sad and full of meloncholoy undertones, but still, it almost seems that my own lack of emotion is even more desperate. The thing is, that every time I do begin to let emotion take me over (usually for the worse) I have people tell me that they have come to rely on my strength. Screw that. I am all too happy to be a pillar for anyone who needs it, but being told that I have to hide my own responses to things is being taken advantage of. But on the other hand, that same rocky facade is my salvation when I need it. I have never cried at a funeral, not because I do not feel saddness, but because if I let it under me at all, then I lose all manner of control. And I think that that is one of my greatest phobias.

Doin' Watchdawgs tonight. All who are in Athens should sign up. It's an awesome service and incredible fun.

The idea that seems to be hitting from all sides is time. Never enough of it and always to much. I need someone with any kind of theoretical knowledge of this 4 dimensional stuff to explain it to me. I got a bit of it from Dad a long time ago, but only enough so that I am aware of my own ignorance. It doesn't matter, actually; I'm sure any theory given to me I would shoot down as pure conjecture and not scientific fact. I think more what I am thinking about is the philosophical aspect of time, or our perception of it. If I close my eyes, can I miss a year? Or can I live six months in a dream of one night?

Time hits humans in a completely linear fashion. We can move one direction through it at one pace. Would the defining quality of God be that he is not bound by that? I remember a sort of fable someone once told me:

"There once was a kingdom where everthing was two dimensional. All the citizens there lived were squares and triangles and circles and such. Now the king of this perticular land was invited one day to a banquet at another kingdom, one of three dimensions. He went to this banquet and when he returned he ranted and raved about this 'third dimension'. But try as he might, he could not convey to his subjects what this third dimension was or even looked like. He lacked the words and they lacked the conceptual capacity."

Sounds like Plato's, "The Cave." (If you don't know that one, read it. Boring as hell for while, but almost enlightening in itself.) Perhaps that is an adept example of what Time is to us. We live in one line of it, and cannot leave, or even think how to leave. But perhaps the answer is right in front of us and we just have to focus our eyes. Draw two squares on a piece of paper. Now look at them. Can you see a cube? Can you then look back at them and see only two squares slightly off centered from each other? I wonder if one can take two cubes and see beyond just two slightly off centered cubes?

Part of the beauty of a kiss is in it's sybolism. I pity those who have worn out the kiss by devaluing it countless times. Because you can really only kiss a person once. And that kiss is more than the touching of lips, it is more than the beginning of whatever erotic sensations lie below. That one kiss is your acceptance of the other as someone. As Iris Murdoch once it "is the extremely difficult realization that something other than oneself is real." In fairy tales and mythology, the kiss is what wakes up or brings to life. I don't think that a kiss has to mean anything other than, "I see you." Which is, in itself, a powerful compliment. Every time you kiss that person after the first time it is the same kiss, the same statement, the same admission. Every so often, people need to be have that affirmation that they are real.