Prayer

A friend who attended Kyle's church in Waco just told me about this, and I'd like to ask for your prayers for his family and church. Thanks much

Picture

"He looked like one with good original intentions but always with a hint of regret in the corner of his eyes when he smiled; picture the western conception of Jesus had he decided not to die for the world's sin, but instead to get that desk job and let the stress and worries of a wife, kids, and office politics wear away at his hairline."

The Bar

Music now falls into two categories: Everything Else, and Queen's "Good Old Fashioned Lover Boy."

Taylor and the Renegade

Seattle

Split em

My bike story idea:

While I was cruising down Highway 8 (enjoying every piece of chipseal maybe even more than the people in cars next to me losing paint as it rocketed out from between my tires into their doors) a car turned off on a road across both lanes from me on my left. It was a grey, older Hondsubishiyota, and the two people inside looked as if they were arguing. I think I could make out a larger woman in the driver's seat and a smaller man in the passenger. I immediately started thinking about ridiculous scenarios that involved them being a rag tag husband and wife bank robbing team, and that they'd been told by an inside source that a bicyclist on the road is a sign that the authorities are waiting for them in, say Bovill. The arguement they're having is them debating whether or not the cyclist was supposed to be on this road or another, general misunderstandings. They also start wondering if he's just a sign, or if his arrival in Moscow will spring the cops to attention in Bovill. They can't remember.

Meanwhile, our biker has nothing to do with the above plot and is just out enjoying the weather. We'll jump back and forth between the simple wanderings of his mind and the growing tension in the car, until they decide that they'd better do something about him getting back to town. I think that shortening each section as they get physically closer on the road would be a good technique for building tension. They'll be catching up to him from behind, so he doesn't see what's coming at all. I haven't decided what to do with the ending; dying biker ending the story with his continuing thoughts, a last minute decision by the couple to not hit him, maybe just build the tension and leave you hanging?

Mark of Success

A good sermon, in my opinion, is like water that seeps into the small, unnoticed cracks in a seemingly stout rock, that freezes and expands and cracks the stone to pieces in time.

Edub's talk this morning on the pursuit of wisdom and relating it to a young man pursuing a woman seems to be having this effect on me today. We were in Proverbs 4 this morning, and drawing on verse 18 made the comparison with hiking in the wilderness at sunrise. Things that were invisible and unknown to you only minutes before are suddenly in plain view, whether beautiful or terrible. Someone rejecting wisdom is like one in deep darkness, unaware of what they're stumbling over. I know I've seen that in my life; I can look back on less wisdom filled days and remember the stumbles seeming random, invisible, and appearing out of thin air, but with more insight today I can pick out most of the rocks and roots that were hindering me. I feel that it's a continuing process, that in 10 years I'll be able to look back, hopefully with more wisdom than today, and pick out exactly what was tripping me up this afternoon.

I think I easily fall into a way of thinking that tells me that I've got it mostly figured out. That while there is of course more knowledge out there than I could grasp, that I'm doing alright. Then the water starts to freeze, and I'm thankful for it.

Identity

I just took the Trek out for ride in this amazing weather, and it was a great reminder of who I am. At this chapter in my life, I am without a doubt, a jock at heart.

I did have some ideas for stories on that ride, one of them being told from a split perspective. More to come.

Origins

A friend and I were talking about classes to take in order to meet the University required 128 credits. Knowing that he'd enjoyed reading through my Narnia books and a few others, I suggested that he take some literature class his last semester. He responded oddly, I thought, by saying that he can't really see studying literature as being practical. I thought that strange, I said, since you enjoy reading when you have the time, why wouldn't you want to take a class geared towards better understanding texts? "I don't know, I guess when I want to read a book I want to read a theology book."

In one of my literature classes last week, Rick was telling us how things like poetry, art, and literature are the disciplines that reveal God's mark on us, because we're "creating", using our imaginations. He downplayed the sciences as just guys "recording stuff."

