Captious Digressions of an Ill Adjusted Mind

How the crap did I get so lucky?


my hands smell like Love Spell.
i'm looking at a stick figure cartoon,
a letter like a kiss, or at least I think so
i carry a votive inside, cause my heart gets cold
when there's no you, no leaves to slip on
lie on the grass
your head by mine
tracing fake constellations, we laugh out destinies
watching ours catch the same spindle
you live so near, it's almost gluttony
i'm knocking at your door again,
i'm sure i left something there.

I AM UP AT 3:56 AM IN THE MORNING AND AM WRITING ANGSTY JOURNAL ENTRIES AND I STILL HAVE NOT WRITTEN MY FREAKING FIVE PAGE NATIVE AMERICAN PAPER.

Also, I am alone in the world and nobody loves me.    WOOT TIME FOR SELF-DEFENESTRATION.




(For the nuanceless ones... j/k.  Some people love me.  Uh...)
(Hm...)
(Well, I think I have parents...)
(They probably love me...)
(And I have a brother...)
(He might like me some...?)
(Oh yeah, I've got a girlfriend.)
(Hee... )
(Guess there's David... and Ray... they put up with me.)
(So, some people like me.  Maybe.)

Also, the Democrats are about to take over the Senate *and* the House.  I shall include a neutral smiley.    Actually, that one looks sort of confused.  Oh well.  We'll see where they take us. 

I have used far too many smilies in this post.

By tomorrow, my EVIL week of three-fourthterms will be over and I shall begin my murderous rampage in earnest I'll be able to start doing things again.  Like talk to people.  And do GCF.  Start writing for myself again.  Take up the oboe.  Do work for charity.  Raise a hobo as my own child. 

I just turned in my second story to Naumoff.  It's in rough rough draft form, but if I get it working, I might force it down your wormish gullets let you read it.  It's about fencing, LSD, and what happens to LSD'd fencer chicks on the backstreets of Philly.

Sort of.

There's a cheesesteak in it for you.

Cheesetastic!

EDIT 7:00AM:  I slepte not, neither... did I sleep.  Verily, verily, I saye unto thee... mayst thou be smitten with smallpox in the sacred name of Jeffery Amherst, and mayst thine crops wither and die in the name of George Rogers Clark!

Let's move on to Seth's Life: A Perspicacious Collage. 

On Saturday I fulfilled the first part of one of my life dreams.  A house-church pastor from China


(That's this country here)
has been staying with the Agape church in Maryland for a while and was able to travel down to Chapel Hill to speak in our church!  If you don't know anything about the church in China, there are two basic churches.  There are the government run, "Three-self" churches that are uber-controlled and useless, and there are the secret, illegal house churches that worship God as God demands.  These people are under powerful persecution, and their pastors are often in and out of the prisons.  God is working in China, and because of the persecution there, the dedication and worship of the people there would shame most of us here in America. 

So he came and spoke to us.  His name is Andrew.  He has terminal cancer - his face is disfigured with tumors.  His voice is slurred as he speaks his own language - his translator interprets, because the only English words he said were 'thank you'.  He was saved eleven years ago, and has served seven years as leader of an underground church.  The doctors in China and America could do nothing for his cancer, and so for four years he has had no treatments, no radiation, no chemotherapy - but he's still alive.  God has kept him alive.

He spoke to us about the call of the Christian, Isaiah 6. 

It was wonderful.

Now I just have to go actually see one of the house-churches.

On Sunday we had another local fencing open.  For the first time this year, I did pretty well!  I only won 2 of my 6 pool bouts, but in the DE's (Direct Elimination... like a bracket) I was seeded 24th against the number 9th guy... and I beat him!  He had me down 6 to 11 (15 touches win) and I came back and beat him 15 to 14!!



So I made it into the top 16 and fenced against David, who is our top alternate (4th in the UNC Foil squad heirarchy.  I fall somewhere between 7 and 9 at any given time.)  He beat me15-8, but I did much better than last week, when he beat me 15-3.  David has this awesome thing where he makes me impale myself on his point-in-line...

And then there was time for girlfriending this weekend, happily.  I know you guys want to be introduced, so here's some pictures of me and her...

Ye Rhyme of Sir Robin
- Monty Python, Spamalot

Bravely bold Sir Robin rode forth from Camelot!
He was not afraid to die, oh brave Sir Robin,
He was not at all afraid to be killed in nasty ways.
Brave oh brave oh brave oh braaaave Sir Robin...

