Because I am done with hate

First, let me give credit for inspiring this post to my Mom who wrote a very nice lesson about the Commandment "You shall not kill". My mother has been writing a number of lessons for our Church's "upper-level" Sunday-school program, which also go out to various people who are family, friends, or interested in the materials (a group which includes me).

This lesson in particular struck a cord in me. When I was little "You shall not kill" seemed like the Commandment least useful for daily living. But as my mother noted, Jesus taught that "You shall not kill" also applies to anger and hatred. After all, murder comes from such feelings.

But sometimes it feels like that as long as you don't act on the anger and hatred, it's fine to store it up inside you. At least, I used to think that way. When I was in middle school in particular, every grade there would be one or two kids who I hated, who made me constantly angry. I thought I was justified in my anger because they didn't seem to care about the effect of their jokes and teasing, and because they hit on topics that very sensitive for me at the time, but thinking back on it perhaps I just didn't understand them, or perhaps they had too much on their mind from other matters that made them careless, as my Mom pointed out, God asks us not to judge.

In any case, my anger, my hatred got me nothing. There were a few cases where I tried telling them off, but those were always ineffective (I've found that telling someone to stop a hurtful behavior works if that person was your friend to begin with, but is much more difficult when there isn't that bond). The anger also never gave me any sense of release for my frustrations, I had many of them in middle school and I thought perhaps if I could focus my irritations on a few people I could release it. Instead, I found my frustrations intensified as my thoughts circled around my anger. I found that when I was angry or caught up in hate, my enjoyment of life lessened, my relationships with those I cared about suffered, and my spiritual life faltered.

I'm not sure if there was a special moment when I decided to stop hating people. In fact, even now there are moments when I slip into that state of mind, but nowadays I take care to pull myself out of it. Sometime around my freshman year of high school a change happened in my way of thought. Whether there was a moment or not, I do believe this was a gift from God. I began to notice that I had no objects of hate, and though I tried to pick out historical figures or concepts to hate, I realized there was no need to hate. Anger and hate simply kept me from growing closer to God.

Later in high school, as I became more convinced that hate was harmful to the soul, I found to my surprise, without intending it, I had befriended most of those classmates I had once considered my enemies. Thinking about my later friendships, my previous anger seems silly.

I get angry at times, but I've been making the effort to catch myself and stop myself from being caught up in anger. Anger, hatred, even if they don't lead to actions like murder, the person who bears them I believe suffers, the mind, body, and spirit become corrupted, and the sin of hate pollutes the person's relationship with God. And it is so unnecessary. At least in my life, I have found that if I seek to embrace love and reject hate, I am much happier for it, I am much more successful in life for it, and I feel closer to God.

After all, if we love God, shouldn't we love his children, who are created in his image?

Those are just some thoughts I had about this Commandment, and I thought I'd share them.

Anywho, take it to your head, take it to your heart and remember Rand rocks. Goodnight Folks!

And God Bless.

One day I'll sit back and say Thanks for all the Birthday wishes

It being two days past my birthday the proper time has come and so I'll share a rumination with my birthday and the lovely wishes from my friends I've received.

Anywho, the random reference in the title of this note is to "Someday" by Sugar Ray

And I suppose I'm just reminded of it because of that line "Someday, when my life has passed me by/ I'll sit back and wonder why you were always there for me" - because I got to say sometimes I wonder why I got all the good friends I got. It's really very lucky, very blessed, very awesome indeed.

Now in my life I've had up and downs, and while these days are far from my lows, my life, in some respects, fall shorts of my more ambitious dreams. But what I never could have dream of, is how many good folk I have in my life and how close I hold them to my heart. And maybe someday I'll do great things, maybe someday I'll conquer the world, but it doesn't matter too much, because I got people with love in their hearts and that's just beautiful.

So take it to your head, take it to your heart, and remember Rand rocks. Goodnight Folks!

And God Bless.

