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July 31st, 2009
01:35 am - Suddenly, everything has changed...
It's approaching a year since I've updated. The absence has little to do with a lack of things to say, I assure you. Rather, it is a combination of no free-time, no adequate computer, and no audience.
...then I happened to find myself in a familiar place. Unable to sleep, sitting in a dark room listening to folk-music philosophers with the harsh glow of a computer screen reflecting from my glasses. Of course, many things have change between then and now. The dark room is in a different locale, a different state...physically as well as mentally and emotionally. Instead of being alone, I can hear the soft snore of a dear friend behind me. He is far away at the moment, probably navigating through a nonsensical screenplay in his mind. A completely different life has begun to transpire.
Yet it hasn't. At least, not completely.
Because at one point in these wee hours of the night, as I turned around to see the synthetic grays and blues cast shadows over the bed in which my sleeping companion dozed, I could not help but feel at home. Instantly I was reminded of a sultry summer night, hearing a sigh next to me as I traced with my eyes the Christmas lights that lined her garden apartment window. I started to remember the way her sun-kissed skin seemed pale in the light of the blue screen after the DVD had finished playing. The taste of the nights drinks becoming stale my tongue. I could feel the beautiful absurdity of two confused souls dancing together without words, frolicking through the uncertain roads ahead of both of them.
It was then that I realized that it doesn't need to feel safe to feel like home.
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September 15th, 2008
02:38 pm - Greetings From Chicago!
So, as many as you may know, I am officially a grad student!
I know, right?!
Seriously though, I cannot get over how quickly this all transpired, and how happy I am to be in the place that I am. It's so exciting to have the opportunity to further my education...especially in a field as exciting and promising as CLS. I'm really starting to think that I've found my niche.
Another point. I am perpetually astounded at the outstanding student services at Rush University. As much as I love/loved Iowa, this school doesn't force me to jump through the inane hoops that the U did. Case-and-point: Financial Aid. Seriously. Me. A.J. Kaufman. Talking about financial aid and not wanting to cry about it. I had no idea that an educational organization could be so outstandingly helpful in meeting financial needs. I almost want to buy them a present.
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July 14th, 2008
02:13 am - God's Selective Disasters
*Disclaimer*
I am not writing to piss people off intentionally. Nor am I writing this to criticize any particular religious group (though the story requires that I mention a few by name) Rather, this is nothing more than my attempt at sharing a recent meditation with you all. Word.
God's Selective Disasters
It's no stretch to say that I was once a religious guy. This former state of being manifested itself in several ways. In fact, my spiritual past prior to my discovery of Agnosticism was an ever-changing spiral of "truth-seeking": Child-like Belief, Penecostal Fanaticism, Back-slid Penecostalism, Penecostal Fanaticism Part Deux, Feigned Atheism, Born-Again Christianity, Five-Point Calvanism, Liberal/Progessive Christianity, Apathetic Christianity, Full-blown Agnosticism.
That's it in a nutshell. Long story short, I have experience with Christianity, in many of its 57 flavors. (OK, so there aren't 57 flavors of Christianity...I told you all: My love of Ketchup runs deep)
Early in college, I was still holding onto Christianity as my guide to figuring out the mysteries of the world. I considered myself to have been "saved", to have been "born again". Indeed, meanderings about religion filled up the majority of my thoughts (one need look no further than my past entries...*shudder*) Like any good Christian boy, I tried to plug myself into a good Christian youth group in order to recharge myself spiritually. My search led me to the ultra-trendy University of Iowa youth group, 24-7. I was awe-struck the first time I attended the event. The people on-stage were attractive, vibrant, energetic...and they played some pretty rockin' tunes (I always have been a sucker for good music). I started attending a weekly Bible-study group and I lived my life as a card-carrying member of Born-Again America.
