Tonight's my last night in the apartment for awhile. Good semester. I am afraid my blog be less attended to during the Interterm than it was during the last part of this semester, but we shall see. We shall see.

Merry Christmas! It's a wonderful time of the year!

I am staying awake now to find out whether Saddam Hussein was caught. The reports seem to indicate that he was, so I'm crossing my fingers. This could be great news.

Also, Easy Cheese + sharp cheddar cheese + cheez-its makes a divine cheese experience. Lem was totally having a seizure from the overflowing taste goodness experience!

I'm also going to spend this time learning about the connection of women to the moon!
http://www.menstruation.com.au/pubertyplace/moonmoods.html
Interestingly, the moon has long been thought to be related to insanity. Hence "lunatic." Not that I'm implying these subjects are connected...

Easy Cheese.

Food of the gods.

Yum.

I recommend to you all today that you go out and buy easy cheese. As I stay up tonight late musing on the wonderfulness that is al-Andalusia, you may ponder in your dreams the significance and beauty that is Easy Cheese.

Scrumpdiddlyumptious!

Put it on a cracker... but have more cheese than cracker. The flavor will sweep you off your feet!

I just got home from a trip to Reno, Nevada.

Not my favorite city. Nor is Nevada my favorite State. But we got to see family, and that was good. And we drove along the Sierras for miles and miles, which I attempted to sleep through, which is always nice. Good to see them, even if only in passing.

Ask Captain Ribman!

Check this out!

Watch out for fire breathing salamanders of death.

Hmm...

I haven't abandoned my blog, I've merely had nothing at all to say on it right now!

Peter Pan is a great book. I haven't read it for awhile, but getting back into it is refreshing and exciting. I mean, Neverneverland really IS like its portrayed in the book. I think that would be the perfect imaginary world for a child to live in. Great fun for everyone.

i remember when i came to biola, i met this wonderful beautiful young woman. And I thought, "she's cool," and so I liked her. And then, things happened. Lots of them. But now I finally have had the priveledge of being her boyfriend!

I'm a lucky guy.

This is actually the third (now fourth!) time I've begun to write on this post. Two times so far I've wiped it clear. Nothing is coming out right tonight at all. First I wrote about the moon, and how it is the sad light of our heavens. Then I wrote about ice, using it as a metaphor for depression. Not bad images, but poorly portrayed they were worthless, so I deleted them. They're true, though, and if someone else thinks. Rain's another good image for depression, because it's like tears. And dew dripping from a mossy, overgrown forest of dark firs. That might be a good one. Imagine pressing through a forest where the trees block all the sunlight, and in the dim overgrown brambles and tree branches you are drenched by an ever present dripping wetness. The green has to be right, though, because it's a relaxing color. So you'd have to portray the image as containing dark, blackish-brown needles: maybe a forest of dead firs. Have it at night, actually. A moonlight forest shows no color, and if you're alone it would be scary as heck. But then, that's not the concept that I was thinking about, either. The third manifestation of the blog was a soul bearing lament. Hardly appropriate for a blog.

Anyway, this is going nowhere, also. I'll leave it as a testament to my creative inabilities.

I saw a sad movie tonight, an Israeli government point-of-view on the history of the current Palestinian infantada and Oslo accords. It had lots of images of people dying, very tragic. Lots of blood, and sick people rejoicing over death. They had the video of the Isreali soldiers, off duty, who were lynched after straying into Palestinian territory. They were arrested, but the police didn't try to protect them when the mob stormed the building. After they were finished, they threw the bodies out of the window into the crowd, where they were desecrated. It makes one sick. Another video showed a man dragging the body of a Palestinian who collaborated with the Israelies through the street by a rope tied to his heel, Achilles and Hector. I don't remember if it was this body, or another one, but they took and hung one by its foot by a tower so that people wouldn't make the same mistake he did. It could make someone sick.

Aren't humans pleasant?

Ah, Plato, the cool breeze of frustration, passing over the intellect and leaving disturbed thoughts in his wake. Thank God for good authors like him.

This weekend has been Platonic. On Friday night Dr. Al Geier, professor at the University of Rochester, came to speak at Biola. He gave a speech on the winged nature of souls. Both Plato, in the Phaedrus, and Dante, in The Divine Comedy, speak of winged souls. Souls that mount up on wings, among the intelligible world.

It's difficult, after reading a book like Phaedrus, to write my own opinions on this blog. It is a dangerous thing to state this or that, because what does anyone learn from reading? If I tell you something, will you believe it? What will you do with the words that I write? What should you do with the words that I write?

I think that by reading this book and having a discussion about it and the Divine Comedy with some other students, Dr. Geier, and Dr. Reynolds, I've come to more of an understanding of the importance of the Torrey system of learning. It was a good reminder of things we hear Freshmen year, and then forget.

