I wonder if I can go a day without speaking... I probably can't, because I can hardly update my blog without incessant rambling. But that's kind of what you're here for, isn't it?
Through the years, I've noticed what activities I can perform that directly have a beneficial effect to my mood. Tonight, I performed very many of those things, with avail to a certain extent.
Here I am, however.
I don't regret the activities because they are healthy and elemental and part of the Lord Almighty's covenant with me as a human. They've only benefited my existence in its many facets, but I was foolish to think that they would have resolved my evening. My evening cannot be resolved because it is over and done with. My actions, and reactions, are without regret and I cannot help where I am because of the events that took place.
I've heard of some people that are able to tell/convince/manipulate themselves, their minds, of how to feel... and I can't decide whether I envy them that ability, but I have never been able to and I don't think I ever will.
I just re-read the sentence, "My actions, and reactions, are without regret and I cannot help where I am because of the events that took place," and thought to myself, "What a pompous and dramatic person you are." I am without excuse, dear reader, and I apologize.
Here I am, however and I'll see you around soon. You may notice that I won't be speaking as much. Day of Silence? Just one day.

We spent eleven hours filming today.

I got out of class at 2:50 and headed to library to pick up equipment and peoples and arrange last minute pick ups for additional props and missing items. For a while, I had both cell phones going (we recently switched networks from Alltel to Verizon and I still have my old phone activated through the end of the month, and because the old number is still how people know to find me) and had supporting actor, assistant head-of-crew, magician and good friend Justin Meissner play assistant to me.

That was really great. I felt like Meryl Streep.

I don't want to relay the entire night, hour-by-hour here because it will all start again, with more complex scenes and stunts (!) and so forth in a matter of hours... and the initial high I was riding one when I got back to my apartment, now about half an hour ago, is wearing me down and I'm beginning to collapse. That energy at the end of the day, after going several, several hours swinging... what to do with that last energy? I'm lucky I caught a few friends up before they retreated to their beds, if just to say hello and goodnight and so forth.

I'm crazy about it.

We're on our way, and I'll be much more gushy and explanatory and specific when we've completed our task - I'll spell out every person involved and, by then, we'll be raising our glasses and dance and dance and dance and collapse in happy exhaustion. And we'll have fun getting there too because even though the cold was deadly tonight, in the early AM hours, when we were filming our last scene of the day, outside, I was bouncing in place, trying not to make noise, because of how perfect the scene was coming together.

More later, I promise. It will make sense later.

Goodnight.

I overheard Dan Davis talk about a Day of Silence... for poverty this evening. Justice Matters and Creation Care hosted a pot-luck dinner and we were seated on the outside and inside of a... I guess you could call it a long, skinny U. I was on the inside. Dan and Nealio on the outside. I was (probably) distracted at the time by Betsy's giggle but I caught the end of their conversation and, ashamedly - though I don't think he saw it - I smirked in uncontrollable initial reaction. Obtain some cheap t-shirts, write DAY OF SILENCE on them and, for one day, be silent... to raise awareness and reflect on the reality of poverty around the world, and to protest the oppression and injustice. I get it. It's a good idea. Awareness is the first step to action and restoration. I believe this. I believe in this.

But there was a day like this at my old high school in Michigan. I was a sophomore and I had been in the Forest Hills schools for five years then and had seen geeky, uncoordinated peers (some friends, others not) grow into their what-have-you high school interests - playing the bass guitar! and, all of a sudden, wearing a whole lot more make-up and a lot less shirt. Why not? To be blunt about it, there was a group of unpleasant people and they grew to embrace it. Fine. Sure. Find other grouchy, moany, ugly people and you have stability and acceptance in the unwieldy machine that is the public school system.

There was a day, then, that these kids caught on called DAY OF SILENCE... for oppressed gays and lesbians... and bisexuals, or what have you in your lustful thoughts. Yes, the words fag and dyke was thrown around callously in those halls. And the alliance for said demographics (I forget the initialism... LGBSA... ?) had been set in place the year before, so it would make sense that they would... "Obtain some cheap t-shirts, write DAY OF SILENCE on them and, for one day, be silent... to raise awareness and reflect on the reality of [homophobic harassment] around the world, and to protest the oppression and injustice." Again, I get it.

Except that these kids were smiling, chatting, raising their hands in class, and kicking their heads back in that obnoxious, "I don't care, but I care so much," laughter that attention-starved kids do in high schools across America. Their shirts had SILENCE crudely printed in black, against white t shirts, and they were still gabbing in the hallways. You'd think that there would be one rule, one job for that day. Just the one day.

Do I think a DAY OF SILENCE is an effective means to raise awareness for poverty? No, but it would be a good day - just one day - for us to shut up and spend our existence in reflection. We've been told that poverty exists. Some of us have probably even seen it in some urban city. But we don't have the financial or strategic means to significantly fight it. Our students visit the Gospel Mission and write letters to Congress and the House of Representatives and plead for more volunteer opportunities and head up clubs for Justice and Creation, and we must, and we must do more.

What's more terrifying than asking your subject to read what you've written?
The movie Coraline, and a few other things but not a lot of other things.

What's more encouraging than hearing their laugh and seeing their smile as they read?
Running against the treacherous wind with only the stars to light the way, and then turning around at the end of the path, beaten but aided with that same wind. That comes close.