With or without you

I've made my share of mistakes in my life, and when it comes to those, this is, well, not really huge, ind of big, but it's annoying.
What's annoying is, I've given up my tendencies to care. Well, not really. What it is though is I've lowered the bar of my social anxiety tolerance, things bugging me started pressing down and I decided to press down as well. Unfortunately, while that left me less bothered by social anxieties, it also left me less motivated. Because in the end, I still like people, and interacting with them, helping them, making them happy, that makes me motivated and driven. But I stepped back from that risky proposition of social interaction in my workplace (on the other hand, not elsewhere, which gives the whole situation the annoying possibility of indefinitability).
So that approach to things, that was a mistake. But it's always easier to turn off my sociability than to turn it back on. And now I'm feeling a little bit too low with motivation to get past it. And so... and so... I don't know. But that's okay.
Still the Lord remains.
So take it to your head, take it to your heart and remember Rand rocks. Goodnight Folks!
And God Bless.

If I should be lost, will your songs lead me home

I'm still off. I dunno, my mind is a bit away from well, relative to my worst I'm still doing quite outstandingly, so things aren't bad, I'm just a little unwell.

But perhaps all I really want is someone to sing me to sleep:

Sing me to sleep

Sing me to sleep
For I am tired.

I shall seize the day nobly,
Pursue my ambition,
But with justice as my guide.
I will write the greatest novel,
I will write the greatest play,
I will write the world a new point of view,
New values and ideals.
I will save us all
And keep us all safe.
I will recreate the Earth and make it better.

And this day was an effort towards those goals,
And it has drained all the energy from me
Each and every drop.
Is it foolish to pursue my hopes until my body is weary and broken?
Is it idiotic?
Dangerous?
Suicidal?
Perhaps it is correct at least for me,
perhaps I do not know,
But I cannot make the effort to ponder such weighty matters at this hour.
Tomorrow I can,
But tonight I cannot.

So sing me to sleep
For it is time for me to rest.

-Rand

And what will find the truth? Love, only Love

I like to think of myself is a tolerant man.

Definitions time!

(But before that, the song that I am alluding to in the title must be given due credit, U2 - Electrical Storm - so much awesomeness)

So often statements like the above are made without proper care to the definitions of the key terms. This can be problematic because even if the definitions of the speaker are only slightly different than the definitions of the listener, it can cause grave miscommunication. For example, if a soldier says "I am a man of peace", what he could mean is that I go to war to defend the future peace or a more profound peace than the present. A listener however could think that statement means is that the soldier is claiming to be a person who doesn't fight or who encourages non-violence, and thus the listener could label the soldier a liar or a hypocrite (or if the listener was a very bizarre person he could label the soldier a hippopotamus, but that assumption would probably be unrelated to what the soldier said). The miscommunication here is the definition, both denotative (as in what the literal meaning is) and connotative (as in what ideas and feelings are associated with that meaning), of the word "peace".

In fact, given the uniqueness of everyone's minds, and the immense power of feelings and unspoken ideas to shape our understandings, all meaningful communication contains a degree of miscommunication, especially since even in efforts to clarify the miscommunication we must invoke words/phrases/ideas which are just as likely to be misunderstood.

Yet by expressing ourselves fully (and clearly as well, though with my tendency for rambling that's not going to happen), we can misunderstand less. So before explaining what implications I draw from my sentence "I like to think of myself is a tolerant man.", let me clarify a little my definition of tolerance.

What I believe tolerance means is that you do not consider it a personal flaw to be wrong, and you do not let someone's wrong-ness in one aspect affect all aspects of your relationship. That may sound profoundly intolerant, but let me expand. People hold different views, and even if you can say everyone is entitled to their own opinion, if you are (more or less) certain that point A is right, and point B is opposed to point A, you must (implicitly or explicitly) hold that point B is wrong. Thus even if someone else is entitled to believe point B, if they hold point B, you must consider them wrong on the matter, or reduce the degree of your certainty to just a matter of being certain of point A in the limited ways it applies to you (that is if you think stealing is wrong, but you refuse to admit that this implies that those who feel stealing is okay are wrong, what you really are believing is not that stealing is wrong, but that you stealing is wrong, you just aren't admitting to yourself the real truth of what you believe).