I had a good discussion with a good person Saturday. It illustrated the experience that Plato talks about in the Phaedrus. Really neat. I can't describe it. It's the sort of thing that poets try to describe. So I'll leave it to them.

A good movie to watch: Brother Sun, Sister Moon

It's a movie about Saint Francis of Assisi. It follows his life up to his meeting with Pope Innocent III. Made by Zepherelli during the Hippy Era, it reaks of a humanistic view of life and interprets the life of Francis in such a way that God might be excusable, or at least made weaker. That in itself is inexcusable.

However, it is more than possible to see the piety and Christ-driven goodness of the true character of Francis throughout the film, and I found it not only very spiritually edifying passively, but a motivating and driving film that really tugged at my desire to do good works in the world and love God more.

Francis is just such an amazing person. I often have wondered how a person such as myself could combine my great love for nature with my relationship with God. God, having made nature, is definitely evident in it. The first way that I considered when I was in high school was science. Biology would provide a means of understanding the order of the universe and God's intelligence in it. But something seems wrong with it to me. You have to take apart the things you love, divide them from their essence, to understand their function. You cannot enjoy a bird's heart as you can enjoy a living bird. I need not know that a bird has hollow bones to wonder at its mystery of flight. As Gandalf says, "he that breaks a thing to find out what it is has left the path of wisdom."

So the tack of Saint Francis, who sees the work of God in all of nature, is a valid alternative to enjoying nature in our Truth starved culture. Francis enjoys the bird for itself. He wonders at Brother Sun, and Sister Moon in an engaging canticle. He blesses all of creation as he sees it struggling to praise God. He even gives a sermon to the birds that he loves. He's bizarre, in short, but he's bizarre because of how much he loves God. He simply and humbly submits to his place in creation, trusting wholly on the provision of God to live, and follows without question his understanding of God's universe.

There are a lot of great scenes in the movie, if you can stand the campy 60s ballads that accompany them. One of these is Francis' renunciation of the world. He takes all of his clothes off as he stands in the middle of the town square, in front of the Bishop, and gives them to his father. Then he walks out of the town butt naked! It's great. The best scene of the movie, however, takes place in Rome. When Francis meets the Pope, wonderful things happen. But I won't say anything about them. Further proof, though not in the movie, of Francis' holiness, is the gift of Stigmata bestowed upon him by the Lord.

I need to read Chesterton's book on Francis, and Bonaventure's Life of Saint Francis as soon as I can. Unfortunately I haven't the time with 3 papers due soon and Phaedrus being my only reading for entertainment that I have access to.

salmonella...

good word.

bad disease.

A good character can really captivate you. I remember as a child comparing all experiences to what I read in books. The mundane becomes epic if taken in the right mindset. I was thinking about this today because I was re-reading The Man Who Was Thursday and I really want to be like Gabriel Symes, the main character. He's a poet, wandering through life with the mindset that makes the mundane epic, continually. He can take an ecclesiastical lantern, and angrily confront the horrors of anarchy, using the cross-marked flaming symbol to bolster his rhetorical outburst of righteous indignation. Check this out, read it with the anger it needs. Outloud! Trust me, it's worth it.

"Judas before Herod!" he said, and struck the Colonel down upon the stones. Then he turned to the Secretary, whose frightful mouth was almost foaming now, and held the lamp high with so rigid and arresting a gesture that the man was, as it were, frozen for a moment, and forced to hear.
"Do you see this lantern?" cried Syme in a terrible voice. "Do you see the cross carved on it, and the flame inside? You did not make it. You did not light it. Better men than you, men who could believe and obey, twisted the entrails of iron and preserved the legend of fire. There is not a street you walk on, there is not a thread you wear, that was not made as this lantern was, by denying your philosophy of dirt and rats. You can make nothing. You can only destroy. You will destroy mankind; you will destroy the world. Let that suffice you. Yet this one old Christian lantern you shall not destroy. It shall go where your empire of apes will never have the wit to find it."
He struck the Secretary once with the lantern so that he staggered; and then, whirling it twice round his head, sent it flying far out to sea, where it flared like a roaring rocket and fell.

The passion of the scene is arresting as the gesture that Chesterton describes. Boy, this man can write.

And he writes good things. Chesteron inspires me to submit to the Church wholly in the intellect, as I wash tired and achy back to shore from my constant struggle for knowledge of the inexhaustible Divine. "Mystery, tradition, love," she whispers motherly, gathering me in her arms.

But I'm a protestant, so I feel like I'm fighting on against the unbreachable tide, riding terrible breakers extending high over my head, constantly at risk of being plunged beneath the dangerous deep that is Revelation.

Two things happened yesterday worth telling:

One, I came to a critical point in understanding the organizing and central purpose behind G.K. Chesteron's The Man Who Was Thursday. This is quite an accomplishment - one Isaac Pletcher was a big help.

Second, we pulled a desk chair around a parking lot behind a car at night.... with people sitting on the chair. That was fun: not getting caught was also quite an accomplishment.