My friend is majoring in the sciences at UI, and "practical" is a great way to describe him. I started thinking more about his reason for staying away from literature study in favor of a book on eschatology. It actually fits pretty well, that someone very practically minded who studies "facts" in a textbook and the actual world, would gravitate more towards that style of book. My own opinion is that theology books are great and have a lot to say and a lot to learn from, but my preference is to become aware of culture, the world, the people in it, Scripture, and it's impact on the previous, and form my own theology. I don't want this to sound like a slam, but it seems that the more "practically minded" scientific is more used to having the facts laid out in front of them and just worrying about memorizing that light travels at 186,000 mps. Or they like having a strict formula to plug variables into to arrive at the practical conclusion. For the most part, I'd rather not be told what to think about God, but see what His creation, all of it, not just theologians, tells me about Him.

Answer?

In regards to my last post, I was reading Lewis's "The Four Loves" at the Kenworthy tonight, and came across something that spoke directly to my question. From the fount of wisdom itself: "When two people who thus discover that they are on the same secret road are of different sexes, the friendship which arises between them will very easily pass - may pass in the first half-hour - into erotic love. Indeed, unless they are physically repulsive to each other or unless one or both already loves elsewhere, it is almost certain to do so sooner or later."

I'm not sure i agree with old Clive on this one. There has to be something besides utter repulsiveness or previous engagement that dissuades two "friends" from slipping into eros. ???

Attraction

What's the deal with attraction to members of the opposite sex? Is it {Pretty} + {Interesting} = Attractive? A better question: Is it possible for someone to be both pretty and interesting, yet not attractive to you? I feel like it's this mathematical impossibility, something you can't get around. Stupid.

Evil

Most of my stories and ideas usually paint some kind of pitiable character that the reader usually can easily sympathize with. I've been reading a lot of Shakespeare lately where he creates really really hateable characters. My teacher tries to look at characters like Falstaff and Richard III as either comically evil, or complex evil, but never just plain bad. I see them more in a straight up bad dude way, and that's the kind of person I want to have a story focus around. Maybe not someone killing their siblings and children to gain the throne of England, but something closer to home that just makes you despise a person.

My first thought for this was of a group of roommates who use a white board to keep track of who owes who what. Jesse takes care of most of the bills, so everyone is usually owing him money on the board. Jesse asks Travis if he wants to make $10 by cleaning up his bike for him. Travis agrees and cleans up the bike. Bills have come in, and instead of taking off $10 of what Travis would owe, Jesse adds $10 to everyone else's, making it look like Travis owes ten less. Things like that, he's not a jerk upfront, just really sleazy and sneaky behind the scenes. I haven't thought much about whether or not he'll get caught and whupped or just keep getting away with it.

Restrained

The idea of a college kid in a low-level philosophy class who's permanently unable to speak struck me as an interesting idea for a story. The thought of it came to me while I sat in my low-level philosophy class wishing that others were permanently unable to speak.

I was actually thinking about the different directions that could take. Would the kid have some kind of quiet, incredible insight that his mouthy classmates lack? Is his rage just building and building with every minute that he can't yell out "It's like in the Matrix.....!" That might be a nice way of illustrating how we all think we have something to say, but that we're restrained from doing so, and when we finally get the opportunity, we make jackasses out of ourselves.

Our character here is unable to speak, but I'm imagining that he has a rarely used kind of speak-what's-typed machine with which he utters his epiphany, either for the class's edification or his own humiliation. More to come.

Marriage

Another interesting thing about Chapter 7 of 1 Corinthians is that it's where the early church formed their idea of marriage being a kind of shameful consolation prize, below the virtue of celibacy. Paul really seems to push the single idea in this Chapter, and makes it sound like "Well, if you can't control yourself, there's always marriage.....not that there's anything wrong with that...." But that fact that he puts them in that order, and points to the example of himself being single a few times tips the scales a bit. I read something brief about the change in that mentality during the Protestant Reformation, I believe, in a great book about Shakespeare. If if find it, I'll post my findings, since I'm not too sure when or why the shift occured.

