Words - so innocent and powerless as they are, as standing in a dictionary, how potent for good and evil they become in the hands of one who knows how to combine them.
-Nathaniel Hawthorne, writer (1804-1864)

I saw this and I had to post it. Something to remember for all of us who write so much of ourselves into these sites.
~~~~
Life is so strange sometimes. You think you have a handle on it by giving it all over to God and that because of this, you are ready for anything. Which is true, in a sense, but some part of you is still surprise at how He has things work. I left for home thinking I had a pretty good idea of how things were going to be during the year, and when I got back I realized that things had changed and I had no clue. It hurt, the knowledge of having lost certainty about a situation, becoming uncomfortable and unsure around people you care about. But in the last week or so, I've found a new friend and renewed already established friendships. And while I am still not sure of how things will work out this year, I'm not going to worry.

School has begun and already I am feeling that there are things I must do. The summer is truly over. During summer I felt no obligations, I was not bound to anyone or anything. Sure, I had to work, but it was (for the most part) a pleasure. I went and did and saw who I wished. Now, I am bound, to my studies and class schedule, to my new job, even to my friends. Burdens I shed for the summer have settled once again upon my heart, things that I thought I could perhaps ignore and they would somehow resolve by themselves. Foolish, dangerous thought.
I spent the last real evening of the summer with the Sprit and Toque, perched on a hillside in the mountains of the surrounding area. I watch the sunset fade and the stars come out. The moonlight was so very brilliant. We spoke of truth and beauty, pain and forgiveness, and most of all Love. After the inquisition of the previous night it was such a relief to be able to speak what had been welling up in me in reply.

Freedom is such and heady and addicting thing, a single sip and it becomes so hard to set the cup down and once again take up one's duties.

I don't want to sleep. I should, I have an early morning and it is rapidly approaching. So why am I still here, looking at this screen, sitting in the corner of my quiet, sleeping house?

I was afraid today, and I could not overcome it. For the first time in a very long while, perhaps even ever, I did not- could not- make myself do what it was I feared. I backed out. The worst part was, I could have done it. I know I could have made myself do it - I just did not care enough. I climbed up and looked over the edge, and I stood there and said 'I can't' and I didn't care. I let my fear control me, and I didn't, and in a way still don't, care. That thought almost makes me sick. But if I were to be up there tomorrow, I would back out again. I hate that knowledge, but you know what, I tell myself that I don't care.

I HATE DIAL-UP!!! Funny, I seem to remember saying that quite frequently before I left home...
However bad the computer situation can be sometimes at school, at least once you do get on, you know you will be online for as long as you want. You don't have to worry about loosing the letter you've been writing for the past hour because the connection suddenly went sour. Ugh...

Now that that's out and off my chest I can move on to what I've been wanting to write since I got back from Sydney. Its not much, but I liked it, and I can still see the subject when I read it. So with no further ado:

(excerpt from letter written 2 Aug 2004)

"The sun is setting out at the horizon. Its out on the right and just ahead, which makes sense considering we're flying toward the southwest. It's slowly sinking, leaving the horizon a rainbow which runs parallel with it. The sky above is so very clear, the ocean below is hazy grey with white cloudy fuzz, stretching away to meet the red of the sunset. The sun's gone now and the colours are almost imperceptibly fading. You've heard of the green flash? It's said you can sometimes see it at the exact moment the sun slips below the horizon. Well up here there is a faint green band in the sky. I wish I could draw or paint, or that I were better with words, then I'd be able to show you what I am seeing. It's such a pity, most of the people around me still have their window shades down. They don't know what they are missing.
I am waiting for the first star. I'll make a wish - and being the practical and pragmatic person I am, I'll forget what it was I wished for in less than an hour. But the star won't forget, it will remember and hold my wish for me until I need it back... And there it is, just where the sky begins to darken to a proper night-time shade.
"Star light, star bright..." You know how the rest of it goes.
The horizon is still changing colours. You know, I think they actually became more brilliant. It's now an almost tawny orange yellow, nearly the colour of a small hot fire. It is so beautifully gorgeous. I'll have to take you on a trip somewhere, someday, just so you can watch the sunset from up here.
Another star has joined the first, about four fingers down and to the left. The southern night sky will be so very different from our own. The blue is deepening and seems to be pressing the horizon for the last bit of colour. The clouds are now glowing with the same shade of red/orange that I've seen cooling lava take and still it changes. Don't presses squeeze the strongest and most potent juice when it is tightest? The sunset is no different.