Here's something to check off my to-do list:

Tonight I went for a walk barefoot in the Halloween rain. At first I just stood there, and let the icy pin-pricks of the rain pepper my face and legs. Then I ran back upstairs and got Coleridge. What better way to read a Romantic, I thought to myself, than by the crinkled yellow light of a street lamp in a snow-drop cold rain? When I returned, though, it was raining harder. The rain dimpled the pages of my book, lifting the paper into little smile-wrinkles. I sketched a few short lines into my mind, but it wasn't enough and I wasn't willing to ruin the book, so I put it away, turned left, and started walking. I say, if you can't read the Romantics, live the Romantics.

So, wandering down the street in front of our apartment, I mused melancholy on the dark night, lit gaudily by street, stop, car and house lights. The dark pools of water settling into the middle of the street seemed an ample metaphor for the emotions of my heart. But something odd happened to me tonight: despite my best efforts, melancholy couldn't set in. Instead, to keep warm in the deluge I had to hurry on my way. If I took quick steps, walking briskly, I would warm up, and as my body warmed, my heart and mind warmed as well, gently nudging me involuntarily into a light heart. Soon I was dashing the dark puddles, spreading glittering drops of water across the sheening surface of the street, each reflecting the many lights that belong to a cloudy city night.

As I approached campus, my destination, I stopped and turned around. It was cold, I thought, and this experience, as marvelous as it could be, is not worth catching my death of cold. So I started down the side street that runs behind Tropicana, avoiding a few rushing cars, illuminating the flutter of a thousand drops in the beams of their headlights, each headlight a tiny meteorshower captured for a moment, then gone. The street became dark and empty; as I was crossing the lane, and as I reached the center, I turned, and gazed straight up the middle of it. It enticed me, drew me, unexplainably. Perhaps that's how the spawning salmon feels, facing the rushing current with mighty strokes of his tail. I can't really speak for him, but as for me, I turned up the middle of the street and started running. I threw my head back, let my bare feet thud a quick rhythm on the black asphalt, and inhaled dewy drops of rain, steeped in sweet poesy. My hair, soaked in the wine, lifted from my forehead, and streamed behind me as I grinned a foolish gaping smile and let myself go. Each step was exhilirating, mixed pain and pleasure, water splashing all around my feet, water stinging my face in a tatoo rythm, increasing as I gained speed. It was a moment of pure youthfulness, Peter Pan taking off from amongst the Lost Boys, swooping wildly through forest and glade, bent on the rescue of an Indian Princess.

The problem with running is that it gets you where you're going faster than when you walk. In a minute I was home, warm, and wet. My face was plastered with water, my heart beating warmly in my chest, as I burst open the door of my apartment. I put on water for hot chocolate, opened Coleridge, and read some empty poetry for a few minutes. And I realized that it was over. I couldn't go back outside again. All these kinds of ecstatic experiences end.

It's funny how running can be such a childlike thing. Childhood is a time of more energy, enthusiasm, and innocence than we have now. When we run for no reason, or for no apparent reason, we revisit the times when we always ran, attempting to outpace our peers in a mad dash to nowhere.

Today is wonderfully winterish. It's cold, cloudy and crisp outside. With the shift in wind there's no smoke from the fires, so today when I saw the sun break through the cloud onto the intersection of Biola and Rosecrans, the street shown with a silver sheen. It matched the day's atmosphere brilliantly.

I wrote out a long post about Coleridge. Instead of repeating it, as it is gone into the depths of data limbo, I will put a poem that, taken with some of his greats, is fascinating. Also, it is candy for the Platonically inclined.

The Destiny of Nations
A VISION

Auspicious Reverence! Hush all meaner song,
Ere we have the deep precluding strain have poured
To the Great Father, only Rightful King,
Eternal Father! King Omnipotent!
To the Will Absolute, the One, the Good!
The I AM, the Word, the Life, the Living God!

Such symphony requires best instrument.
Sezie, then, my soul! from Freedom's trophied dome
The harp which hangeth high between the shields
of Brutus and Leonidas! With that
Strong music, that soliciting spell, force back
Man's free and stirring spirit that lies entranced.

For what is freedom, but the unfettered use
Of all the powers which God for us had given?
But chiefly this, him first, him last to view
Through meaner powers and secondary things
For all that meets the bodily sense I deem
Symbolically, one mighty alphabet
For infant minds; and we in this low world
Placed our backs to bright reality,
That we may learn with young unwounded ken
The substance from its shadow. Infinite Love,
Whose latence is the plenitude of all,
Thou with retracted beams, and self-eclipse
Veiling, revealest thine eternal Sun.

(it's a lot longer than this, but you can read the rest for yourself if you would like.)

Go read Kubla Khan again, and as you enter the pleasure dome, feel the cold grip of icy caves on the tender extremities of your soul!

