Eleven Years Ago
Breakfast Klub Fanale
Breakfast Klub Fanale
Sunday, April 30, 2017
Sunday, April 23, 2017
04/23/17
Sometimes I feel a certain sort of way.
It drives me to want to write it, express it
But maybe writing isn't the best avenue to express it
How do I illustrate in a journal the act of sitting silently
How do I capture this moment these feelings when the act itself was still and silent?
Do I simply type an ellipsis and end this entry?
...
No that doesn't suffice.
Do I attempt to use my limited vocabulary to nail down these ... I can't even find a word to describe my feelings...
My lack of vocabulary makes me feel trapped inside my own body unable to articulate adequately, handcuffed by both poor spelling and thesaurus suggestions from google out of this come frustration.
On top of all of these mixed confused feelings comes the anger at my own limitations to simply express them.
So here I sit, alone on the couch fingers rested on the home row, eyes rested and blurred as I remain in my prison.
Every day’s been a step toward perfecting the art of the small talk
So I never have to say something I might really mean
...
Dawes- Now That It's Too Late, Maria
It drives me to want to write it, express it
But maybe writing isn't the best avenue to express it
How do I illustrate in a journal the act of sitting silently
How do I capture this moment these feelings when the act itself was still and silent?
Do I simply type an ellipsis and end this entry?
...
No that doesn't suffice.
Do I attempt to use my limited vocabulary to nail down these ... I can't even find a word to describe my feelings...
My lack of vocabulary makes me feel trapped inside my own body unable to articulate adequately, handcuffed by both poor spelling and thesaurus suggestions from google out of this come frustration.
On top of all of these mixed confused feelings comes the anger at my own limitations to simply express them.
So here I sit, alone on the couch fingers rested on the home row, eyes rested and blurred as I remain in my prison.
Every day’s been a step toward perfecting the art of the small talk
So I never have to say something I might really mean
...
Dawes- Now That It's Too Late, Maria
Sunday, April 16, 2017
04/16/17
July 2015 I started grad school for my teaching license
April 2017 I signed a commitment of employment with Columbus City Schools
It's actually happening.
My dream not just to become a teacher but to become a teacher in the Columbus public school system.
I could seriously cry.
I understand many, many people have bigger dreams than to make a measly teacher salary spending their lives getting disrespected by 8 year olds and working endlessly planning a lesson most of the students will forget in a matter of weeks but it's everything I want.
And it's actually going to happen.
I haven't been able to stop smiling.
I have so many ideas for my classroom and I don't even know which school I will be teaching or the grade level.
But I have a job, and it is in CCS!
This is going to be a very fun spring and summer...and I guess it will be an exciting autumn too.
I suppose I can say 2017 has been and will be such an awesome year for me.
especially coming off of 2016 which was filled with homework, textbooks, papers, projects, terrible first dates, exes entering and exiting my life again, and an underpaying job 2017 is going exactly as I had hoped.
Well, there is one thing that would make it beyond what I had hoped but that is beyond my control. Of the things I can control I have worked very, very hard for this moment and it feels every bit as rewarding as I had always imagined it would.
I'm going to be a CCS teacher!
Keaton Henson - Lying To You
Sunday, April 9, 2017
04/09/17
...I am a part of all that I have met;
Yet all experience is an arch wherethro'
Gleams that untravell'd world whose margin fades
For ever and forever when I move.
How dull it is to pause, to make an end,
To rust unburnish'd, not to shine in use!
As tho' to breathe were life! Life piled on life
Were all too little, and of one to me
Little remains: but every hour is saved
From that eternal silence, something more,
A bringer of new things; and vile it were
For some three suns to store and hoard myself,
And this gray spirit yearning in desire
To follow knowledge like a sinking star,
Beyond the utmost bound of human thought...
-Ulysses by Alfred, Lord Tennyson
The grace that is the health of creatures can only be held in common.
In healing the scattered members come together.
In health the flesh is graced, the holy enters the world.
The task of healing is to respect oneself as a creature, no more and no less.
A creature is not a creator, and cannot be. There is only one Creation, and we are its members.