Thus the only way a man of beliefs and ideals can be tolerant is to accept that others can be wrong. And this isn't really so hard, since yes, you too can be wrong. Admitting that you can be wrong isn't a contradiction to believing you are right. After all, if you go outside for a walk, you don't think you'll be mugged, but even in the safest neighborhood, you might get mugged. Moreover, maybe based on limited information, or a flawed thinking process, or maybe bad luck, you can miscalculate the chance of you getting mugged. So you can be wrong, I can be wrong, and that's okay.

But then again, why? Why is it okay? Well, here is something I believe, and as the center of all my beliefs, it is the thing I am most certain I am right on, in fact it is perhaps one thing I don't think I could be convinced that I am wrong on.

That above all else, Love is supreme.

Intertwined with this:

There is a loving God in charge of the universe.

Could I be convinced otherwise? I doubt it. I'm not going to say that I couldn't be wrong on this point, because I admit my mind is not infinite, perhaps there's some way I haven't thought of that I could be convinced otherwise. But this I believe.

Thus above all disagreements, Love must prevail, and thus I strive to be tolerant even when I believe in all earnestness that the other is wrong.

Now let me draw out the implications of "I like to think of myself as a tolerant man."

The implication is tolerance is cool. So don't be an intolerant bum, yeah I'm talking to you Raj Thackeray! (now this may seem like a contradiction, but idiotic bum-iness is the natural outgrowth of a lack of tolerance, as shown by Raj Thackeray, so while I do not hold that this inherently dehumanizes him or that this proves him wrong in other aspects of his person, he is an idiotic bum (actually I'm just kidding, he may very well be a smart man, and may very well be a hard-worker, however the idea of intolerance that he holds is idiotic, wrong and full of bum-iness, and while I believe in tolerance for people, I do not mind saying that some ideas (not people mind you, whether or not they support this idea), ought be given a savage beating for their extreme idiotic-ness (again NOT people, beating people due to politics is also a very idiotic idea)).

The politics of the fool

I often repeat myself in sessions, often because a point reoccurs to me and I forgot that I dealt with it before, or in better cases because I figure out another angle on something. Now even in the latter case one must be careful lest laziness and the recursion of revisiting revisted topics lead to madness and rather poor reading, however, given the complexity of the human mind, a good topic often deserves more than one angle and more than one session to boot.

But who then can determine whether the booting requires the revisiting or whether upon that road lies madness, madness! I CAN, for I am Rand, the great and glorious.

And so I shall revisit the fool, or rather my fool-ness or fool-i-ocity, or if you insist on the grammatical, my foolishness.

I've dealt with the topic as an ideal (dedicated to God, of course), but let me now migrate a bit into the practical, or perhaps the pragmatic, or perhaps just the otherwise.

At this point in my life, I'm rather satisfied with the role of the fool, with some qualifications and ample wiggle room. Indeed, I do aspire to the path of the holy fool. However, it is not necessarily my natural role, largely because there is only a minor fraction of our souls presented in our outward faces, thus one can fit many of these fractions in a mind, and thus many roles can be elegantly natural.

That is to say, I can play other roles.

I can play the insistent idealist, the apathetic pragmatist, the careful politician, the passionate artist, the dedicated scientist, and the austere monk. And I do play these roles all from time to time, and more.

But when push comes to shove, my default face to the world is that of the fool. For better or for worse. For now.

I can justify this position in a variety of ways. I find it grating to take myself too seriously, moreover I find it grating to take others too seriously, yet I hate to offend, and I hate to cause trouble. But most importantly, the fool does tend to entertain.

This is a principle point. I like making people happy. I enjoy the happiness of others. I like interacting with happy people. And me playing the fool often makes people happy.

Though to be truthful sometimes I wonder, whether people actually do enjoy the act, and as importantly whether they like the sincerity behind it. Because as much as my fool-ness is an act, it is an act based on my thoughts and feelings, essentially it is me expressing myself. And in that sense, it is me being myself.

On the other hand, I could for example be myself by throwing myself 110% into writing, however... being a writer or an artist, while requiring one to draw upon others, is an essentially solitary craft. That's fine when I'm alone, but to make this the face I use to interact with others would risk pushing others into roles relative to my artistic drives and ambitions, denying them a real relationship based on mutual humanity. That is not to say others have not taken the writer role and ran with it, limiting its excesses so that their relationships are full and rich while mining its virtues for all that they can get... I'm just saying that as a public face, I don't think the writer is for me.

