05/30/16

...She's single and I'm not suppose to make a thing out of this.

05/29/16

Finished my first year of grad school and I have a 4.0!
I've never gotten a 4.0 in my entire life
Not in elementary school
middle
high
undergrad
and here I am in grad school is a perfect 4.0.

I have to make it through these three summer classes and then I have field experience in the fall and student teaching in the spring. I am so close and yet to far away!

I remember how stressed out I was before school started. I was so worried I'd fail. I was worried I wasn't smart enough to do grad school.

I've always hated school. ALWAYS.
Now I'm doing awesome in school and a year away from creating a life spent in the school system.

I remember using school as the reason to be single. I used it as the culturally appropriate excuse to escape the scary close intimacy of a relationship where I would be put in a vulnerable situation. So afraid I could keep up the performance of boyfriend and grad student.

We learn so much from our mistakes.

I've also learned what I am capable of in order to reach a purpose that has great meaning to me.
I want to be a teacher. I want that to be a part of the identity of Adam. I believe I would make a better teacher than someone else filling the classroom I will have one day. I believe that and I haven't felt this way about a career before.

nine classes
nine A's

I think back on all the hard work, all the reading, all the projects, all the writing, oh God I am getting closer but I am not there yet. I still have another year. And beyond that I still have the job hunt and the first year of teaching. I've heard nightmare stories but I'm looking forward to that first summer off. Summer of 2018 I will have it completely open to garden and explore the world. Load up my backpack and head out for a month or so. Each year ending a rewarding, exhausting school year of teaching by setting off to a different country to experience.

One step at a time.
One year down and a 4.0
I need to stay hungry and I need to keep my nose to the grindstone.

Summer classes have already started.

No adventures, no road trips, no plane rides over the ocean, this year is killing me but I need to keep going. I have to stay focused. 2016 will be known as a sowing year for future harvests.

Glen Hansard - High Hope

05/22/16

Four nights
Four women
Four dates

I know what I want. I've tasted it before. I know it's possible. I've experienced it. I've seen it, I've held it in my hands. I know it is out there and I know that I want it.

But days turn to weeks turn to months
another flirt
another number
another date
another sigh

I'm starved for conversation.

Were not our hearts burning within us
-Luke 24

I miss that spark that burn within my heart during a conversation.
I know I'm not romanticizing, fantasizing, I've tasted it before.

"I'm working on the high hope
And if it all works out, you might just see me
Or hear from me in a while
I'm gonna make it across this tight rope
And I'm coming for my prize
No more I'll be waiting round
While life just passes by
Maybe when our hearts have realigned
Maybe when we've both had some time
I'm gonna see you there
Cause I've been living in the half life
Not sure which way to turn
Why must a man lose everything
To find out what he wants
I'm gonna wait until it feels right
And when that time has come
Wild horses won't keep me back
From where you have gone
Maybe when we're both old and wise
Maybe when our hearts have had some time
I'm gonna see you there,
Lay where we can be natural,
I wanna see you there"

To be understood
To be known
I think about it often and it's still such a mystery to me
Why do we want, why do we need to be known?
Why does it feel so good to know we are understood, we are known?
What is that within us?
Where does it come from?

How beautiful it makes life!

Is nostalgia a bad thing God?
Hope is part of the fruit of the Spirit.
Hope is longing for a better future
Wouldn't nostalgia be a hope in the other direction of our timeline?
What is time?

I believe we in the present should hold in one hand nostalgia and in the other hope.
It makes me think about the Scioto dam removal. without the nostalgia of the rivers beautiful past we would not be able to have the hope of its return to beauty.

I find most of Wendell Berry's writing to master this tension of nostalgia and hope perfectly.

Is nostalgia idolatry? What would our pale blue dot look like if we never looked back at the past lovingly and longingly?

It's a conversation my heart would burn to have with someone

I'm gonna wait til it feels right.

Tried to keep you close to me,
But life got in between
Tried to square not being in there
But think that I should've been

James Bay - Hold Back The River

05/15/16

Another year, another season in the garden.
As my life changes drastically from year to year it is calming to see the consistency and the routine of the garden.

It seems to keep me centered.
Everything around me, and myself included, may change
But I find the garden exactly the same each time I plunge my fingers into that dark soft soil.