This is a really cool website that I found reading about the fire on-line. It has pictures from NASA satellites of different natural hazards. Besides the current Southern California fires, you can look at ash plumes from volcanoes or dust storms from the Sahara over Italy. Clicking on the pictures gives you huge high quality images.

http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/NaturalHazards/natural_hazards_v2.php3?topic=storm

As the Southland burns it is blanketed in ash, pouring it over itself in dismay at the pain and loss of its children.

500 homes already... I just spent the whole evening trying to get back into Southern California and had to try multiple routes, eventually winding my way through flame ringed highways back to the smoky land I live in. And it is a good land, and a compassionate land, filled with care to the brim for those many many people who are suffering the losses of loved ones and the pain of losing everything that you call your own. The radio is filled with such messages. Everybody at least knows someone who's lost their homes.

And so for once, coming back home from the Wild was not preoccupied with distate or discomfort, but with intense concern for the megapolis I live in. Calling loved ones for news, leaning into the radio to catch the scattered static of a desert radio station, waiting in long lines of cars trying to find a way home, driving between tongues of angry orange flames leaping skyward: home became something to be sought after and desired.

I'm going away for awhile. But I'll be back.

The Road goes ever on and on
Down from the door where it began.
Now far ahead the Road has gone,
And I must follow, if I can,
Pursuing it with eager feet,
Until it joins some larger way
Where many paths and errands meet.
And wither then? I cannot say.
-Tolkien

Roads are marvelous things, black and long. They are the thread binding us all together in California, the very blood vessels that nourish us. A wonderful thing to do is to stand in the middle of a long straight road. There are some roads that go for miles and miles and don't bend, and to stand on the yellow line in the middle of that road, and stare off into the distance, is a very edifying experience.

Anyway, I'm going to Zion National Park, which is pretty cool. I expect to see a lot of beautiful things and enjoy myself. All the same, I cannot help but wish I was going to the Sierras instead, to get one last minute in with them before the blanket of winter closes them off for another year. Of course, hopefully I'll be able to go there during the winter, but it's just less free. One of these days I'm going to go backpacking on cross country skis. I think that would be awesome.

I was reading some other blogs by Biola students and I noticed that there were a lot of comments on the opposite sex. I got to most of them through Jon Clede's blog which you can reach through Phil's blog which I have a link to on my site... (wee, that was fun.) So I must be abnormal because all I have been thinking about lately is mountains. Of course, mountains are a lot less hassle and a lot less work than woman. Here's a typical conversation with a mountain over the telephone:

Me: "Hi, mountain, how are you?"

Mountain: "..."

Me: "That good, huh? Sweet, well, see you as soon as a I can."

Mountain: "..."

It might seem rather strange that I make phone calls to mountains, but it's not. Another advantage that mountains have over women is that they dont' change all the time. For example, a conversation with a woman:

Me: "So, I got you that cheese whiz you wanted, what do you think?"

Her: "Yeah, cheese whiz... I don't like that stuff anymore."

Me: "But... yesterday you said it was your favorite food!"

Her: "Because it was! Yesteday. But today is a different day."

See, a conversation about the same thing with a mountain would be very different.

Me: "Yeah, so I got this new tent to put on you."

Mountain: "..."

Me: "Cool."

See? Of course, mountains don't offer much tangible companionship, either... but they're awfully beautiful. Heart-strikingly beautiful in fact.

Phil and Alisha were looking at bridal magazines today. I've made a rule that the magazines can't stay the night in the apartment. Otherwise I'll burn them! Mwuahahaha! And I can, too, we have matches. Plus it would be a fun excuse to burn something. And it's fun to give Alisha a hard time. So it's a good rule to have.

I'm really tired, but the laundary is in the dryer. Perhaps it's done. I forgot when I put it in. I'm getting up really really early tomorrow morning, too.

A riffle spread on the surface of the swimming pool here at Tropicana today, the softest breath of wind wrinkling the water like tiny smile lines at the corner of someone's mouth. It awoke me my latent love of calm water in sublime places. I wanted to be at another lake, somewhere else, gazing at high granite peaks, wrinkled through ages by a sculptor's mighty hand. I wanted to cast a line into a blue green depth, and smell the scent of pine as I reeled it in. I wanted to breath thin air, clean and crisp and cold. I just wanted to be home.

In short, I am in love. And I am against my will away from my beloved, with no hope of seeing her soon. It's a strange thought to me, to think of the Sierras existing right now, without me. I can imagine the cabin my grandparents own, sitting uninhabited as chipmunks still scurry busily here and there around it. It's continuing. The same crisp air is there, accessible to all, but I cannot go and breathe it.

I think I'll pull a Lancelot and go mad.

In essence, I think this is a sign of the positive role that emotions can play in our lives. These emotions are results of a certain set of beliefs that I hold about the High Sierra. I have a high view of them, I recognize in them Beauty, and thus I am drawn towards them. The emotions are a push on my will to get me to act on my knowledge.