He was not in the least bit scared to be mashed into a pulp.
Or to have his eyes gouged out, and his elbows broken!
To have his kneecaps split and his body burned awaaaay...
And his limbs all hacked and mangled, brave Sir Robin...

His head smashed in and his heart cut out and his liver removed and his bowels unplugged and his nostrils -

"That's... that's enough music for now lad."

***

As you can see, I'm suffering from positive media input.  Maybe the elusive and esoterotic Number Six will come to me sometime tomorrow.  Two hours of Baltarian goodness!  In other news, my midterms are almost over, by tomorrow at 1:00 I should be done with it all. Sorry about the paucity of my last updates, I just haven't had a lot of time recently, but I should have much more time after this week. 

I'm working on lots of stuff, including fencing practice, my creative writing project, (and the beginning stages of my big personal project), midterms of course, a nice little monologue with Ray, church stuff, and then the things I *should* be doing, like GCF.

Thankfully, I get to find a little time for girlfriending in between.  Hehe...

Also, I should probably do laundry sometime soon... phew.  If they were bringing around plague-barrows and calling "Bring out ye'r dead!" I could totally pass my laundry bag off as a decomposing body. 

So much to do, so little goat-entrails left to summon my servant demons with...

My name is now in red!  Joyous day!

Can't sleep. Thoughts of good friends in danger keep me up. I'll offer you a way home, if you'll take my hand. What an impossible distance it seems to reach out. At least as long as the list of my sins. I can't say if I'll be afraid or not. Consequences of failure are more than tears. You don't know it, but you're already dead.

Feel so restless wanna go go go go go have a list of 13 things I need to do threw it in the air and it slapped the ground for me don't know what the plan is what the game is where the fun is but I'm finding it moving when you tag me and say go ready for the weekend ready for the year ready to launch ready to eat my heart out I found where I'm living and touched base and romance is somewhere nearby when I buy the new carpet wear the new shirt and realize that its all externals that have so little meaning that its funny when I take japanese religion instead of chem lab head hurts blood when there's no more of the ready to be done with stitches and talkers getting up when I'm well enough to make you wish you were me in the mirror and somehow I'm still here in the bedroom waiting for you to stop putting me on hold.  Please hold my calls.  I'm pirating your life.

Okay, here's the so-far with the class registration.   Because sophomores get the litter-runt classes, the backwash of course choices, our only real chance of getting anything good is to wait until late registration and keep on typing ENGL23W003 into the Add/Drop list until it spits out a "You have joined the course".  So that's what I'm up to.

So far, we have...

Engl 206:  Intermediate Fiction Writing - Fulfills a Requirement for my Minor.  My pride and joy for the semester, only 6 members of my noob-Fic class made it to the next level.  This is what I'm most looking forward to this year.

Phil 101:  Introduction to Philosophy - Phil Requirement.  Gotta have one sometime.  Since this semester for me is all about the have-to-get-it-done-sometime-why-not-now classes, I'm taking this gem.  It should be... bah.  Easy, at least.

Amst 110:  Native American History - Post 1700's History Requirement.  I'm actually really looking forward to this one - so much that I don't even mind that it's messing up my "Do everything possible on Tuesday and Thursday and nothing whatsoever on Monday and Wednesday" plan.  I've always been interested in this part of my heritage, but I know so little about it.  I guess when I wrote that story about my great-great-great grandmother was when I realized I wished I knew more about my native American roots.

Ling 101:  Intro to Linguistics - Social Studies Requirement.  This'll take care of my final social science credits and remove me from the realm of anthropology and needless ethnicity gobbletigook forever.  I cannot overstate the uselessness that social studies is to me... it has so little to do with my existence that it's vaguely painful.  That said, I'm so glad that Linguistics falls under the social sciences.  It is my salvation from World Prehistory, Anthropology 101, and What It Means to Be Whatever Ethnicity I Happen To Be.  How that contrasts with my excitement about taking a Native American History course... I'll let you figure.

Reli 199:  Religion in Japan - Social Studies Requirement.  Although this was absolutely the last class I could possibly find for a Soc requirement and still retain some feeling of self-worth, this should be an interesting course.  A last ditch effort it may be, but it sounds like it could be pretty cool - at the least it will allow me to complete social sciences without ever having to take Sociology 101.  I'm happy.