The red became a rosy warm coral and now is slowly dying. Each time I look, there is a bit less fire, and the band is a bit thinner. The Night sky, with her two stars, has deepened to a soft velvet black, speckled with pinpricks of light, which I can only see by pressing my forehead again the window. There is hardly any colour left now, the rainbow is beset by Lady Night. She is closing in on three sides, unwilling to share her realm with any who properly belong to the Day. A few more minutes and she will have prevailed. But I will have watched it go, slowly and gracefully, knowing it will return with the morrow."

As we drove, the wind swept past my face, calling up unbidden a now familiar ache. It's the same ache I feel when I'm on the trails behind campus or when someone's arms are around my waist. A feeling of both longing and transient security, a desire for something that I can fit no name to and am unable to fully describe. Sometimes I think that this sense of lack is a desire for the Divine, and at others, that it's simply depression. But then it passes, fading out undying like a candle slowly guttering, and I am left wondering what it was I was thinking while in the betwixt and between. My practical self will tell what's left that I am merely feeling self pity for not being able to obtain whatever it was I wanted but couldn't have. But then the ache will return, and I know it's not self pity. At these times, "lost" echoes through the empty space which the ache creates.

I am going home tomorrow. It will be good to be there, to see family and friends. I would be ungrateful if I did not feel so. But the knowledge that I don't belong anymore, and at the same time, that I have been irrevocably formed and will always carry some of it with me, will not be shaken.

We did discuss living vs survival the other night, in the welcome darkness, with our cups of hot drink.  Survival can produce nothing but life, and that alone. The rational soul desires to live, to create, to do something beyond the mere functions of survival. This is the reason for even the most primitive societies have music and dance, art and story. Man has something within him which presses him to do more that simply survive.

I wish I could make this do what I want it to.  I know nothing about web page designing, what am I doing with my own page. It's like having your own flowershop and not knowing anything about flowers or having a cafe and not knowing how to cook. I want to move things around and I can't. My usual method of fixing something is to mess around with it until it either breaks beyond repair (this rarely happens) or I figure it out. But here, its not working. Can somebody tell me how to move the stuff at the bottom of the page (the profile, recent posts, archives and links) to the right sidebar. I just can't make sense of the template. Bother and balderdash...

Crazy for feeling so lonely...

I'm sitting here with Patsy Cline running on repeat through my head. I wish I
paid enough attention to get the whole song stuck, but I've only got a few
random lines.

I just found out that a number of my classmates are not coming back. I knew it
would happen, but somehow this made it sink in. Some I did not know very well,
but a few were friends of mine. It hurts to think that I won't be seeing them
in the fall. Its all very well to hear about people not coming back in other
classes; it's easy to say that it's for the best and whatever else comes to
mind. I'm finding that its another story for dealing with your own class - odd,
how that makes a difference. I've been told it is inevitable, that the trend
will continue. Now I have a better idea of what he meant when he wondered who
in his class would make it to graduation. I guess I can let myself miss them
now...

Earlier today I was listening to the radio and a song came on that made me
start wondering: what is the difference between surviving and living? Just to
hear it, surviving connotes getting by, hand to mouth, making it but just
barely. No time for music, or art, or relaxation; no time for pleasure in
general. You are just too busy keeping body and soul together, as it were.
It seems that life ought to be more than this. I think I will bring this up
while I drink tonight. 

Questions

Why are people nice?
 
Why is dancing fun?
 
Why do people want to grow up? And why do they look down on people who stay like children?
 
Why do some let others annoy them?
 
How do people change? Why do they change?
 
Why do people ask questions they know they will never get a satisfactory answer to?
 
Why does the answer "that's life" make so much, and at the same time, so little sense right now?

 
 I gave a friend a massage last night. Nothing unusual about that, except I felt like I knew what I was doing. I really don't, I just try to do what I think would feel best if I were the one being massaged. This mind set of doing what I would like to have done if I were in their place seems to be my innate guiding philosophy.  It doesn't always work, individual idiosyncrasies manage to get in the way sometimes. I don't even really think about it, I'm not sure I every consciously did.

I'm almost ready for the summer to be over and school to begin. There are so many things on the brink of happening, things I am looking forward to, and others I am not. Work, classes, relationships - Change and changes I can see, that are beginning, or are nearly ready to begin. I feel as though I were poised on the edge of a cliff, about ready to jump into the pool of water below, but not quite there. Only Time will bring me to the edge, and beyond.

What is time? I don't think I want that question answered.