We think of God this way through His Son. We look to the Beauty incarnate, and recognizing His worth we are moved to move "further up and further in." And He has provided so many means for the inspiration of this love in giving man a sub-creative faculty! Churches, books, paintings, the imagination, all of these provide us a way of seeing God better, inspiring more love, and drawing into more perfect communion with the Trinity. Praise God for His wisdom in our creation! He has created us to perfectly relate to Himself.

Fun simple game!

My best so far is 2051. So much fun.

Oh-ho, the coolness of it all!

So, on Friday night my roommate Phil Hagelberg asked his girlfriend of two years, Alisha Broach, to marry him. And, unworthy as he is, she condescended graciously and overwhelmingly happily to say yes! He is a lucky guy.

It made for an exciting day, and it really was sort of Christmas-ish. There was such a to-do, helping him get things ready for the night, and then preparing a small celebration at our apartment for the two when they came home. And it was all a lot of work for a little bit of time of really happy people, beaming and lots of laughing and smiling and togetherness, to subside at 1:00 and after into three college age guys lounging on couches and dubiously eyeing a tremendous pile of litter spread about a coffee table and the floor, and all-in-all a little overwhelmed by it all. So we didn't go to bed until long after 2, but we didn't get much cleaned up either. I think that's sort of one of those really good community moments. Eyeing the same thing together and thinking the same thing.

I also have begun to smell wood fires in the evenings, despite it being so hot recently! Smells and sometimes feels like Fall. So hurrah for the changing of the seasons.

Happy Friday, world.

I miss solitude. I am too hypothetically busy to warrant going to my poetry tree and being alone. Intentional, outside, silent solitude was one of the best means that God used to be with me during my trauma at the beginning of this semester. Somewhere I could have the rims of my eyes fill with salty tears and distort the red glow of Mars in the distance, and remember the mighty power and beautiful Goodness of God. Sitting under my tree, I could feel the cool blades of grass, the rough bark of the tree, and just be. I could think, or not think, I could read, or not read. I could feel inside myself, and deal with all of my soul. Some nights I would just let my book sit there and not read more than one or two poems. The night is a poem of its own accord, if we would but sit and listen to it speak.

I read some St. Bernard today, about loving God. Good, good stuff, sounded like Edwards at times, but with a more pleasant metaphysics. Also read some Abelard. I may agree more with Abelard on some things, but I like St. Bernard a lot better. Although, one monk friend of his did write a glowing review of the last part of his life. Apparently he died somewhat holy, so perhaps he learned his lesson in the end. I do not find The Story of My Misfortune very contrite, though. I wonder what that says about his ethics. His lover justifies her actions towards him with arguments about her intent. It would be interesting to see if it works. I don't remember the nuances of his theory well enough right now to make the comparison.

Hypothetical business is a term I just coined. It's something that describes my methods of procrastination. If I have a lot of things to do (like always) I feel guilty any time I do something intentional that is not productive or working towards fulfilling that goal. I end up filling my time, then, with unintentional stalling methods. This is much worse. I actually procrastinated on my Islamic History paper yesterday by writing 7 pages of my Torrey paper, before my tutor has even seen the proposal!

Everyone really needs to go visit Phil's blog now that he put up a comments section. Post! Be heard! :)

In the tradition of the grand bloggers of the World Wide Web, I will now comment on Politics.

Politics are made up of two things: politicians and the public.

Politicians are rich guys or smart guys or just power hungry guys who like to screw over the public.

The public is a group of stupid people who fight each other over which politician gets the right to screw them over.

Politics is the American Way.

Today is Wednesday.

Yes.

That is the day that today is.

Of all days, Wednesday is most dayish. I can think of no days more like a day than today. And that's saying a lot.

If I were describe Wednesdays I'd say they were a day, for it's true. But then I'd add, it's most like a day than any day, and people would be excited about that, because they're realize how true it is.

It's a good thing to know, how dayish a Wednesday is.

Not that I'm in a daize about it. Ha ha... oh, I crack myself up. But I'm not on it.

My fortune cookie presented a new idea!

"As the wallet grows, so do the needs."

So deep. We should all take a moment to muse about such deepness. As fathomless as the musty cobwebbed hollow that is my wallet. I must not have many needs.

Of course, lacking money presents another need, which is the need of money.

Reading Blake. Strange stuff.

It would be a very fascinating project to take snapshots of your soul at different points in your life. I wonder what I look like inside of myself now compared to how I looked inside of myself 2 years ago, when I came to Biola.

I think that I am a very different person. I remember having the most fun doing the stupidest things. I remember reacting in certain ways to certain people. I remember other people reacting to me in ways that they no longer do. This must reflect a change in belief sets. I must believe differently now than then.

There are a few questions to ask.

What beliefs changed?
How did they change?
Am I at a better place now than I used to be?