As it stands, I'm satisfied with my classes.  I'm still hoping to switch one of them out for Spanish II, but if I can't, it'll be okay.  I retain some small hope of finagling them all into Tuesday, Thursday and Friday, but I'm not expecting that to really happen.  If it does, I'll be pleasantly surprised.  By the end of this semester, I'll have completed every single random Perspective that UNC forces on its students, and can focus entirely on my core classes, my minor, my languages, and my electives.  Actually, now that I say that, it still sounds intimidating.  Ah well.

15 hours in all.  Not so bad, eh?  I have several things to be thankful for, including:

1.  NO CHEM LABS!!!
2.  NO CHEM CLASSES!!!
3.  NO CHEM LAB REPORTS!!!
4.  NO CHEM TA's!!!

Odd.  You might almost think there was a theme.  A common denominator of some kind.  Something that makes me unhappy that I am elated to avoid.  Hmm... perhaps I'll figure it out later. 

Whew.  I just had my wisdom teeth removed, and I'm delightfully puffy and on fun medicine *and* steroids.  Not the get-kicked-off-the-fencing-team kind, thankfully.  All I remember is trying to sit up after the surgery and various nurses yelling at me to lay back down.  But I wanted to go!  Oddly, they wouldn't let me.  Also, my mom tells me that in the car, I kept waving my hands in the air saying: "It's like, there's air, but there's no air resistance!  See?  Can you feel it?  CAN YOU FEEL IT?!?!"

I had fun.

By this time next week, I'll be packing for UNC!  Yay!

Also, main campus dorms!  Woohoo!

So, goodbye to all my Friendship friends who I've been able to hang out with this summer - it's been great.  Love Ya!

Still in Florida.  For those of you who didn't know I was in Florida... well, I've been traveling all over this summer and haven't told you anyway, so there. 

 

I'm probably going to be staying for a while longer.  Unforseen Grandma difficulties have occurred, leaving her in the hospital almost the entire time we've been here.  She's felt really bad that she's missed our visit.  So we moved our mobile florida-base to the hospital and spent as much time as possible annoying her in her room.  They had to get her a bigger room because we were all sardined in there and the nurses couldn't check her blood pressure and stuff without our elbows in her eyes. 

 

Poor Grandma.  I stayed the night up there with her one night, giving my mom and aunt and grandad a break.  I got to talk to her for hours before she fell asleep.  I fear I won't get to do that many more times.

 

Also:  I was quite vanquished in the annual Flush Tournament Risk game.  I shall no longer be the defender of the Flush Tournament Plunger, although I do get to keep the one from my previous victory.  The game isn't over yet, Tara, Josh, and Taylor are still in the game.  Personally, I think Taylor's got the win - she's holding Austrailia, and Tara and Josh have just expended themselves killing my nomadic mongolian 80-man army.  The nomadic mongolian approach almost worked... had the other players not wanted revenge against me for how awesomely I played them against each other last Flush Tournament.

*Grins*

I just thought I'd put this in here, because an inordinate amount of people seem to have been confused by it.

Five or six entries ago, I posted that God's will for my life was no longer to become a missionary, but instead, to become a 'Cledonomancer'.  Grant me a moment of exposition.

This was sarcasm.  Cledonomancy is an art closely tied to ornithomancy, the divining of the will of the gods through the flight patterns of birds.  Cledonism is the art of chance encounters - you can create your own prophesies by walking down the street, hearing random words and organizing them into a message straight from the gods.  This gives the cledonomancer great leeway in the interpretation of the gods' wills. 

Let me be very clear.  God's will is not for me to be a cledonomancer. 

Nor do I feel, personally, that I could do anything else with my life than some kind of full-time ministry.  Whether that be a missionary, a missionary trainer, a teacher, a writer, I don't know, but that's my goal.  Not ancient pagan mystical arts... even though that is a major at UNC.

Perhaps you can still sense the sarcasm.

My dad and I made Crepes Perisienne for the first time tonight.

Yum.

In other news, Rachel Eschenbach has eyes of doom, my brother is alive and well in the Caiman, and I've come to the very, very end of my Battlestar Galactica series.  Can't wait for it to start up again... ah, Number Six, you are my muse.

Today, every song I listened to touched my romantic's soul for some reason.  (As opposed to my other souls: writer's, warrior's, sluggard's, ninja's, megalomaniac's...) I don't know why.  One interesting thing I've found out about me that I can't identify with other people about:  I'm never lonely.  I have never been completely and utterly alone and wished someone was there with me. Sure, I need other people to keep me sane, motivated, and enjoying life, but I've never been 'lonely'.  Odd thing, that.  They say that one only knows loneliness once one has known love.  But what do they know?