Here on out the garden is where You will find me every Saturday morning if I'm not exploring outside of Columbus. It is my favorite way to end a week and start a day.

The calming slow pace of the garden. The noise and sounds of the city around me.
The sweat bearing work of pulling weeds and working a shovel. I love it all. Something very beautiful about joining my ancestors in this most ancient of tasks, gardening.

My dad told me my grandpa would have loved to see my garden. He loved to garden when he was younger. I never knew that about my grandpa and I will never get to talk to him about it. Maybe that is where I get it from, and he from his grandpa and so on.

I have to take breaks when I work the ground alone. I am overcome by the beauty of both the plants and the work.

God I can't express in words how much I truly enjoy and love that plot of land. Just thinking about it now makes my eyes water. I hope to always have a piece of land to garden until I return to soil one day.

Seems like the older I get the more people around me value
address
clothes
cars

when we were younger we valued spending time together. We valued adventure and fun. We planned our lives around where our friends were, or what could help us have the most fun and the most time to be together.

The closer I get to thirty the more I see my friends need to live alone, they need to "grow up" but if that is what it means to "grow up" in American culture then I don't want to.

To grow up is to become isolated, independent, self sufficient.
I don't want that.
I want community, generosity, and shared experience.

But what do I do when everyone around me is going a different way?
What do I do when all my friends seem to value and chase different paths?
How do I hold us together?
How do I feel understood when they have different lens?

I've been a 20 something for such a long time now I didn't realize how much of my identity had been tied up in that age bracket. How do I live as a 30 something? What does that look like? Ready or not it is coming. How interesting that is.

Is it still okay if I want to explore cities and nature? Is it still okay if I want to laugh and have fun over being serious and "grown up?"

People will tell you, this is your life and you should live it the way you want. Be yourself. But there is another side to that coin. Community and friendship is important to me. What if my friends don't want to live like I do?

Is it better to live the way I want and be isolated and misunderstood
or is it better to bend to culture and stay with friends?

This stuff is so interesting. Once you turn 18 you think you have adulthood figured out but now I see how much more there is to it. Imagine closing in on 40...

But the garden is always constant.
I find rest in that.
The world around me is always changing and I am too.
...but the garden is there.
and it is where I will be.

Glen Hansard - Leave


"I can't wait forever", is all that you said
Before you stood up
But you won't disappoint me, I can do that myself
But I'm glad that you've come

Now if you don't mind leave, leave
And free yourself at the same time leave, leave
I don't understand, you've already gone

I hope you feel better, now that it's out
What took you so long?
And the truth has a habit of falling out of your mouth
Well, now that it has come

If you don't mind leave, leave
And please yourself at the same time leave, leave
Let go of my hand
You said what you came to now leave, leave

05/11/16

Come further up, come further in
― C.S. Lewis

I gave You my word God, I will never talk about this with You or anyone again.

I intended to keep my word.
I cannot look back.
I can only go forward.
further up and further in.

And with last night's text conversation I broke my word from March 26th.

Claire sat with me as I cried like a fucking preschooler (and believe me I know how they cry) hiding my face under the quilt.

She's moving to the Mountains.
and in an astonishingly ironic fashion she is moving to the mountains exactly one year after I posted that letter to You, oh God, venting my fears that she would.

June 25, 2015
Me vs Mountains

Last June in that post I was afraid she wouldn't stay for me.
I said I've seen her cry but never over the loss of me.

This winter she told me she would have stayed for me.
This fall she cried in my arms over the loss of me.

She called me family. Fuck, she still did last night...
It took losing her to finally see how much she cared about me.
And now I know, and now she's gone.

All I've ever wanted for her is to be free.
She is, she's moving to the mountains, and I am staying.

Come further up, come further in
― C.S. Lewis

I cannot look back.
I can only go forward.
further up and further in.

I foolishly hope she'd go a fifth round.
I love that woman, and I always will.

Life - Sleeping At Last

05/08/16

A photo posted by Brian Carr (@briancarr33) on Apr 29, 2016 at 5:13pm PDT

We made it back to the city. We promised each other we would and we did. We celebrated our ten year friendiversary with Alan. I look forward to another 10.

New York felt different this time. It has been three years since the last trip.
Last time we left on 01/04/13 of course I have a post from that day.