I could go through many other roles and pick them apart. I can also pick apart the role of the fool, for example the barriers it throws against me being taken seriously or being able to deal with people seriously.

What it comes down to, with the pluses and minuses, is how comfortable you are with dealing with the minuses, and how much you like the pluses, and ultimately, how much God wants you to follow that path. To be fair that's a lot of factors that are hard to figure out all in their wholeness. Hence one often bounces between things back and forth and finds revelations and insights and mistakes, and so on and so on, et al.

One thing you also fine with roles that fit you better or worse, is those that don't fit you at all. I've tried playing the counter-cultural, the over-achiever, the techie. Parts work alright for me, but I find only a minimal passion. Ususally to find some real satisfaction I need to mix it up with some foolishness.

And this is an aspect of my problems with my life at now. To say overall, I must say the work environment doesn't suit me well. I am every now and then able to pull out my fool card, but there's an essentially lacking element for me to comfortably play that role, or really any role with satisfaction. To have some satisfaction in my human interactions I must have some confidence that how I interact with people is either appreciated or at least enjoyed in a general sense, and I must have some confidence that my faux pas's, my miscalculated gestures, my inarticulate attempts at communication, these will be generally tolerated. That is actually a rather heavy demand to require of everyone, and so I don't. But for me that is the basis of a real, meaningful relationship, otherwise all you have is confused postering.

The work environment seems to lend itself to the confused postering. Afterall, a faux pas can get you fired. But moreover, there is this great ambiguity about relationships. What is the proper ettiquette of a professional relationship, what is too far, how do these relationships weigh and interact with other ones, how do these fit into life outside of work. It doesn't help that my professional role has no real need to inteact with anyone besides my boss, so what is the professional relationship of coworkers who have no professional need to interact. I am always perpetually insecure with my relationships, but with my professional relationships, I find it is a constant drain of stress. And this isn't the fault of anyone, this is just the nature of me and my circumstances.

Let me backtrack, with most people in the office, there is a degree to which they approach that mark of trust where I find my relationships both meaningful and comfortable, and there are some who are just easy to deal with and wonderful to be around. But as a whole... as a whole work is stress, there are times when it is less stressful, and I sometimes wonder if work could be otherwise... but then again, in the long run, perhaps that's irrelevant. Afterall, work is but so many hours, and life is so many more, and in those hours I should be able to find time to play the fool.

But then again I wonder... I am undecided the extent to which I want to write off some degree of comfortableness at work. Moreover, if I can hit that degree of comfortableness, there is a good chance that I harnest a general affection for the people at my office toward feeling more satisfied with work, and yet... It is all so complex, the hodgepodge of different emotions and thoughts that run an office's social ecosystem, and my tradition has been to step back and create my own social ecosystem when my frustration with my current one runs too high. But with work, I don't really have the option of stepping back...

But then what would the fool do? If I really do aspire to the path of the holy fool, what ought I do. More importantly, and in all seriousness what would Jesus do?

The answer is a path of love, but here's the question, does that path lead me deeper into the office-universe or further away?

I am not idle on this question, but I am ambivalent, but in the end, I am also awesome.

Which does give me the edge.

And so despite my confusion, despite my cowardly indecision, despite my frustration, I still must ask myself in the morning, how can I be a fool today?

So anywho, take it to your head, take it to your heart and remember Rand rocks. Goodnight folks!

And God Bless.

And it all makes you want to scream

A little something from the late great Michael Jackson - Scream

I've been mapping out my past, a common enough task I think, and I've found there are many benefits. You gain a degree of self-learning, a clarification of your understanding of the past, an improvement of your appreciation of good memories and good poeple, and a great story.

There are dangers though: wallowing in self-pity, obsession on the past, renewed bitterness, over-attachment to this life, etc.

But perhaps the most repeated lesson I've found looking over my past is that things were never as bad as I thought they were, nor are they ever as good.