I dunno.

I'll work this sort of thing out over most of my life. This kind of introspection only has a limited scope of affectiveness because where I've come from is less important than where I'm going. The way I have lived the last two years is not the most critical thing. It will be important in affecting future change, but it's no end in and of itself.

Mostly right now I just feel sort of sad. Last night I had a long conversation with a good old friend. We talked from 1-7 in the morning at a Denny's. I don't think I could have listened that long as a Freshman. I don't think I would have had to.

I have always resisted maturity where it would decrease the degree of savour I felt towards life. In some ways I feared that taking responsibility would decrease the joy I took in the activities, people, and toys I enjoyed. This is really a root to a lot of the stupid ways I've kept myself from leaving Never Never Land.

And I wonder if by resisting losing these things at the expense of virtue I lost what I was looking to keep. And I wonder if you can ever get them back.

Word for the Day: demasiado

My grandfather is developing serious heart problems. This is just too much. He had a heart attack years and years ago and ever since his heart has given him trouble. His circulation is weak and he can't even really excersise because of his weak heart. Lately he's been having a shortage of breath, and says that he can't breathe when he's laying down. So he went to Reno and they inserted a pacemaker. But now it doesn't seem to be helping, and so he's giving up. They're discussion a valve replacement surgery, but it's somewhat doubtful he could survive such a difficult surgery. As a doctor, he knows his own chances, and as a pessimist, he's not liking them.

As he's a Christian, we know that he'll be going to heaven, but it's not easy when anybody in your family dies. And this is especially hard on my mother. It can't be easy to almost lose your husband and then to be in danger of losing your father also.

In the end I have a hard time understanding how this could happen right now, how God could cause it to our family at this time. It doesn't make sense in my mind at all. My reason, stretching to its max, straining madly for the unreachable, is unable to perceive the roots, the causes of this kind of event.

And like Job, I cannot know. I can only know that God is Just.

All in all these past few months have been such a mix of fear, pain, sorrow, depression, happiness, hope, joy and love that I cannot quite make sense of experience in any sense. It's all too much.

Word for the day: Feudalism

I read about feudalism today, so that's my word for the day. In the period post collapse of the 'Abassid Caliphate of Baghdad, and the decentralizing authority that came with the invasion of the nomadic inner Asian tribes like the Suljuq Turks there was a period of semi-feudalism within Islamic society. But it wasn't really feudalism.

Feudalism is based actually on an agreement between a Lord and a Vassal. This agreement is strictly a military agreement. I agree to support you and you agree to protect me. The economic structure that comes with it is referred to as manorialism.

The social system that developed in the Middle East was actually a slave soldier system, wherein the agreement was not a substitute for a central government, but an outgrowth of it. And the iqtas actually were owned by the ruler, and the person who worked them got the tax revenue from it. Isn't that interesting?

So yay for history!

Uh...

Yeah....

We got new Nintendo games today from Brian Nick! We got one called Gotcha, and it's cool because it uses the duck hunt gun. So my natural talent will have another outlet. I will be the king of Gotcha, as well.

Last night I didn't go to bed until after 3:00 am because of a long discussion with two of my roommates about information ethics. The joys of living with computer science majors! All the same it's good to have long discussions like that. I think it's a healthy part of our community. And one we're all too busy for, generally.

I think an interesting book that relates to the ethics of spreading information is The Silmarrillion. I guess Phil's writing his myth paper on The Silmarrillion now, which should be interesting. I wish I had a paper to write about Tolkien.

It occurs to me, though, that if you had a really good idea you shouldn't post it on your blog, because someone else might take it.

Word for the day: Calvinball.

Just because.

Word for the day: synthetic a priori knowledge

The word for the day says it all... Kant sucks. I mean, if you want to set up a functioning impious ethical system, I guess you'd want to be Kant, but if you want to, you know, love God and stuff, it just doesn't do it.

My discussion on Kant today must have been the slowest discussion I've ever been in. There was no spark of vitality at all in the group, and probably less than half of the people there actually contributed to the discussion. Basically, it made for a looooong 3 hours, and we were all falling asleep at the end. If only Kant wrote clearly. I have a feeling that would have made things a lot better.

I just noticed I have two words for the day of Monday. But really, Po-mo was yesterday's word. And I should think of some better words than philosophical ones to make my theme word... because, really, my life isn't all about philosophy.

Oh, and I was thinking today about how wonderful it is to walk places. It allows thought and perception that's more acute than driving or running, which either destract by increased concentration or exertion. When you walk you can notice that the flowers are closing in the dusky twilight or that there's a small falcon perched atop a traffic light dropping the occasional feather from a roughly eaten meal. And you can pray, spend time in introspection, or muse on the days' readings. The best kind of walk is the kind of walk where you don't have to be somewhere soon, and it is possible to stop to actually smell the closing flowers, or to watch a butterfly pass an empty sidewalk late at night on some unnatural errand.