The more I write on here the more interesting it always is to look back.

But New York was not as I remembered it. I love spending time with those two and I love how much we make each other laugh. The first time I went the city took my heart. I loved how many people were there. I was overwhelmed by the size and amount of buildings. I loved the feeling of the city and it's history.

This time it felt a little exhausting. I kinda wanted to load up three backpacks and head into the forest with Brian and Alan. I'm not sure why that changed. I missed the big trees of Ohio and I wanted to build fires and cook our own food.

But the city did still tug my heart at times. I love high line park that gorgeous mix of garden and urban. It always makes my heart swim! Alan kept laughing at my inaudible grunts of joy as my eyes consumed the beauty of the moment in that park.

I also love the diversity of the people in New York. Every subway ride hearing at least one different langue is very beautiful to me. It shows how little humans of new york is really capturing the city.

It makes my brain wonder and get lost in the idea of all the lives and attempting to meet every person and hear their story. We are alive for just a blip of time aren't we God?

One tiny island in one planet in one solar system in one galaxy and there is infinite stories to be told. How many stories exist inside one tiny little cell inside of my body?

I love the museums in New York. I got to see another Michelangelo sculpture it reminded me of Rome. What an amazing artist and human that man was. I could stare at his work for hours. Allowing my mind to wonder what the world was like when he walked it. What were the colors of the cities? What were the smells, the sights, the cultural norms that were taken for granted and history never recorded. What parts do we have wrong in his story and what would he think about the legacy we have preserved of him.

And that is just one man.
How many people have lived completely full lives on the same rock flying through space
Forgotten, but lived nonetheless.

New York City, where the stars are impossible to see but the skyline offers our human attempt to captivate the heart. I could look at that skyline every night before I go to bed. I haven't seen anything like it.

New York is such an amazing city to be in. But here I am. I find myself greeting yet another morning in Ohio and I love it so.

Columbus, the home of Adam.

there are many many better places in this planet
but this place is mine
and I like that.

Back to my life. Another day, taking a final to wrap up another semester of grad school. One step closer to the dream. Another day, growing and waiting.

If I sit here to long I start to think about existence and life. My brain goes in circles wondering the same things asking the same questions.

I know I will never get the answers but I find a strange peace and enjoyment out of allowing my brain to wonder over these things again and again like the hands of a blind man across the braille of his favorite book.

I keep my hands open for You oh God.
Thank You for my existence.

And I don't want a never ending life
I just want to be alive while I'm here

The Strumbellas - Spirits

05/01/16

Ozymandias
I met a traveller from an antique land,
Who said—“Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. . . . Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;
And on the pedestal, these words appear:
My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;
Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.”
-Percy Bysshe Shelley

Our lives are collections of moments filtered through our senses. Eating a delicious meal there is the sensation of taste. The countless number of combinations of flavors and savor. During a moment of eating our bodies can sense through taste that it is good. Feeling there is the sensation of touch. Resting my head on a cold pillow, a warm shower after a hard days work. Kicking up my feet on my porch in the evening. These again can be felt. I can feel the water on my back. I can feel the muscles relax as I recline.

but sight is such a strange sense. There doesn't seem to be a concrete sensation during an enjoyable sight. I know when they are happening but I can't express the feeling. I have words for describing good food. I have words to describe good music and sounds. I have words for delightful scents.

But what is the sensation my eyes give me when I watch the sunset over a mountain? What is the sensation my eyes send to my brain when I look into a woman's eyes? When I see a beautiful piece of art? When I am surrounded by skyscrapers, an ocean, or even better mountains?

Sight is maybe my favorite sense. It brings me the most joy and yet it is amazing that our eyes even work. They are so complex. And also I can't even describe the sensation sight gives me.

I can use words like beautiful and whatever but they don't capture the feeling, they only describe what my eyes are seeing now how my eyes make me feel.

The most I can do in those moments of sight sensation is let out a peaceful sigh. I can replay a song, I can prepare the same meal, I can take another shower, light the same candle, but I can't capture sights. No camera can do justice to the things my eyes have seen. They give poor imitations.

I think that makes me like sight even more. The fact that there is no sensation for pleasing sights. No taste buds on my eyes. Just a temporary moment and my miracle eyes to project it to my brain for that period.

Bethel - God I Look to You