Looking at the past also helps put the present in perspective. I can say that my current life has been a bit rough at times (though not nearly as rough as the life of others mind you), but looking back I find it's amazing that my life is at least better than this period or that period, and so it's not that bad, and I ought to thank God that I got past those past crises because they were pretty damn bad.

Take for example my crisis of April/May 2008 - where I was almost certain I was going to fail a number of classes and need to take another semester (although in retrospect it may have been a good idea to take another semester and get a CS double-major, although who knows how that would have reshaped who I am today?)

Compared to that crisis, my feelings today are light and fluffy, and while I should not take my feelings to lightly (after all, like speed they can kill), it is a bit comforting that I got over that, it chastises my self-pity a bit, and it reminds me - life can suck sometimes, but it is still worth it. I look at that period and there's no way I can reconcile it with the idea I was secretly happy, no I was miserable, but there was still a beauty in that period of life, because I strove to live and live rightly and serve God in my life. Screw the misery, even the crises are beautiful.

And I got a little Facebook posting from that period to prove my point. As miserable and self-pitying that the posting is, I like to think it's a good piece of writing, and well worth looking back upon, or for those who have not read it, for the first time upon. Especially as the most major of the points are still valid, you can always trust God to get you through the bad times, and even when the thrill of life is gone, you still got to go on (and indeed move along):

So here's the posting which I after the fact labeled "Scream":

Oh yeah, life goes on, long after the thrill of living is gone

Little bit of Jack and Diane
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QT9tpKXFd8A

Of course the best thing that John Cougar Mellencamp has given us is this line from How I Met Your Mother (Aldrin Justice):

Barney: Tonight, just like John Mellencamp, I am going to get rid of the cougar once and for all.

If you don't get it watch the episode.

Anywho, I'd like to thank everyone who gave me birthday messages, it was a nice gesture. If it seems odd to not write this till now, well, my life has been a little bit of a crapstorm this last couple weeks. And now that I come to the end of this semester it seems everything is coming up failure, partial or completely, and even my successes seem to be interspliced with failure. And this has all left me pretty miserable.

If I had some time to relax and move away from that mindset, maybe that wouldn't matter so much, but I have more work to do, I have to clean up the mess I've been dealing with lately, I have to deal with potentially failing one or more classes, and this sucks. So life's not going to be enjoyable for a while now.

But life goes on. And one day, really one day, maybe in a month, maybe in two, someday probably not too far from now, I will be getting out of this crapstorm, or I will learn to deal with it. I have great faith that God will get me through all this, but I'm having trouble finding enjoyment in life anyways, and in worse case senario, and I need to deal with the aftermath of these failures and the reactions of my family to these matters, which will likely be as uncomfortable as the problems themselves, I might be living in a crapstorm till the end of the summer or beyond. But still life goes on, I'll have moments of happiness now and then, and someday life will get better. So life goes on.

Even if for now, the thrill of living is gone.

-- Fin --

So how thrilling is living now?
At times very much so, at times terrible. Are things getting better? Off and on, yes. Do I trust God for the future, I am trying to, and I think for the most part succeeding. And looking back, I can say all and all, things are not so bad, maybe not great, but, to paraphrase Hamlet:

In this sleep of life, what dreams may come?
And then in death too, what dreams might appear?

Anywho, take it to your head, take it to your heart and remember Rand rocks. Goodnight Folks!

And God Bless.

The inherent folly of internal isolationism

Casablanca is an awesome movie (as recognition of such, here's a link to a very nice fan page of said film). (The movie, though far from a comprehensive picture of the period, and far from an accurate picture of Morocco in the early 1940's, is all the cooler to parse from a historical perspective due to its omissions and selective inclusions) If you dare to question that I will have to smack you upside the top of your head. And as such, though from some angles it can seem down right pulpy, on many, many levels it speaks to the human condition.

Let me just pick one as if for random (or perhaps my mention of Casablanca was really a lead in to this topic, you'll never know! Actually the later case is the truth).

One theme in Casablanca I've always been fascinated by is the connect between emotional internationalism and political internationalism, or rather pragmatic apathy in personal relationships, like cheating a woman into sleeping with you, feeds into and onto political isolationism and apathy, like kow-towing to a viciously evil regime like the Nazis. In the same, "rank sentimentalism" feeds into and onto political idealism which allows one to give up a chance for love because of the larger causes of the world.