It should be noted, though, that I never completely believed everything that was tought. Not just in 24-7 or Parkview Church (the Evangelical-Free church that sponsors the group.) To be fair, even though I might have claimed it from time-to-time, I never really did believe that I was supposed to live my life by the words of the Bible in a verbatum fashion. In fact, I never could reconcile some of its words with the world as I saw it. Often times I would find myself verbally disagreeing with the Bible as taught by those in the pulpit. I never did understand how God could condemn a person for failing to follow the religion of a people half-a-world away from him or her. I never could figure out the "problem of evil" and how God could truly be Omniscent and Omnipresent while retaining to be truly Benevolent (I mean, think about it. If God were actually outside of time, then He/She/It/Them would have had knowledge about how everything would go down on Earth. This would mean that He/She/It/Them would have created Satan, man, etc. knowing full-well that we were going to end up sinning and therefore suffering. I'm no geometry expert but if the transient theory is true, Christian God made sin and suffering)
There should be little suprise, then, that my skeptical nature would show itself from time to time. One particularly warm evening, I was attending the low-key, intimate summer version of 24-7. I cannot remember the central theme of the words spoken to us, but one of the most common messages that the pastor repeated was the fact that God sometimes uses disasters to get our attention. He gave an example. Hurricane Katrina, for example, was a horrifying disaster that took many lives and ruined many, many more. "What good can come from wiping out an entire area?" the pastor wondered aloud. He explained further. God, you see, hated New Orleans. OK...he didn't exactly hate New Orleans, but he did hate the sin that was thriving there. The pastor went on to inform us that not only does/did the city have a history of voodoo practice, but it also has/had a sizeable GLBT community (gasp!). He pointed out the fact that the hurricane made landfall a week before the Southern Decadence festival, the gay community's version of Mardi Gras. It couldn't be more obvious, the pastor explained. God was getting our attention! Those silly queers made God angry! Homosexuality caused the devistation!!!
Needless to say, I was outraged and was not the least bit hesitant to make my opinion known in the small groups that followed the main message. "That's bullcrap!" I can remember thinking aloud, much to the chagrin of my fellow 24-7 patrons. This made no sense to me, at all. I could not figure out for the life of me why nobody was backing me up on this one. I mean, sure, Christians tend to be a little on the homophobic side (though I've found that this is usually demonstrated in a homoerotic way...I digress), but still...why would God do such a thing.
It wasn't until this summer, the summer of 2008, that I figured out why He/She/It/Them would indeed do such a thing. The devistation in New Orleans was an obvious repercussion of a city living in sin. He/She/It/Them obivously wanted us to read inbetween the lines created by the debris strewn by Katrina. It was all symbolism, of course! Certainly a disaster is justifiable if it's a part of God's divine plan of saving the flock and drowning the rest!. God, according to some I've heard teach, is found in every disaster and He/She/It/Them is/are shrouded in a cloud of symbolism! Just like the floods of 2008 in Iowa City and the surrounding area. When the water of the Iowa River began to rise and mud began to creep into the halls of Parkview Church it became clear what was happening. God was unhappy with the church's expansion project. Apparantly, megachurches do not please Him/Her/It/Them. God had ruled with a heavy hand and wanted it to be known: "Build not ye megachurches, or I shall flood them like the queers in New Orleans!"
It doesn't take a genious to figure out that I obviously don't believe this is the case. It's hard for me to imagine that God would reveal His/Her/Its/Their disapproval of a particular group by ruining the lives of several hundred people. Especially a group like Parkview Church who has helped touched thousands of lives with their generosity during disasters like Hurricane Katrina. God would never use a disaster against His/Her/Its/Their own people...why would that make sense?
But there-in lies the problem. God, it seems, uses disasters selectively. At least, that's what most of modern Christianity would lead you to believe. It stands to reason that if God wants to get the world's attention via natural disasters, then He/She/It/They would do so universally. All disasters would and should be open to interpretation. This isn't the case, of course. In fact, I believe that if there IS a God the exact opposite is true; God NEVER uses disasters to bring attention upon himself/herself/itself/theirselves. Maybe I'm simplifying matters a bit, but it seems to be that man aligns his Gods to mirror his own desires. In a way, when man attributes the death/misery of a particular group of people to God, he is really expressing his own desire to rid the world of those who think and live differently than himself.
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May 12th, 2008
12:11 am
I think about you
When all evening trees
Are inkblots upon
Midnight blue canvas
And you hide within
Mind-shadow saftey,
Teasing from afar.
