159 – New blog

Go this way, please!

158 – Ceci n’est pas une pipe dream.

MORE TO COME!!! AAAHHH!!!

157 – Wrong, wrong, wrong.

I have spent most of the day in front of computers in the library, writing final papers to earn favor and letter grades. It is the sorriest sight to see a roomful of youth half-prostrated in front of their Macbooks on a dry Seattle day. I am pretty sure this is not what any of us were meant to do with our lives.

Why am I in college? What in the world am I doing here? It is what my family fought for, and it is a convenient way to put off actual self-sufficiency. I get to this point every finals week where I realize I’m just part of a system and can’t escape it. I’m never sure whether to take myself seriously or not.

156 – recent frustrations, expressed as passive-aggressively as possible

I show people I like that I love them, and I show people I love that I fear them.

Protected: 155 – Pilipinas 2010: Day 4

This post is password protected. To view it please enter your password below:

Password:

Protected: 154 – Pilipinas 2010: Day 3

This post is password protected. To view it please enter your password below:

Password:

Protected: 153 – Pilipinas Day 2

This post is password protected. To view it please enter your password below:

Password:

Protected: 152 – Pilipinas Day 1

This post is password protected. To view it please enter your password below:

Password:

Protected: 151 – Pilipinas Day 0: Travel Time

This post is password protected. To view it please enter your password below:

Password:

150 – Travels and Journeys?

So I’m typing up the first few entries from the Philippines, and I realize that the first few days I also wrote so much about things that had happened in Seattle before I had left. And even well into the trip, I spent some time recording stories from Seattle that I had never written down. I think what’s interesting is seeing the juxtaposition and trying to unlock why I would’ve thought about those stories or those people when I did, in the context of what was happening during my travels.

But the challenge, of course, is figuring out what I post and where and when. I intentionally planned to put the Philippines entries on a different page that would take a little more work to get to, because they are so much more personal, but other stories would get lost if left only in context. And I realize I’ve been censoring from the blog a lot of the people I’ve met and fascinating conversations I’ve had, when those encounters are really what have been most relevant and important (and interesting, if I do say so myself) to me, my personal formation, my observations on the world. I leave them out and I code them in symbols and passing sentences because I’m afraid of corrupting the intimacy of those experiences, and I’m afraid of revealing them prematurely to a tiny but unknown audience. I mean, who am I allowed to exploit here? Exactly.

Also, I suppose the other question is, why don’t I write this much in my journal all the time? Aren’t I always on a journey, a pilgrim of sorts?

149 – And I’m back!

This street is dimmer with all the students on holiday. It’s an eerie quiet in my house, where I’m not even sure if I’m allowed to be. I can’t decide if I should put a record on or dwell in it. What would I even put on? I thought it even smelled weird, until about five minutes later my nose adjusted and I realized I had just spent three weeks in a country with completely different smells. Imagine that–so foreign, you have to readjust your smells.

I have written much and thought much during my three weeks in my parents’ homeland (but never written or thought enough, of course). If you’d like to start following my journey, I’ll be posting selections from my journal each day here.

148 – And we’re off!

Flight to the Philippines in 12 hours.

There is nothing I can say that would really be right or enough.

Until then, I pack and I write.

147 – Examined in a new light

Justin saw this first:

Examined in a new light

Despite the commitment
from the weaker to the healthier
we have failed to calm
the panic
The thinking goes
what also rose
was more grandiose than practical

Anxious, You bear much of the burden,
drawn out
selling debt
taking some losses
borrowing costs
from across

the fear
still unsettled
growing nervousness
comes with a call

Ever-higher costs have been floated,
But You rose in a new light

– New York Times News Service

146 – For all your secrets

I have a lot of really good days. It’s kind of unfair.

I struck a deal today with one of God’s favorite things God’s ever created. He said if I brought in some of my writing next week, he’d bring in some of his poetry.

We even shook on it.

Any ideas?

145 – many airplane rides ago

201003231815

A friend told me once about some drug that’s meant to mimic the neurological processes of dying. You feel like you’re dying. You see a bright light and reach out to it and all of that. I wondered if someone could be addicted to near-death experiences.

Zach was just naturally magnetic to them. Some people just have a lot of death in their lives. I have never been to the funeral of anyone close to me, though I did once nearly speak at the funeral of someone I’d met just once because I was no older than ten and hadn’t really been to any funerals and I thought when they asked if anyone would like to share some words they really meant anyone. She was the daughter of a man who helped my parents come to America. In a freak accident (a phrase my dad used to use a lot to scare me out of opening the large freezer bigger than my body) she jammed her head into the wall coming down the stairs and couldn’t get it out of the jagged drywall hole, or at least that’s the mental interpretation I remember. Maybe she really just hit her head. She was in her forties, a grown adult, but mentally delayed, and what I would’ve said at the ambo is how purely happy she was to get her driver’s license the other day or week when we saw her in the Target parking lot. I would’ve told people about her smile. I wondered, then, what it would be like to be a firefighter trying to free her neck and deciding she could not be saved, leaving her stuck, screaming, crying on one side, with her body bent and kneeling on the other side. It was probably not like that. Sometimes I wish I spoke at Terecita’s funeral.

144 – Weak for lack of oxygen

I just last.fm tagged this song as “worship” and “sad songs.”

Lately I’ve been really digging the broken Jesus, the radical Jesus, the hated Jesus, the weak Jesus, the weeping Jesus, the crucified Jesus, the crazy Jesus, the naked Jesus, the forsaken Jesus, the forgotten Jesus. And how the humility in humanity still falls to its knees before him.

and if i had your faith i’d be fearless