written 04.27.09

Guest appearance by my roommate

Someday soon
There will be
An end to chaos
A chance for peace

Someday maybe
Day will break
Kingdoms crumble
The dead awake

You have seen it all
The world come to an end
You start the fire watch it burn
From the ashes you'll return
Moving on
Moving on

Speak the language long forgotten
Of broken chains and laws abolished
Of blood and sweat and tears and heartache
Of life and love and walls demolished

You have seen it all
The world come to an end
You start the fire watch it burn
From the ashes you'll return
Moving on
Moving on

getaway

It's nice to get away sometimes.

"This is the one I esteem: he who is contrite in spirit, and trembles at my word."
-Is 66:2

Having a hard time trembling. I hate numbness.

thorns

"Remember Martin Luther (not the Martin Luther King that gives you a holiday in January, but the original Martin Luther) shared this on his sickbed. He said that the pains and troubles he was going through are like the types which the printers set. As the types look now, we have to read them backwards, and they seem to make no sense. But when they are printed on paper, we shall find them make great reading. The pains and troubles we are going through now may be just backward and meaningless as we see it now, but when the Lord prints them in the life to come, we shall find they make great reading as well."

-Martin Luther via Albert Zhi

Full text here

Die, self.

reset

I wish I could pack everything up and start over in a new city. Too bad I'm such a wuss.

Current state: tired.

therapy

Sometimes therapy involves metal, hammers, and blind rage.

internets

All you need to know about teh internets.
http://knowyourmeme.com

vivid dreams

I usually can't remember my dreams.

#1
I was with my parents in a house haunted by the mute ghosts of Disney characters. We were trying to solve the mystery or trying to get away, I can't remember which. We escape to a huge shopping center, but it is not safe yet. A tidal wave is coming so we run to a barricaded room at the end of a long corridor. Right before the wave hits my dad runs out and sacrifices himself to save my mom and me. Then I woke up.

#2
I was speaking for the first time at ICA rally [which I actually have to do later this quarter] and I was completely and utterly unprepared. It was on some passage in the Old Testament, but I had no idea what I was talking about and was just making it up on the spot. People were shouting out questions and walking around and talking in the middle of everything. I kind of gave up and prayed more earnestly than I thought was possible in a dream. Then I woke up.

Wonder what it means...

sonnet

From the far star points of his pinned extremities,
cold inched in—black ice and squid ink—
till the hung flesh was empty.
Lonely in that void even for pain,
he missed his splintered feet,
the human stare buried in his face.
He ached for two hands made of meat
he could reach to the end of.
In the corpse’s core, the stone fist
of his heart began to bang
on the stiff chest’s door, and breath spilled
back into that battered shape. Now

it’s your limbs he comes to fill, as warm water
shatters at birth, rivering every way.

-Mary Karr [via]

hardest

The hardest things are those which cannot or should not be expressed.

frivolous stuff i read

Jalopnik - auto industry news, funny
Autoblog - auto industry news, serious
Cardomain blog - random car stuff
Bring a Trailer - vintage and interesting cars for sale

Gizmodo - gadget stuff
Engadget - more serious gadget stuff
Lifehacker - helpful tips
Unclutterer - get simple

Harmony Central Forums - music and music gear
Bimmerforums E34 forum - trying to fix car
Digg - useless browsing
FML - more useless browsing

Sometimes I'm shallow.

Bonus:
For those who nod off in class/at work

science is beautiful

[linky]

play the fool

How do I know I'm not fooling myself?

Then the man said, "Your name will no longer be Jacob, but Israel, because you have struggled with God and with men and have overcome."
-Genesis 32:28

[Israel means "he struggles with God"]

man of constant sorrow

I am the man of constant sorrow
I've seen trouble all my days
I bid farewell to ol' Kentucky
The place where I was born and raised.

The place where he was born and raised

For six long years I've been in trouble,
no pleasure here on earth I've found
For in this world, I'm bound to ramble,
I have no friends to help me now.

He has no friends to help him now

It's fair thee well, my old true lover,
I never expect to see you again.
For I'm bound to ride that Northern Railroad,
perhaps I'll die upon this train

Perhaps he'll die upon this train

You can bury me in some deep valley,
For many years where I may lay.
And you may learn to love another
while I am sleeping in my grave.

While he is sleeping in his grave

Maybe your friends think I'm just a stranger
My face you never will see no more
But there is one promise that is given,
I'll meet you on Gods golden shore

He'll meet you on God's golden shore

[from the movie Oh Brother, Where Art Thou]

irvine

Blessings.

ad se ipsum [to himself]

Kierkegaard speaks to my soul.

"What is a poet? An unhappy person who conceals profound anguish in his heart but whose lips are so formed that as sighs and cries pass over them they sound like beautiful music."

"In his youth he built an insane asylum; in his old age he himself has entered it. I say of my sorrow what the Englishman says of his house: My sorrow is my castle. Many people look upon having sorrow as one of life's conveniences."

"I have, I believe, the courage to doubt everything; I have, I believe, the courage to fight against everything; but I do not have the courage to acknowledge anything, the courage to possess, to own, anything."

"Let others complain that the times are evil. I complain that they are wretched, for they are without passion. People's thoughts are as thin and fragile as lace, and they themselves as pitiable as lace-making girls. The thoughts of their hearts are too wretched to be sinful. It is perhaps possible to regard it as sin for a worm to nourish such thoughts, but not for a human being, who is created in the image of God. Their desires are staid and dull, their passions drowsy...That is why my soul always turns back to the Old Testament and to Shakespeare. There one still feels that those who speak are human beings; there they hate, there they love, there they murder the enemy, curse his descendants through all generations- there they sin."

"My life achievement amounts to nothing at all, a mood, a single color. My achievement resembles the painting by that artist who was supposed to paint the Israelites' crossing of the Red Sea and to that end painted the entire wall red and explained that the Israelites had walked across and that the Egyptians were drowned."

"In a theater, it happened that a fire started offstage. The clown came out to tell the audience. They thought it was a joke and applauded. He told them again, and they become still more hilarious. This is the way, I suppose, that the world will be destroyed- amid the universal hilarity of wits and wags who think it is all a joke."

-Kierkegaard, "Either/Or, A Fragment of Life"

The ashes of Ecclesiastes. I would transcribe this entire essay if I could.

work and dreams

Last night I dreamed I got fired and I was actually upset. Kind of surprising.

Oh and check this out. I designed it. It was my first project and my longest running, headachiest design. Nice to be recognized. Oh, and the model a couple pictures down is my co-worker Emily.