I've been told that they need leaders in Indonesia... and just that they thought to tell me this, that they need leaders, is also encouraging. And it leads me to ask how I could possibly be capable of fostering growth, or instilling confidence.

Frankenstein or The Modern Prometheus by Mary Shelley

God's Plot and Man's Stories by Leopold Damrosch, Jr.

The Question of God: C. S. Lewis and Sigmund Freud debate God, Love, Sex and the Meaning of Life edited by Dr. Armand M. Nicholi, Jr.

Paradise Lost by John Milton

To be completely immersed AKA obsessed with a subject... say, to have put in the all-nighters and strains on relationships and headaches and library fines and assignments to be acknowledged as, say, the world's most notable Proust scholar... that's something I'm a little ambivalent about. It's something I'm wary about.
But are we driven by dissatisfaction? Are we or aren't we?
Maybe not wholly, but anyway... I think this happens to a larger degree when I meet new people and give them the basic data about my being (Junior at Dordt, majoring in English Writing, on Student Gov't workstudy, take electives in video and photography, interested in food - both creation and consumption, born in Michigan, living in Iowa etc.) But I always wonder how those initial pieces of information will affect their mental synopses of me. What do I subscribe to? What do I take notes on? What music do I listen to? What are my favorite books and movies? What was the best part of my Spring Break?
The challenge of trying to be a(n) artist, writer, photographer, cook, scholar is that I want to be completely immersed... in all those things. Shit. Yes, yes - being good at one makes me better at the other, I got it.
Anyway, dear friends... here's to the exalted bliss of the journey, and the submission in its closing, to open beds upon our arrival back, to our desks that are just as haphazard as the way we left them, to the vulnerability that our loved ones have on us, to cold vodka and spiced rum that will be legal in a little more than a month, to conviction, motivation and steadfast prayers to battle the tough days, to the things we won't say and to open days, in which to do as we will.

I'm having difficulty realizing that we're on break now. It's slowly solidifying into my head, but maybe it will hit me in the morning. I'm under the same roof as my brothers and tomorrow will be lunch, followed with more friends and a complete immersion into the other life. OK. So I feel a bit stretched thin, and having had safely, successfully made the great escape here, I still feel like I walked into a storm.

I'm leaving soon to take my test in Later British Literature.

Having the Lion King soundtrack in my head probably won't help, but it's likely in my head because of the dream I just had... which probably won't help either. Oh well.

Tomorrow, we'll head towards Chicago. In between now and then, some things have to be done. Whoop!

The entire sky was one giant soft-box of rainy light, diffused evenly for us to see the wet pavement and the wedding guests, hunched over their umbrellas, dashing into the building. Five groomsmen, two fathers, a priest, an usher and the groom - all in brown tuxes, sitting around a table of home baked cookies, bagels, grapes and carrots that went mostly untouched - waiting for the ceremony to begin, watching the minutes pass.
Jacob, soon to be Piper's husband, was calm and looked younger than I had ever seen. Having had shaved his beard and let his hair grow long, I felt like I had just met him again in some small, conservative Christian school where the kids were late to first period because they were loading hogs with their dads.
And yet, there we were.
I am twenty years old, and it was the seventh wedding I'd been to since graduating from high school. The room was dim - the lights were off in the building, and I imagined what it be like to photograph the men, and boys, in their tuxes, lit from the soft glow of the rain outside. Sitting, sprawled in our chairs, maybe a little anxious, but not too much, sharing a few laughs and mostly, steadily, wrapping our minds around the coming situation.
We will walk out of the room and down the hallway. The band will play. We'll line up and walk each other down, through the room full of people that we know, or knew, and (for me) have trouble to keep from smiling, laughing, waving. In a matter of moments, they will be married.
And then they were. Piper walked down the aisle with her father and Jacob received her. I saw the look in her eyes and, later, was told about the look in his, and we were all near the edge of blubbering tears.
Who can explain such things?

-

1) The line "We're free to fly the crimson sky. The sun won't melt our wings tonight." from an album I bought several years ago, by a band that I loved like you do when you're thirteen years old. Driving back today, from Traer to Sioux Center, meant crossing the beautiful state of Iowa in the middle of a mid-March snow fall. Small, neglected and dying towns of Iowa - stuck in the faded vitality of decades before our existence - contain some of the saddest images I've seen in a while. Imagining, in light of the weekend's celebration, the lives that these people have lived - marriage, children, parenting, support and goodbye to children, watching them graduate, leave, work, become confident in themselves, letting them be terrified in their independence, and continuing on with existence in their homes, having had built the town and sustained it for so long. I guessed I'd like to have shaken some hands. But the lyric still.

2) The worn, sky blue sweatshirt from high school that my friend was wearing tonight - it being Sunday and, for her, the weekend brought a close to several good things and the prelude to goodbye to several talented, magnificent friends. I sat and watched my friend bristle and shake in anger, falling over her words and in the middle of it all - I don't know why - we both said, "It's okay," and "I'm sorry." Over and over again. When I left, having said goodbyes in simple and calm confessions of "I can't take this right now," and yet another "I'm sorry" and a brief blocking of my exit (which kills me), her anger still hung vividly in the room and I found no comfort in the lyric above, the song still in my head. I played other music, met other friends, but it is there still - the anger without sight of consolation, and the doubt for myself and what I've been doing.
There are some unattainable ideas that we fight for - myself and others with me - and it's not uncommon for others to find our efforts in vain.
So what's the trouble?