Lem talked about going to the desert this weekend. I hope so, I love the flat barrenness of the California deserts. You are alone and isolated for miles all around. I have this great memory of a desert sunrise from when I was a child. My father, brother and I went for a walk in the time just before dawn, and we were out on a plain when the sun finally pushed its drowsy glowing red eye over the flat horizon. There was, I recall very vividly, a dramatic line marking the shadow of the horizon, the place where night ended and day began, and it raced along the surface of the earth toward of us. It gave me the impression that, if I ran, I might always, just barely, stay with it, stay on that line between day and night, dark and light, innocence and knowledge, or maybe even outpace that glorious yellow orb, just for the sake of the exhiliration. I can imagine even now my small feet thudding in the sand, wind flowing through similarly colored hair, and lungs bursting from the effort to beat God. But I never could run very fast.

Word for the Day: Po-mo

I felt sick tonight, but I'm beginning to feel better, so now I can go read some Kant.

My friend told this girl he liked her today, and she was like, "I like you, too." So that's pretty cool. I guess sometimes this girl thing works out.

Every Sunday we play rugby, and today was pretty fun. We also played canball with the GROSS guys, who were my brothers roommates. There were some other guys too. Canball is an extremely difficult thing, but as you are not likely familiar with it, I'll spend some time explaining it.

Basically, it's like basketball. You have two milkcrates sitting on the ground that count as the baskets, and your goal is to get a tennis ball into the basket. The trick is that you have to use a tennis ball can to hold the ball. It can't touch any part of your body. And you can't run with it, you either have to dribble it or pass it if you are in possession. Needless to say it's not a simple skill to master, catching and throwing tennis balls from their cans, but the game is a lot of fun none the less, with the more experienced players having no trouble with the basic skills that make up the game. The rules are in a semi-state of flux, but they've got a few years of tradition behind them now. Anyway, it's a cool game.

I also saw someone blow lighter fluid into a fire from their mouth. Talk about awesome!

Duck Hunt rules.

I just scored 540,200 points and got to round 20 on single duck hunt. At that point, you can't miss any ducks. Irritatingly, I missed my first duck in that round since round 11 or 12, and so lost on the first round you can't miss any ducks on. How frusturating is that?

All the same, I'm now the undisputed king of Duck Hunt in my apartment.

I just got back from watching 28 Days Later.

Good movie. I liked it. Not as scary as I expected, but quite suspenseful. It was also an intelligent movie, which is always nice. Horror movies present a unique opportunity to comment on humanity's condition, especially zombie movies like this one.

The zombies in this movie are explicitly an incarnation of the violent nature of man. They become senseless violence itself, and thus doing, warn us about our tendency to be like them. This is developed much more fully than this in the movie, which is interesting. It may even have commentary on the proper use of violence in society, though I'm on the fence in committing to that.

The major theme of the movie, though, is hope. Hope being one of the cardinal Christian virtues, it's always fascinating when a post-Christian society (the movie is British) puts out a new movie that comments on it. How can a society infused with a Christian ideal of happy endings reconcile a world-view that is inherently hopeless with a story that still compels. This movie doesn't, I don't think, offer a sufficeint explanation.

A common answer, one which is seemingly rejected in this movie, is that mankind is inherently good, or good enough at least, within itself, to bring hope. The enlightment ideal of the progression of man is an example of that sort of ideal. In this movie it sets up other men as hope, but then convincingly destroys that hypothesis. The zombie within us all will never allow us to be at peace.

Thus the ending, which brings us back to hope in living with man, is merely a hope in continuing the way we have, killing each other these last 28 days the way we had the 28 days before that, and the 28 days before that... and so on for the history of man. It's curious, given this perspective, that you would make the movie at all. For what?

There's more to the movie, but it's always difficult to tell which is just done to get people to sit through a film, or pay money for it, and which is done to present a thesis or contribute to a discussion.

Phil says that I need to write something intelligent on my blog. And he criticizes me for putting anything up here that's about history or anything. I think this is a manifest contradiction. So, you can read Phil's blog here: http://www-students.biola.edu/rozinant/index.php. But... you don't take my word for it.

I loved Reading Rainbow.

On other matters relating to Phil's blog, what if the gods exist? I wouldn't be surprised if Dante really thought he was evoking a person when he prayed to Apollo.

Rape me.
Rape me, my friend.
Rape me.
Rape me, again.

I'm not the only one.
I'm not the only one.
I'm not the only one.
I'm not the only one.

Rape me! Rape me! Rape me! Rape me! Rape me! Rape me! Rape me! Rape me!

Nirvana is funny.

I need to put a links section on here so you can get to others' blogs. I have a few people who'd I link up to.

And today is Friday! Woo hoo! Bestest day of the whole week!

Scattered Thoughts...