Mmmmm, Context

Just found out something interesting in a Bible study going through 1 Corinthians at the Big Haus. Towards the end of chapter 7, Paul makes a strange comment seemingly about a father giving away his daughter in marriage and how it's better for him to keep her a virgin. An alternate reading can look like it's better for an engaged couple to stay unmarried if the man can control his desire. Either reading is weird, and neither seems to make much sense. And then the Evan Wilson context kicks in. Turns out there was this "celibate living arrangement" practice called sub interducti (sp?) in the early church in which a man and woman lived together, unmarried, and refrained from sex. The intention was to have the assistance and companionship of a spouse, but to keep your thoughts and actions pure and "towards God", by staying chaste. The things you learn in Moscow, I tell you what....

So Paul seems to be instead referring to this wacky living situation, when he says that if any man feels he is acting unbecomingly towards a Christian daughter, let him marry, he does not sin to do so. But he adds that it's better (in sub interducti) for them to remain celibate and chaste.

Trust

So I just had a conversation with a guy who used to have my bosses position at the theatre I work at. I was telling him about how the place has gone downhill, and isn't living up to half of it's potential as a small, independent cinema. We had a good talk and afterwards I realized that, while I had known Jerry before tonight, it seems that he would place much more trust in me because we shared these common grievances.

For some reason my mind is usually turning towards unpleasant things to write about in stories. Any twist that I think of, or theme, or character type is something uncomfortable, cruel, or twisted some other way. What I was thinking about tonight was a story that takes tonight's situation, but playing up my character as someone intentionally gaining trust with the end result of using it to hurt. I'd definitely want to spend most of the space on the reader seeing me talking with Jerry, with no other intent obvious on the outside. A closer reading should reveal little hints that I was planning this all along, and that I'm just that evil of a guy. No conscience nagging him about completely misleading this guy, just calm, calculated manipulation.

I haven't settled on how I hurt in the end, but I probably won't go into much detail, I just want it to have the shock of realizing what I'd been doing the whole story was a lie.

I (matt the writer) will probably not write this in the first person, I just used "I" and "Jerry" to remember what the original idea was.

Squirm

So this idea of a wonderfully awkward scene came to me a few weeks ago on the farm. I've really been writing a short story that tells of a youngish guy's day to day life away from his home town. He keeps in touch with a high school friend sporadically, and in one of these messages tells him about a girl he's possibly interested in. The girl has to have a fairly unique name, one that would be certainly identifiable in a small town. A few years later, the girl has met and married another guy in town, and this friend comes to visit Youngish. In a small group setting which includes girl's husband, Friend is catching up with Y. and happens to ask something like, "So, whatever happened with you and Girl?" Gut-twisting awkwardness ensues.

What I need to work on is giving the guy the type of personality that would obviously be mortified at the end. Maybe by portraying him as someone who doesn't talk much about his interests in the opposite sex very much, making this such an unlikely event to happen to him. Still debating whether the story continues beyond a few lines after the bomb is dropped.

Mold me

So it's a little early for school griping, but what the hell. I'm sitting in my Geography 100 lab, struggling to grasp the concept of the Coriolis effect in regards to air travel. My grad student teacher comes over, and basically fills in the answers for me. When I ask about the mechanics of it, since they still remain obtuse to me, she dismisses the importance of "actually knowing how it works." I offer my understanding of the effect, and she replies that it makes sense, but that she's been taught to teach this way which she admittedly doesn't understand and therefore can't explain to me.

What is the point of these "rounding you off/making you a better person" required classes if we can't have basic, 100 level material explained to us? The only rounding off going on is of my respect for the education system.

It Begins

At 9:09 on a Monday night in Moscow, I enter the world of blogging. I'm sure if it didn't have such an ugly sounding name I'd feel as if I were doing something much more academic and artistic. I think my first goal that I'd like to see realized in this is to write freely with as little editing as possible. For example, I've already deleted and re-worded two sentences in this post. I'd like to see less of that. As far as where I'm going thematically, I have no set guidelines right now. I've been wanting to get ideas for stories written down somewhere, and this will most likely be a storage of plots, twists, awkward moments, themes, one-liners, frustrations and other bits of things I'd like to put together into to cohesive stories. There's an off chance that I'll be expressing my digust with things going on in my little world from time to time as well, but don't worry, probably 97% of the people who read this won't recognize any of the context that I'm griping in (ie, you won't hear a lot about the President from me). That being said, I think I'll close and hit the sack with intentions of an early rise when I plan to destroy some homework.