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April 24th, 2008
03:45 am - Blue Like Jazz
When I came home from school today, I noticed a large, yellow package-type-envelope sitting on the table where my roomates and I usually set the mail. I was a bit surprised to see that it was addressed to me. Upon opening it I realized that it was a care-package from Second Reformed Church in Fulton. Inside was a copy of the book "Blue Like Jazz". It's a book that I had heard a bit about but was unsure of its specific contents. Like I do with most books, I surveyed it to get a quick synopsis; on the bottom of the front cover was a brief description:
"Nonreligious thought on Christain Spirituality"
At first, I was turned off. I really didn't want to spend any of my increasingly rare free-time on what I assumed to be one man's personal experiences with fairy tales. On the other hand, I thought, it was a very kind gesture of the church to purchase a copy and send it to me.
I didn't plan on reading it right away, but an exam tomorrow morning had me up late studying and drinking coffee and I found myself unable to sleep. After about a half-hour of tossing and turning I figured "what the hell" and I gave it a shot.
I finished it in about an hour and a half. And, no, I didn't have a spiritual reawakening. I will give the author a little credit, it was the most honest book written from a Christian perspective that I have ever read, and it was refreshing to hear some of his opinions about Christianity in terms of social justice and politics. I'll admit that I was taken aback by the fact that he didn't hate on Liberals (at least not blatantly). And I found myself agreeing with some of his sentiments, especially his feelings about attending church.
There was one chapter that struck me in a strange way, however. The chapter was titled "Belief". At the beginning, the author says:
"Sooner or later you just figure out there are some guys who don't believe in God and they can prove He [sic] doesn't exist, and some other guys who do believe in God and they can prove He [sic] doesn't exist, and the argument stopped being about God a long time ago and now it's about who is smarter, and honestly I don't care. I don't believe I will ever walk away from God for intellectual reasons. Who knows anything anyway? If I walk away from Him [sic], and please pray that I never do, I will walk away for social reasons..."
I don't disagree with this entire sentiment, per se. In fact, I whole-heartedly believe that most people that spend the bulk of their time arguing for or against the existence of a diety are doing so to prove that they can win a pissing contest, of sorts. He and I see eye-to-eye in that regard. I also think that disagreeing with Christianity (or any other religion, for the matter) because of social principles is a valid reason to do so. What struck me as odd about this passage, however, is the apparant disdain that the author has for logic, as if logic is some pestilent nuisance to be avoided at all costs.
I guess what I'm saying is this passage exemplifies one of my major qualms with religion, Christianity in particular: It's haughty and circular. Because it lacks any emperical way of legitimizing itself, it seeks to destroy the very nature of logic itself. In reading the book, and this part in particular, I've decided that theology is no more than the art of manipulating language in such a way that life, truth, and all of the questions that plague mankind can only be interpreted a rigid paradigm. I'm not saying this to disprove God or whatever, but I'm more or less saying that it's pretty easy to understand why religion can catch fire like it does. It provides a means of going into a mode of existential auto-pilot. And I get it...who wants to deal with logic? It's linear and without end. I can understand why people would rather jump into a safe circle of reasoning.
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April 8th, 2008
04:35 pm - Things are just a bit nicer over some coffee...
Tuesdays are my long days.
Every Tuesday I wake up early (and I use the term in its strictest college-usage) and walk to school. It usually takes me about a half-an-hour to get there, and I'm usually late. But I'm full of excuses, so my perpetual tardiness usually goes unnoticed. Today it was raining and Sarah drove me, so I was able to finish most of an interesting program on NGEO about a mid-air plane collision in Germany. It was a bit disturbing, but incredibly engrossing. I found it odd that I hadn't even heard of the disaster. It then occured to me that my ignorance was most likely due to this country's stark indifference towards events in the rest of the world. I shuddered at the thought.
Every Tuesday, at 2:10, I start a rather long break. I live further off-campus this year than ever, so I tend to stay on campus once I've managed to get there. Since my next class isn't until 6:30, I usually occupy this time in one of three ways:
1.) Hanging out with Nicole and gossiping the afternoon away.
2.) Finishing homework, errands, and tying up any loose-ends that need to be dealt with.
3.) Playing on the computers in the student union and finding new and interesting music.