To be creative is only to have health: to keep oneself fully alive in the Creation, to keep the Creation fully alive in oneself, to see the Creation anew, to welcome one’s part in it anew.
The most creative works are all strategies of this health.
Works of pride, by self-called creators, with their premium on originality, reduce the Creation to novelty, the faint surprises of minds incapable of wonder.
Pursuing originality, the would-be creator works alone. In loneliness one assumes a responsibility for oneself that one cannot fulfill.
Novelty is a kind of loneliness.
-Healing by Wendell Berry
How dull it is to pause, to make an end,
To rust unburnish'd, not to shine in use!
As tho' to breathe were life!
Pursuing originality, the would-be creator works alone.
In loneliness one assumes a responsibility for oneself that one cannot fulfill.
Roots or Wings
As I continue to seek the answer for this question I continue to find the truth in both.
To pause, to dig roots, is to rust as tho to breathe were life, which certainly it is not,
and yet in that same value questioned breath
novelty is a kind of loneliness.
To pursue originality to shine in use in an attempt at creating, separates myself from the creation, and thus fails to accomplish the one task I set out to achieve in adventure.
I cannot rest from travel: I will drink
Life to the lees
For always roaming with a hungry heart
Much have I seen and known; cities of men
And manners, climates, councils, governments,
Myself not least, but honour'd of them all;
Push off, and sitting well in order smite
The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds
To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths
Of all the western stars, until I die.
And this gray spirit yearning in desire
To follow knowledge like a sinking star,
Beyond the utmost bound of human thought.
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.
It’s like we’ve forgotten who we are. Explorers, pioneers, not caretakers. We’re not meant to save the world. We’re meant to leave it.
-Interstellar
Roots and Wings
I suppose the fundamental question when the thread is pulled to its onset is this,
Are we caretakers or are we pioneers?
History has shown Europeans believe the answer is a resounding "explorers"
But other human cultures have answered the question differently, as caretakers.
Many different native American nations along with African nations voiced their opinions through generations of their cultures.
As the explorer affiliation expressed their beliefs they enslaved and executed their fellow human counterparts.
The question of caretaker or pioneer is almost an impossible question to answer for out of the two parties only one by nature can exist on the planet and was history has shown us the explorers were the prevailing philosophy.
Perhaps the protagonist of interstellar was misguided by the events of our ancestors leading up to his fictional present future. Maybe we as humans were meant to save the world but the votes for that way of life were snuffed out in the wake of the former.
Roots or wings,
what would the world look like if we as a species agreed upon roots.
What if we came to a consensus to invest our lives in where we are, invest in home.
Or if we did attempt wings it was from a position of humility asking the preexisting cultures and societies upon which we discover how we can be held in common, how we can come together in harmony, with the established.
Rather than focusing on differences we find the common. Rather than extinguish the bison only to ship over the cattle we find a taste for the existing. Rather than plant the apple tree, we gain an appreciation for the paw paw.
I don't disagree that I find in me a deep desire to adventure, to follow knowledge like a sinking star, beyond the utmost bound of human thought. But to disregard our common connection, our health as one creation may not be mutually exclusive. When I breathe my last I'd like to say I had a home, I had a place on this pale blue dot, I was known by those who shared that place with me and that I left that speck of dirt slightly better than when I started.
I want to see all this planet has to offer me, both in nature and in humans but I want to leave only footprints and take only memories and leave with my mind's horizon broader than when I arrived.
Roots or Wings, I continue to seek truth.
Mandolin Orange - Hey Adam
Yet all experience is an arch wherethro'
Gleams that untravell'd world whose margin fades
For ever and forever when I move.
How dull it is to pause, to make an end,
To rust unburnish'd, not to shine in use!
As tho' to breathe were life! Life piled on life
Were all too little, and of one to me
Little remains: but every hour is saved
From that eternal silence, something more,
A bringer of new things; and vile it were
For some three suns to store and hoard myself,
And this gray spirit yearning in desire
To follow knowledge like a sinking star,
Beyond the utmost bound of human thought...
-Ulysses by Alfred, Lord Tennyson
The grace that is the health of creatures can only be held in common.