Thus Rick, who once ran guns for Ethiopia (wooo Ethiopia!), when a bitter romantic disappointment makes him turn callous in his personal relationships, becomes politically callous, at first dismissing the very idea that he help a man on the run from the Nazi's escape certain torture and death. And thus when he re-accepts the idea of personal love, he re-discovers his idealism, and is willing to let go because his love belongs somewhere else.

What a world... that Rick's love be so doomed by those circumstances... but the non-fictional world can be far more brutal... but then again it can offer even great beauties such as the film itself Casablanca.

I'm just saying...

So take it to your head, take it to your heart and remember Rand rocks. Goodnight Folks!

And God Bless.

Damn it didn't I tell you to Ultra-Relax!

I'm tempted time from time, moment from moment, to worry and think about what people think about me, whether or not I'm normal, whether or not I fit in and all that jazz (all that rotten jazz, rotten apple eating mean non-funky jazz monkey, etc. et al., and so on). But then I remember, always, always, tooooooooooooooooooooooooo

ULTRA-RELAX

Go Kodocha!

And here's the lyrics, via Naokochan (the notes are via spontaneous awesomeness)

Plenty of free time today and tomorrow
(oh so much time, got to webinate the web, but when you gotta be cool, you can find time to cool it up and cool it down)
Taking an overnight trip by the four of my family
(Because my family is awesome, they just are)
Seeing Sphinx with an Egyptian air
(Because more history=more better)
Seeing Texas with an American feeling!
(USA rules!!! But as nice as Texas is, Jersey rocks!!!)
Just be as cool as a cucumber
(mmmm, cucumber)
And laidback all the time
Then bugs in your stomach bugging you
Will just go off!
(those bugs (or maybe they're worms...) might be tempting, but just remember, ain't no bugs in this world that are really worth worrying about... after all, if God's with me, all the world's just a bitty bug ain't it?)
I'm ultra-relaxed
Gracefully, unbeatably relaxed
(Soooo relaxed, though my acid reflux, occasional breakdowns, frequent insomnia might argue different...)
Just a little bit different deluxe
Scatterbrained but...
(Scatterbrained who...something, something, scatterbraininess)
When you call me, "pah pah pah pahng"!
(That's my other name)
I'm always relaxed
Wabi-sabi-seasoned deluxe
(Because nothing's as relaxing as wasabi. Take it with some hot sauce to cool the tempers)
Bright! Clear! -Headed!
Brainy! Pitt! Pitt!
Watch no one but me!
(Because I'm awesome, and though I stress out over everything, but when push gets to pushy, I do become ULTRARELAX!!!)

Oh yeah!

So take it to your head, take it to your heart and remember Rand rocks. Goodnight Folks!

And God Bless.

And if I can turn the stars blue can I follow you

Otherwise, how can I find where you go when you're lonely?

I'm a bit tired all and all of romantic songs. On the other hand I'm dreadfully romantic at heart. With an emphasis on dreadfully. It's become something of an irritant to me as much as a virtue... if it can be claimed to be so.

At least once upon a time I viewed romantics as an advantage, but overall... I dunno, I have to say were I less romantically inclined my life most likely would be simpler. But better...

Yet romance has always fueled my creativity, even in its absence. And yet can one depend on such an uneven fuel as the ever-changing fluxuations of the human heart?

To dream of something more, a real relationship, that, that would be wonderful but it does seem immensely out of my reach...

As abstract and jumbled as these ruminations might be, they are not idle. For there is a great significance to my long-term goals depending on whether or not I am looking to eventually get married, financial planning, career choice, the type of skills to acquire, and then there is also an immense short-term significance depending on how much I want to enter the dating scene. How much energy should I spend on it? How much should I let it draw me away from the other things in my life?

And then there's always... is it feasible for me to have a relationship? Is it wise, when my emotions are such petulant forces?