Every Tuesday is the same, except for today. Today I was under the assumption that a good chunk of a paper about the biology of aging was due. Because my internet at home has been down for over a week, I was unable to verify the assignment online. When I finally got to the union, I found that "a good chunk" was actually a brief summary paragraph. Bored and looking for a way to entertain myself, I started looking through some of my past journal entries. Specifically I was looking through my poems to see if there were any that I could not remember archiving on my hard-drive at home. In doing so I stumbled upon a series of entries that made me wince. There have been many ups and downs in my life, and part of the joy and curse of keeping a journal is being able to conjure up memories since forgotten. Sometimes it's good to forget temporarily, but I'm not sure if it's ever good to do so forever. For even though the memories were sad, angry, and maybe even a little confused, it helped put recent events into a different sort of perspective. Specifically, it helped in wading through the meaning of a drunken sentence that was uttered by yours truly this past weekend. In any other social setting, the words would've been muffled by the intoxicated cacophony that surrounded me. Unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately) Megan was there to call me out. At any rate, the words stuck with me and have darted around my thoughts from time to time. And the sad words from my past made blurry words clear once more.
Current Music: Death Cab For Cutie - "Wait"
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April 7th, 2008
03:13 pm - An experimental poem
this alcohol tongue
has cristal dream
has hawkeye cheap
has slur-word truth
has fancy fake
has tale-spin twist
has forward fierce
has bubble splash
has coffee burn
has sexy romp
has lonesome limp
has poet taste
has slacker waste
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March 7th, 2008
12:58 am - Haven't come up with a title yet.
If I had my way
Fog would roll in every evening
At 8 pm, maybe.
It would be thick,
Dense enough to envelop
The rays that you shine
From across the room.
We wouldn't need a horn,
And we'd have no worry
Of losing our way.
Trash T.V. could be
Our lighthouse,
And its shallow beams
Would help us avoid,
The world's most jagged rocks.
And we'd remain immersed
Until, at last, it cleared.
If I could only have my way
The fog would never cease to be
And I'd never again be forced to say
I wish you were here with me.
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March 4th, 2008
04:02 pm - People don't dance no more, they just stand there like this...
This past weekend might have been among the most fun in my entire life.
It all started with a mad dash Friday night with Radhika to finish getting ready for Tara's wedding in Springfield, IL. We frantically searched for a salon willing to take us as walk-ins to make sure that we both got pretty-fied enough to at least look somewhat fierce the next day. From there, we sprinted to Olive Garden where we had a fabulous meal with Sarah for her birthday and we went out to the Vine afterwards. Long story short, I ended up drinking/staying out for way longer than I had anticipated. Megan and I went to a concert at the Yacht Club and she proposed to me. All was well and good until the plastic came apart and my ring broke. We took it as a sign and decided that we would postpone any further plans of engagement...at least until we fixed the ring. :*)
The wedding itself was a blast. Megan, Paul, Ana and I drove down to the boonies together. Somehow we managed to get everyone (all 12+ of us) to the same location in one piece and relatively on-time. The ceremony was absolutely gorgeous, and Tara looked like she could've been on the cover of a bridal magazine. Srsly. The reception was hoppin'...great food, great drinks, great people (terrible D.J....the only complaint of the night). I was beyond impressed by some of Tara's friends from Springfield. They were very easy to get along with and they sure knew how to have a good time. The hotel was very nice, especially for the price, though I suppose I wasn't really there for a heckuva long time. While there, I made two extremely fabulously fierce friends, Alex and Deshawnee. They were both beyond fantastic and we simply must plan a reunion of sorts in the near future. Perhaps I can convince them to venture up to this neck-of-the-woods to party it up in the I.C. with the Gill-Stones (by the way, that's officially what I'm calling you two, Tara. pretty much the coolest name EVER) and all of the Iowa gang.
I'll probably comment more later, I should probably get studying for an exam coming up at 6:30. heh.
Current Music: The Rapture - "Whoo! Alright - Yeah... Uh-huh"
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February 25th, 2008
11:57 pm
We found that,
When the lines
Disappeared,
Heaven is a rock
And Jesus is in
The summer haze which
Gathers above Dodge Street.
And we are the saints
Who preach
With the haze
In our haze
And drink salvation
In the park.
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