In healing the scattered members come together.
In health the flesh is graced, the holy enters the world.
The task of healing is to respect oneself as a creature, no more and no less.
A creature is not a creator, and cannot be. There is only one Creation, and we are its members.
To be creative is only to have health: to keep oneself fully alive in the Creation, to keep the Creation fully alive in oneself, to see the Creation anew, to welcome one’s part in it anew.
The most creative works are all strategies of this health.
Works of pride, by self-called creators, with their premium on originality, reduce the Creation to novelty, the faint surprises of minds incapable of wonder.
Pursuing originality, the would-be creator works alone. In loneliness one assumes a responsibility for oneself that one cannot fulfill.
Novelty is a kind of loneliness.
-Healing by Wendell Berry
How dull it is to pause, to make an end,
To rust unburnish'd, not to shine in use!
As tho' to breathe were life!
Pursuing originality, the would-be creator works alone.
In loneliness one assumes a responsibility for oneself that one cannot fulfill.
Roots or Wings
As I continue to seek the answer for this question I continue to find the truth in both.
To pause, to dig roots, is to rust as tho to breathe were life, which certainly it is not,
and yet in that same value questioned breath
novelty is a kind of loneliness.
To pursue originality to shine in use in an attempt at creating, separates myself from the creation, and thus fails to accomplish the one task I set out to achieve in adventure.
I cannot rest from travel: I will drink
Life to the lees
For always roaming with a hungry heart
Much have I seen and known; cities of men
And manners, climates, councils, governments,
Myself not least, but honour'd of them all;
Push off, and sitting well in order smite
The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds
To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths
Of all the western stars, until I die.
And this gray spirit yearning in desire
To follow knowledge like a sinking star,
Beyond the utmost bound of human thought.
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.
It’s like we’ve forgotten who we are. Explorers, pioneers, not caretakers. We’re not meant to save the world. We’re meant to leave it.
-Interstellar
Roots and Wings
I suppose the fundamental question when the thread is pulled to its onset is this,
Are we caretakers or are we pioneers?
History has shown Europeans believe the answer is a resounding "explorers"
But other human cultures have answered the question differently, as caretakers.
Many different native American nations along with African nations voiced their opinions through generations of their cultures.
As the explorer affiliation expressed their beliefs they enslaved and executed their fellow human counterparts.
The question of caretaker or pioneer is almost an impossible question to answer for out of the two parties only one by nature can exist on the planet and was history has shown us the explorers were the prevailing philosophy.
Perhaps the protagonist of interstellar was misguided by the events of our ancestors leading up to his fictional present future. Maybe we as humans were meant to save the world but the votes for that way of life were snuffed out in the wake of the former.
Roots or wings,
what would the world look like if we as a species agreed upon roots.
What if we came to a consensus to invest our lives in where we are, invest in home.
Or if we did attempt wings it was from a position of humility asking the preexisting cultures and societies upon which we discover how we can be held in common, how we can come together in harmony, with the established.
Rather than focusing on differences we find the common. Rather than extinguish the bison only to ship over the cattle we find a taste for the existing. Rather than plant the apple tree, we gain an appreciation for the paw paw.
I don't disagree that I find in me a deep desire to adventure, to follow knowledge like a sinking star, beyond the utmost bound of human thought. But to disregard our common connection, our health as one creation may not be mutually exclusive. When I breathe my last I'd like to say I had a home, I had a place on this pale blue dot, I was known by those who shared that place with me and that I left that speck of dirt slightly better than when I started.
I want to see all this planet has to offer me, both in nature and in humans but I want to leave only footprints and take only memories and leave with my mind's horizon broader than when I arrived.
Roots or Wings, I continue to seek truth.
Mandolin Orange - Hey Adam
Sunday, April 2, 2017
04/02/17
The other night I watched "The Verdict"
I have a major soft spot for Paul Newman ever since I wrote that ten page research paper about him my senior year of high school.
I do this weird thing from time to time. I like to watch movies starring actors who in their day were the hottest men in film but are now older.