In the end, tossing and turning such thoughts, I end up with a great deal of frustration, but little solid answer-wise. Looking inward, looking spiritually, asking God for guidance... I think I am meant to be married someday, and even to have kids someday. And yet I also believe I am supposed to be creative and a person who lives honestly, despite his oddities. Which is to say, yes, I am a romantic, but what that means for now, I do not know... I guess I'll keep my eye out and my heart open, lest I my soul fall into a Total Eclipse of the Heart.

Anywho, take it to your head, take it to your heart and remember Rand rocks. Goodnight Folks!

And God bless.

Working like a turkey

Because if you ever saw a wild turkey run across the road, you'd know they work pretty darn hard.

Anywho, I'm building up a new site for The Rand Show + doing lots of job-like work. So I've been busy. But also, I've been looking over old posts, and am starting to compile some best of stuff. Here's a run down of a bit of a random sampling of the best of the Rand Show. Be forwarned, it is pretty awesome and it's incomplete.

Rand Reviews

At home in the lonely hearts club, or my review of Cupid
It's Mightly Cold in Juno, or my review of Juno
28 days later, 28 weeks later, 28 years later and forever, or my review of 28 Days Later
But for a nail... 28 weeks after the fact, or my review of 28 Weeks Later
Sometimes you need to go where everyone has a gun, or my review of Arsenal
We love big dreams, right? or my review of the Melancholy of Haruhi Suzyimiya
The Inevitable Gravity of Destiny, or my review of Escaflowne
The temptation of wheat, or my review of Azumanga Diaoh
My American Dream: notes on Rushmore and The Great Gatsby

Rand vs. the Music

I wanted to be all you need: Notes on Here is Gone by the Goo Goo Dolls
Creep: Notes on Creep by Radiohead
Karaoke equals Awesome: Notes on Perfect Situation by Weezer
Space Oddity: Notes On Space Oddity by David Bowie
Here's to You Michael Jackson, Salute: Notes on the King of Pop
Putting the f-ing fun back into Rand F-ing Awesome McRanderson

Rand Writes

The Insidious Logic of Transfat
And the sole survivor watches us all, he's got the eye of the tiger
Me, Eddy, and that Oriental-Loooking Fellow
And What of the Oriental in America?
Just to start some contraversy
For some reason I can't explain, once you were gone it was never the same
Christ has Risen!
I follow he who has conquered death
Rand's Advanetures in Job Land
Happy St. Thomas' Day
For James

Jersey City here I am

What an odd turn of events. For most of my life Jersey City was a place existing but not a matter of thought. And here I am, living in Jersey City, few blocks away from Journal Square station. Damn, and last year I was wondering whether I was going to move to San Francisco. I go back further and I find this point in my life is even more unimaginable (I'm pretty sure that sentence lacked grammatical sense, but there's a gist of it that I think you can understand it).

Yet here I am. The mind reels.

I remember when I was in Elementary School and figured that I was going to be a doctor and then a politician. I suppose that would put me in Med School right now. But that figuring was based largely on a utilitarian consideration of what would best allow me to help people on a small scale and then on a large scale. Though the latter part of the dream, presidency, persisted with me for quite a while. And then there was the island...

But that's neither here or there, point is, despite various plans and schemes, and for many reasons, I graduated college with neither a plan or a profession and... something, something.

And so I found myself working with computers and stuff. And then I found myself doing an 1 1/2 hr. commute to NYC and neglected my life outside of that. And then I found myself unemployed. And then I found myself getting a new job. Dude. But then I still had the 1hr commute or so to Jersey City. And so hence I'm here.

Actually that all made perfect sense.

What makes less sense is my sense of purpose, et al., which was once quite a bit stronger. I dream dreams, it's what I do, and I have still some great ambitions, but I've come to terms with the fact that success is something that may come or may not, and I'm not terribly worried about it.

Which leaves me not terribly worried about much. Which bugs me. But then again, whenever my feelings fall upon that zone, I always end up remembering stuff.

I got family, friends, dreams to work on. I'm doing alright. And In those family, friends + dreams, I do have stuff requiring urgency et al.

Honestly, I have to say I have at times been neglectful of my friends, family, and perhaps even my dreams. But that's what tomorrow's for right?

And so raise a glass with me, mine will be filled with orange juice of course, and let me toast to all the girls I've ever loved and God, the founder of the feast.