Letter

(written on 17 July. Edited for content)
 
Regarding our ongoing topic, I think you have some good points. Your point about man being composed of both natural and supernatural and only then being fully human sounds true. And the ruling of the lower nature by the higher is definitely true. I still think that there is something to what I am trying to say, I'm just not saying it correctly or fully or whathaveyou. I do agree that responsibility plays a huge role in the growing up process, and it is how the weight of responsibility is handled that determines the grown-up-ness (for lack of a better word) of a person. But it seems there has to be something more...Perhaps I am looking at growing up from an emotional level, when is someone emotionally grown-up? I know people who can handle various tasks and duties wonderfully, but are still not really grown-up. Even maturity is not a guarantee of being grown-up...it perplexes me. I will wonder on it some more.   
 
To throw in another topic for discussion, I've been thinking about ends and purposes. How necessary are ends? Let me clarify, how necessary are definite ends, that you can see and understand? Is there any merit or benefit in working toward an end you cannot see or understand in any way? Or working toward an end that you know to be impossible, at least at this time, if not forever? I keep trying to put order into my life, and I look at the things I do and I wonderwhat am I doing this for. I remember hearing the life of a saint, I think it was St. Philip Neri, who asked a young friend of his why he was doing something and what would happen next. The young man had a ready answer for the first few questions, but the saint kept asking "And then?" Eventually the young man answered that he supposed he would die and the saint said something to the extant of "Exactly! And where will you be having spent your entire life working toward material ends?" I look at what I do and ask myself "To what end am I doing this, where will this leave me?" I know I am to work toward God and His Will, and all my ends are to be in line with His...but its hard for this to transcend from the realm of my head to the realm of the heart...Isn't it odd theway you can know something in your head, know that it is something you ought todo or be doing, and it still be totally foreign to the way you think and act?

Reply to musing of mine

(reply to foregoing letter, dated 13 July. Edited for content) 
 
First, I just want to say that I was of the same opinion as you till I thought about the subject after sophomore year. I'm not so sure that it is the wrong way of thinking in principle, and if it is wrong, I (which I believe it to be now)it is  an error in defintion.The reason I say that is because we are composed of a body & soul, the animal & the supernatural, and that is what makes us human. If we separate the two, weare no longer human. Hence the resurrection after the last judgment. Yeah,we're perfectly happy in heaven w/o a body, but we aren't human, strictly speaking. Then there's the problem of ruling. The higher power should always rule the base. Therefore the animal passions of man, good by its nature (God has that peculiar problem - he can't seem to create anything deficient) should not rule man, who has a higher power. Original sin destroyed the natural order, and we are left struggling. But to say the two should be separated seems to me to bethrowing the baby out with the bathwater; besides, we are no more able to accomplish this violence against our nature than to make a man out of dust, if you take my meaning: God made nature; thus we can only pervert the order of nature, not change it.
------------------------------------------------
I suspect there is no simple answer. What you were calling detatchment I called mastery in my last email, denying that really could be detatchment properly speaking. I still hold to that position. And since mastery is only gained by the denial of one's self, hence what has been called detatchment. (so called detatchment [strictly speaking] appears to be gained by a perverse attatchment. Perhaps that is right, perhaps wrong. It's something to meditate on. It could be, looking back on what I'm saying, that I just take the word detatchment a different way than you, and hence we can be both right. I'm not in a position to argue things straight. However, what I said should at least be food for thought. But an answer to the question every child begs his mom: whenwill I get older? I think common opinion (always a good place to start) has it that you are grownup when you can show yourself responsible. Lack of responsibility is what proves a man to be a child, and responsibility proves a child to be a man. That is why mere children could be entrusted to take care of their mothers when their fathers died, and could fight in the Civil War. That is how boys become soldiers in our military. I can only speculate what responsibility is. Does it come fromthe virtues? which ones? Or does one need merely a certain percentage of virtues to be considered a man.

How, gone?

W is back in town. I have not seen him since school let out. He left without saying good-bye, without a word. After saying that, because of a year of smiles when he needed them and a few acts of kindness, he'd be "my friend forever." I don't doubt we're still friends, but his leaving hurt so much. Why? Because of his (perhaps) careless words, and I believed them, silly and foolish girl that I am. Why did I let it mean so much, why let it matter??? Because I wanted a friendship that was safe, that I could count on not changing around me. When everything else was in danger and changing, I wanted to have someone I knew would be safe. I believed him when he said that anytime I needed someone to talk to or just someone to take me away for a while, that he'd be there. I believed because I wanted to, and then he was gone.