Man, it's past midnight! I was going to make another entry for Thursday. But today is now Friday. Oh well, it really doesn't matter. Who needs a structured, organized view of life, anyway? And who's to say that this blog runs on my time zone? I should check that out...

Anyway, tonight we had an appartment meeting. It was pretty good, Mike, our advisor, had some good advice for improving the function of our group. It might lead to more conflict, but in the end it was really encouraging. So cool.

Since I don't think original thoughts anymore (I am hardly qualified) here's something cool that happened to me today, which I will record for your spiritual edification and for the glory of God (that's how the Pilgrim begins all of his stories in the book, there are some really cool ones):

I have been reading as a devotional the Way of the Pilgrim. I highly recommend it, especially to people who have read about or have read excerpts of the Philokalia, or have otherwise studied the thoughts of the Eastern Orthodox Church. The basic plot of the book is that one day the author went to attend liturgy and heard his priest preach on Paul's exhortation to "pray without ceasing." The passage bothered the man, so he went out and started asking people how to do it. He didn't get any good advice until finally he found a wise old hermit who agreed to teach him.

The basic idea is that one should pray "Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me." The prayer actually appears in different forms throughout the book, sometimes it ends with "on me a sinner." The prayer is wonderful because within it there is the whole of the gospel. That is, there is the wholly perfect God, who we can know through His Son, the Christ. On the other side there is the man praying. He is in desperate need of the mercy of this Holy God, because on his own there is no way that he can achieve heaven. Our hope in this mercy is founded in this very Incarnation. In the Eastern Orthodox Church the focus is on the Incarnation, not on the atonement.

Anyway, his spiritual father assigns him a certain amount of times to pray the prayer a day. He continues this for a few weeks, at which point the monk would increase the amount for the Pilgrim. The end result is that the Pilgrim begins to love to pray the prayer, and cannot live without it. There's a lot more to it than what I can put here, so it's worth a read to understand the beautiful concept.

Anyway, so I've been starting to pray the Jesus Prayer when I have spare time. It's just an awesome way to connect to God. Earlier today I had a really bad asthma attack, as I posted. And it really hurt, and continued to hurt well into the afternoon. I was coming home from the one class I went to, and I remembered many miraculous stories recorded in the book about people who had trusted on God through the Jesus Prayer, and I figured, God heals... He can heal me.

So I started to pray the prayer, and prayed it the whole way home, and by the time I got home the pain had noticably decreased, and I could get a full breath in for the first time all day. So praise God from whom we can receive all blessings! He is truly Good and full of power.

Now I have to work on my Annotated Bibliography for Middle Eastern History. Bah humbug!

http://www.cnn.com/2003/HEALTH/10/02/sprj.wnv.california.ap/index.html

West Nile is going to hit Southern California hardest this summer! Although they specify the Imperial Valley as a probable epicenter, I wouldn't be surprised if someone in my family caught it, since my Dad's garden often has small stagnant pools that lay undiscovered for weeks. Oh well. I wonder if the mosquitoes in the Sierras will carry the virus. If not, I should just spend the whole summer there.

I have asthma right now. Holy cow, it came on fast and hard. I could hardly breathe. Scary, I have never experienced anything like it. I think the reason I like thin air is that I can get it to the very bottom of my lungs easily. Whereas the air down here is suffocatingly thick. Because of my asthma I'm considering skipping class. I just don't like to have other people see me struggling to breathe. It's uncomfortable... probably because of my masculine pride. "I'm stronger than this... *wheeze*"

Ah ha!

I now have a blog.

This is amazing, I mean, it's a blog, and it's mine.

I just spent 3 hours at the Cal State Fullerton library. It was so cold in there! But I got some books to help me on two different papers.

The first paper will be on Shakespeare's Henry V. I'm going to use Plutarch and write on the classical theme that Shakespeare develops throughout the play. I'm not sure exactly how I'm going to develop my thoughts right now, but I'm leaning towards one of three different specific areas of the text to exposit and then critique The book I looked at in the library was Holinshed's Chronicles of the Kings of England, Scotland and Ireland. It's an absolutely massive 3 volume history, but it's great because it's the history that Shakespeare read.

The first area of the text that would be interesting is the justification for war that Henry uses. It would be fun to parse out the archbishop's argument, and compare Shakespeare's version to Holinshed's, but I probably won't because I want to use Plutarch.

The second area of the text that I might do is the seige of Harfleur. Holinshed comments extensively on it, and I think that it's a rough parrallel event to the sack of Thebes that Plutarch records for Alexander.

The third possible option is the famous Saint Crispin's Day Speech. Comparing Holinshed's version to Shakespeare's version is really telling on the character of Henry. The flaw that it exposes is the flaw that the parrallel with Alexander the Great exposes, as well, so it's a pretty good way to integrate all three texts.

The other paper I was researching is on the Umayyad Dynasty in Spain, but nothing I found got me really excited about it. *sigh*