I find myself wondering during the films how these men feel about the inevitable process of aging. I can't help but think how it must feel for them to have their career, their identity in their looks. Their fame and success founded on an outward appearance that is slowly taken from them not because of anything they did or because someone else took it, but rather the march of time and gravity.
I don't know why I am strangely intrigued by mortality but there is something about the dichotomy of the immortality of a film and the finitude of the actors who star in them. I wonder what it was like for the first generation of humans who experienced this contrast through photography.
Sure many people had been painted prior to photographs and I'm sure some looked back at the piece and reflected upon the change. But a painting is a physical display of the painters perception of the individual. A painter may be fooled by her own brain believing the subject to look a way they do not actually look. Or feeling pressured for the subjects approval the artist may take liberties not unlike the modern day photographer touching up through Photoshop.
But their must have been this moment in that generation, the first photography generation, when they looked back upon old photographs of people and realized how much time had changed them. I wonder what that must have been like for the first time in humanity we had physical evidence of the aging process. A process all of them had to be very familiar with but now were able to literally come face to face with it.
How strange.
Nothing stays the same.
sequoias tip over
mountains erode
stars burn out
empires fall
people age
But what can anyone do about it? Even if I spent every day of my life traveling or as a millionaire or solving world hunger at the end of the day we may all look back and say we could have done it better, we would have done it differently.
I shouldn't have spent my teen years playing video games
I shouldn't have spent my 20's watching sports and TV
I should have been learning ceramics
I should have played my guitar more
I should have went out on the weekends more
I should have went to grad school sooner
I should have spent more time with my children
I should have told the people I love how I feel about them
I should have quit that job years ago
Even if we do everything I'm sure we will find ways to look back upon our lives and think we could have done it better. I bet every one of those actors would give lists of the mistakes they make, the roles they passed on, the lines they could reread, the charity they could do...
How strange we are.
Does everything go away?
Yeah, everything goes away
Mark Wilkinson - When I'm Not Around
I have a major soft spot for Paul Newman ever since I wrote that ten page research paper about him my senior year of high school.
I do this weird thing from time to time. I like to watch movies starring actors who in their day were the hottest men in film but are now older.
I find myself wondering during the films how these men feel about the inevitable process of aging. I can't help but think how it must feel for them to have their career, their identity in their looks. Their fame and success founded on an outward appearance that is slowly taken from them not because of anything they did or because someone else took it, but rather the march of time and gravity.
I don't know why I am strangely intrigued by mortality but there is something about the dichotomy of the immortality of a film and the finitude of the actors who star in them. I wonder what it was like for the first generation of humans who experienced this contrast through photography.
Sure many people had been painted prior to photographs and I'm sure some looked back at the piece and reflected upon the change. But a painting is a physical display of the painters perception of the individual. A painter may be fooled by her own brain believing the subject to look a way they do not actually look. Or feeling pressured for the subjects approval the artist may take liberties not unlike the modern day photographer touching up through Photoshop.
But their must have been this moment in that generation, the first photography generation, when they looked back upon old photographs of people and realized how much time had changed them. I wonder what that must have been like for the first time in humanity we had physical evidence of the aging process. A process all of them had to be very familiar with but now were able to literally come face to face with it.
How strange.
Nothing stays the same.
sequoias tip over
mountains erode
stars burn out
empires fall
people age
But what can anyone do about it? Even if I spent every day of my life traveling or as a millionaire or solving world hunger at the end of the day we may all look back and say we could have done it better, we would have done it differently.
I shouldn't have spent my teen years playing video games
I shouldn't have spent my 20's watching sports and TV
I should have been learning ceramics
I should have played my guitar more
I should have went out on the weekends more
I should have went to grad school sooner
I should have spent more time with my children
I should have told the people I love how I feel about them
I should have quit that job years ago
Even if we do everything I'm sure we will find ways to look back upon our lives and think we could have done it better. I bet every one of those actors would give lists of the mistakes they make, the roles they passed on, the lines they could reread, the charity they could do...
How strange we are.
Does everything go away?
Yeah, everything goes away
Mark Wilkinson - When I'm Not Around
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