Now W is back and I am not sure how to act. I knew him a year, less really, a school year. I have no claim on him, for friendship ought not to be such a burden. So, lost I was and lost I will remain.

This is another test of the remote publication service...

I am really beginning to wonder if I will be able to get this thing off the
ground. It seems like the establishment is conspiring against me, preventing me
from accessing a computer and the internet. Too many coincidences...
It would be so easy to become a paranoid conspiracy theorist...

Today in History

Today is Bastile Day. Seven prisoners freed, and the entire garrison slaughtered. A truly great day in history, marking the beginning one of the most influential events in modern times, the French Revolution. Vive la France...

Letter...

(This letter has been edited for content. Written on 13 July)

'lo John,

I saw Signs for the first time this evening. It was rather good. I can see why
my dad liked it. The real story was not the one you'd tend to focus on while
watching the movie. The renewal of faith of the main character was the real
plot, the rest was just the manner in which it was accomplished. I don't think
that his faith was really dead or gone, if it had been he would not have been
saying "I hate you" over and over while they were in the basement. His faith
had been thwarted and twisted such that he thought that he really did not
believe anymore. But the Providential asthma attack of his son while the alien
was holding him and his subsequent recovery, was not enough to bring back a
faith that was totally gone. It would have been enough to show him how badly he
was twisted though. Perhaps that was what his wife meant when she told him to
"See" just before she died... (I do hope you've seen the movie, because I've
just given away the end)


Time for a serious topic. What makes a child grow up? What is the difference
between a child and an adult, in the truest sense of the word, not simply
meaning "having achieve a certain number of years". I've been thinking about it
and I thing that it is a level or degree of detachment. Let me explain what I
mean by detachment. To me (how Mr. Collins would be grimacing at this)
detachment means a separation of sense perception and basic feelings from the
intellectual and spiritual workings of the soul. I guess, in a way, its
separating the rational from the animal in the nature of man. (I know I really
don't know what I am talking about when I bring up nature, but I'm thinking
aloud, as it were) Granted this separation cannot be total or men would not be,
well, human. I think of it more like a sieve...Anyway, I think this detachment
is the ability to control how the things you sense and feel affect you on a
deep emotional and spiritual level. (Does this make any sense? I've been
thinking about it for a while, most of the summer, but have not really had to
express it very much. Funny how things make so much less sense once you put
them onto paper or try to explain them.) As a child, the smallest things can
make you cry or be happy. And I'm not saying that we should loose our childlike
qualities. But we have to be able to control them, see what things ought to have
a real and lasting effect and what things ought to be let go of.
I'm still thinking about this, so I will probably be bringing it up again.


And now its late. Good night, God bless.

Sleep is a faithless mistress. She will desert your bed at the first sign of trouble, leaving you to toss and turn in the wakeful darkness of your room. Days later, once you have worried your trouble like a bone, shaken it down and given it some semblance of order, she will return, softly, oh, ever so softly. Gently she will hold you in her arms, arms smooth as marble and soft as fine silk. Sweetly, Sleep will kiss your weary eyes, inviting you to relax and forget the cares you have so tediously worked to reduce to naught. She will caress your face, and run her hands down your neck and over your shoulders. You forget to chide her for leaving you for another, for abandoning you in your hour of need. Gradually, you secumb to the invitations of Sleep and, in the end, rest your head on her breast, forgetful of her infidelity, knowing only that your nightly mistress has returned.

Letters from unknown parts...

This is a test of the remote publication service. Repeat, this is a test of the remote publication service.

 

Baby...newbie...infant...

So I finally did it, after talking about it and thinking about it and prcrastingating to what seemed like no end, I actually made this real. This should be interesting. Some place I can stick all my random thoughts and feelings that I don't want rattling around in my head any more. Perhaps I should have named it the junk box or something along those lines. Names...yes this one is odd. I am not a soldier, not in the conventional sense of the word. It came to me while thinking about Go. To me the game of Go is like a battle, or a series of battles in a war. I am completly lost when it comes to this game, but I keep wanting to become better at it. I've lost every game, badly, and I stopped playing for a while. But I have spent the summer trying to get things together in order to play online. (shrugs) When I think about it, this is the first thing that I've really wanted that did not simply come the first time I tried. Even getting into school, hard though it was, came to me the first time that I tried. So that is the random explaination of where the name is from.
I am sitting a room filled with the silent whir of computers. There is no human sound, other than my breathing in this room...indeed perhaps in this building. Odd in a way.