I tried to write something more practical and light-hearted, I really did; but I just couldn't find the words. Instead, I've included excerpts from my recent writings. If you're looking for something to happen, watch the news; nothing happens in this blog. If you're looking for a life update, here it is: classes are going well. Grad school is a breeze. My job is challenging and interesting. I'm making friends slowly. I climbed El Capitan in 14 hours and hope to write about it in the future. I spent five days taking a wilderness medical certification in the mountains and camping by myself. I'll be in Houston for Thanksgiving, Indiana for Christmas.
As I said, this post is comprised of my random musings. Several of them make it sound like I'm depressed. I'm not. It's just how I write. I'm really enjoying my time in the L.A. suburbs, the people I've met, and the challenges that meet me daily. I'm looking forward to seeing some of you in the upcoming months.
All images were stolen without permission.
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| L.A. |
November 5th, 2012
I’m floating in a sea of buildings—a massive flotsam of shingles and greasy orbs. It curls and rises with the heat, coursing blood-red metal and men along its veins. It is even now pulsing steadily in the dark, a phosphorescent ooze splattered against the globe like gum. Orange haze rises driving back the night, attracting helicopters like flies that glare down spotlights on criminals and lone wanderers. I’m floating, riding the tectonic waves that shiver through the slab. Crickets, my fellow passengers, they chirp unperturbed by the raucous gang of clattering air conditioners. The tree in my shared yard, it shivers and sheds leaves like a dress; they fall in a discrete circle at its feet and gleam there proud for a day and are erased and are digested by machine. I am floating on a sea of buildings beside the hulking ocean. The water sits silent and strong against the bay, mysterious and huge, ready, at the command, to swallow my haughty raft, to send up great steaming wisps of cloud in place of haze, to uncover and unsmudge, to recede back into its sleeping form and paint anew the stars upon its back. I’m floating in a sea of buildings and the date is November 5th, 2012. It is Monday and the windows are dark--dark and speckled with pieces of twinkling streetlight.
November 17th, 2012
It’s been three months in L.A. The first real rains started yesterday.
November 16th, 2012
(an excerpt from a letter to a friend)
It’s a cold day today, not so much in temperature as in mood. The clouds have swung low, uniform, grey, brooding. The soft pressure they leverage down on everything makes it hard to move. When I go outside, I’m in a diving bell moving slowly, breathing slowly, sending prayer-filled bubbles warbling up to the surface. I’m tempted to go back to sleep, to find a book and weather this day like a storm, to just hold fast until tomorrow when the sun returns and the birds come back.
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| An underwater diving bell used for bridge construction |
The day smells of chopped leaves and small engine exhaust. These two aromas combined with cold, damp air contribute to the pressure of the day; they act as a time warp, a drug, a vortex that propels me immediately back to the bank of my parent’s pond. I’m standing there under similar clouds, under naked cottonwoods, smelling the mower and the leaves and the damp. Something presses in on me. I feel sick.
November 10th, 2012
(written in the back of my truck on a snowy evening in Idyllwild)
Someone recently admitted surprise at a remark I made about being lonely in certain circumstances. I felt suddenly more alone even as I listened. Of course I am sometimes lonely. Wrong or right as it may be, loneliness sometimes drives my actions. When I flee to solitary places—to my truck on a snowy evening—it is because the loneliness of the setting seems to match the state of my own heart. Often, when I’m truly lonely, I seek solitude, separateness from society based on the fear that human interaction will only make more apparent the misunderstanding we have of one another, based on the steady hope that God understands myself better than I do. I go to God, and I go to the trees that whisper in the darkening breeze. I read once that trees are the only ones who were taught the word for loneliness, they say it once a year and the utterance takes them all winter (The Brothers K, David James Duncan).
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November 5th, 2012
Silhouettes of leaves travel across the window when cars pass. They’re accompanied by a hushing sound, like a wind in the trees but more uniform, a steady crescendo and a symmetrical fall. I’m sitting at a table that is antiquated and borrowed from a friend of a friend. The chairs too, are borrowed, as is the coffee table and the night stand and the recliner and my time on earth. A stained yellow rag is in the sink fraternizing with soggy crumbs. The conversation of a bible study is playing out before me in the living room. My headphones are their privacy. And the cars keep coming. The leaves keep rolling. The hushing continues. They are freshman, the bible study goers, and I read no skepticism in their faces.
November 16th, 2012
I struggled to find emotions towards God today. They were surfused, I think, by the weather, and by tiredness. I am floating down a river, groggy and swollen.
November 5th, 2012
I took a walk last night on my favorite maze of streets which rests darkly in the absence of streetlights. They did not take long to find after moving here, but it took several weeks to be satisfied with them. I leave my wallet at home even though they are not in a bad neighborhood. Security lights blink on behind me as I stroll and an occasional dog will bark from behind a fence or screen door. Once, I hopped a fence and trespassed into a school yard. I climbed a tree to the very top and spread the branches apart to watch planes and helicopters fly against a backdrop of stars. It’s not true that stars don’t exist in the city; I’m convinced that most city-dwellers just don’t know to look for them.
November 16th, 2012
Thanksgiving is coming soon. It’s an easy holiday to celebrate at this stage in my life. My loving family is still mostly intact; I have very few woes to distract me from all the things for which I can be thankful. God has chosen to train me slowly. I’m thankful for that too. Through my family and friends and health, he’s been gentle with me, like a skilled player of the game “Jenga”, beginning me as a solid and whole structure, removing boards gently, the easy ones first; I have barely noticed any wobbling yet. One day all will be taken, my knees, my elbows, my tendons, my family, my wife, my words. It’s likely they’ll be taken slowly, but he may choose to sweep me off the table--to scatter me across the living room floor all at once. If they’re taken slowly, I’ll piece by piece, void by void, learn to trust his steady hand, his deliberate deftness rather than the physics of boards upon boards, of relationships upon relationships upon activities upon pleasures. At each Thanksgiving I’ll be more and more holy, fraught with hollow vacancies, but shining (I hope) with joy ever brighter. But if he takes them all at once, in one sweeping movement, I’ll be baptized in frigid waters and raptured awake into light and fresh grass--to trees swaying in the wind and the intoxicating smell of adventure on the air. I think that’s how he’ll take me--slowly rather than quickly, but I wonder if he’s ever tempted. Sometimes I hope he is.
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| Just put this here to lighten the mood...thanks for reading! |