Bah, the clumsitude of a blog! Bares deepest, crunchiest, innermost musings to the world.  Hey, on that note, I had an interesting mini-discussion with Ray the other day about the teenaged angst years.  We both came to them late, he and I.  I speculated that they didn't get into full swing with me until I was 16, and didn't end until I was 18.  He said, nah... 17 at the most.  I suspect though, after thinking about it, that I never had them in the sense that most people had them at all.  'Angst' for most people is that intense, intense feeling of emotional frustration and confusion that manifests itself in their life somehow between 14 and 20... sometimes forever.  Most people manifest it by causing strife in their relationships with their friends and parents, rebelling and being angry and worried - by forever trying to express themselves and failing.  They don't know who they are, why they are, and they don't know what to do about it.

Angst is at it's base a complete lack of peace.  I just never manifested it.  I had a fairly good relationship with my parents that's lasted until today, a great group of friends and self-expression galore.  But looking back, I was the definition of Melancholy/Phlegmatic personality type - I had so much confusion, so much internal frustration that I never, never allowed anyone to see.  Except maybe, maybe my best friend, but only a little of it, and only occasionally.  I hate it when people say "You could never understand me" but honestly, I'm not sure many people could have, because I had a tenuous grasp on it myself.  Like my favorite Dorian Grey line from League of Extraordinary Gentlemen... "What *are* you??" 

"I'm... complicated."

Which movie went on to absolutely murder Dorian Grey's story, by the way.  Sigh.  Such is life.  I had a good life, a good family, even though my parents had gotten divorced, God got me through that.  But so many ideas, so many things pressed themselves on me all the time, happiness and sorrows, hatreds and grey areas, desires and yearnings that were so often in conflict with one another that I could barely keep my head straight.  Complicated.  And not even things that everybody else seemed even remotely concerned about, so I had no one to talk to about most things, really, other than, again, Ray occasionally.

Poor fellow had to put up with a lot, being my friend.  This one time, like the second or third year since he'd come to FCS (our high school), he invited me to... oh, something that had something to do with people from his church, games, and ice skating... was it the WOL Superbowl maybe?  I don't remember exactly, but what I do remember is that he invited me.  It was also the first night I'd ever heard' Sadie Hawkins' Dance' by Relient K.  I embarrased him sooooo much, I know it.  Although he was a great sport.  But in front of all his Mount Vernon friends, and very possibly a girl he was dating at the time, I went out on the ice skating rink, round and round screaming WOOO!!! WOOO!!! COME OUT THIS IS SO FUN!! or something like that.  I concurrently managed to say the most idiotic things in front of all of his friends that I'd never met, and to be fantastically nerdy in general.  By the end of the evening, he must have been sorry he brought me, although he never said a word about it.  I amused myself.

But that has nothing to do with angst.

So, even with my teenaged mental and spiritual complications making my head spin rather consistently, there was still abundant joy there to enjoy life.  It wasn't that there wasn't happiness, there was just... everything.  Too much of everything - joy and incredible, paralyzing melancholy.  I was never un-genuine, I was in fact quite genuine - I just made an effort when I was around other people to make use of the joy and save the messed up crazy stuff for later, where I could lay in bed and lock my door and watch the fan blades spin as I dove into that morass of needs and voices that is my soul.

Until last summer, I never fully escaped... well, escaped is not the right word... controlled?  Got over?  Even that's not entirely true because the same feelings and emotions and thoughts are still there.  But when I was in Curacao last summer, I learned how much God longs to be the peace in our lives.  I'd known God could give peace, but I never really applied it in a tangible, experiential sense.  I never gave enough of myself up to experience it, I guess.

I'm complicated.  So, I guess, is everyone, although surely about different things than I.  But God brings peace to the chaotic, and a balm to the confused and frustrated.  If you walk with Him.  Everyone who realizes that there must be more to life than what we can see, than good and bad, right and wrong, the rules of religion and the morals of our parents - everyone who recognizes that there must be something deeper than experiencing God as our King and Judge - everyone who is complicated by concerns about the nature of life and people and yourself and why... God has peace, and he has that more that we're looking for. 

God makes us unsatisfied and confused so that we go out searching for more.  As Randy Alcorn said, we can only truly lose ourselves and find ourselves in Him.  But its not enough to say it - we have to each of us find that out for ourselves.  I know God's peace, I really, truly do, and this year since Curacao has been the first year in my life since I was saved that I honestly feel like it wasn't one step forward, two steps back.  We'll have to wait and see.  It's an adventure.