So take it to your head, take it to your heart and remember Rand rocks. Goodnight Folks!

And God Bless.

Excuse me, please miss

I'm sorry
Excuse me
Just a moment
Please miss
I simply want to say
You have the most beautiful arch of the neck
I have ever seen

No that would be creepy
But I could say
You have the most amazing eyes
Make sure to mention the color
Maybe that's too cliché
But maybe it's worth a try
I've got to say something
Before the moment is gone
She steps out of the train
And though I saw her four times on this route
I can't parse her face from the crowd anymore

And so it goes
Life moves on

I suppose I was bold that day

Rand writes. It's what I do. It's something I've done for quite a while, sometimes by necessity, most often by choice, and always with awesomeness. And thus I have a number of scraps of writing like this, written long-ago in my prehistoric high school junior year, which despite their age have quite a bit of life to them and are deserving of throwing onto the web. And who am I to make such a judgment?

I AM RAND!

“Just because someone smells does not make them any less of a person!” I shouted in the late September, early October day. Those may not have been my exact words, but I remember the feeling of frustrated anger. I stood tall that day, eyebrows raised and nostrils flaring. I was pissed off because a kid was getting picked on because people said he smell. I don’t remember smelling anything, but my opinion is biased. The entire room turned against him, and even the adults joined in. That was the way group therapy was supposed to work, but this wasn’t a sin, some gaping flaw that made the kid, named Bill (not the real name for obvious reason), any less ofa man. At the worse this was a minor annoyance that it would be nice for Bill to change. Perhaps my anger came from other reasons. Many of my friends have been picked on because of how they smell, they have been alienated and made outcasts. While I’ll admit some of them did not smell pleasant, they had good hearts, and that is what ought to have been judged on. And perhaps my anger came from another reason. Perhaps it was because I had been in a mental hospital far too long.

The days pass in a mental hospital like slugs. My two weeks of in-patient confinement and 2-4 weeks of outpatient therapy seems now like a lifetime. Some of the people there, they didn’t deserve it. Bill told me he was sent there because he was sitting on the roof singing, heck, if I knew an easy route to my roof I might do the same. Others were sent there because of zero tolerance policies and abusive parents. Of course some of us needed to be there. Some of us needed some of the constant surveillance. Not all of the maddening rules, mind you, but some of them. Some of those people were like me, with a disease in the brain that wanted very much to kill them. Still after a week or so of in-patient therapy I was pissed off royally at the world. And so I didn’t take it when my friend was being picked on.

That alone is sort of standing up to authority, I suppose. The authority of my peers. And I am proud of the act if just for that. But one thing must be remembered about the mental hospital I was in, though nearly all of them were signed in ‘voluntary,’ we could only leave when the doctors gave the go ahead. Getting pissed off and yelling isn’t a good way to look sane.

Of course for all of the dramatics of my act it wasn’t all glamour. I hurt someone’s feeling, and I apologized for yelling. Yet I did not take back my message. Over the next week I tried my best to stick up for Bill whenever I could. Occasionally I got pissed off, though it never came to fists for me (though Bill ended up getting into two fights in the hospital, one the starter I do not know, but the second was most definitely not started by him). Still I felt like I stood against the grain, and against the sheep-makers in the mental hospital. I was his friend till he left. I suppose I stood up against authority that day, maybe, maybe I was just being a friend, I dunno, but heck, I helped Bill out, so that’s worth quite a bit.

So take it to your head, take it to your heart and remember Rand rocks. Goodnight Folks!

And God Bless.

Even though Sally can wait, don't look back in anger

And what does that song mean? Take a look at the lyrics. Watch this music video. I think you understand the song's meaning, so much so I don't need to explain. (actually I think the song is fairly easy to get a sense of meaning-wise, though as to its precise meaning, despite what I've said previously (because you forget good sir, I lie), I'm not terribly sure, nor am I terribly inclined to figure it out right now).

Anywho, a little kid impressed me a while back (little kids are awesome, and funny, I mean just look at 'em, heh, heh, heh), by noting a bad behavior at some prompt, and remarking that he (less than 8 years old by the way), used to act that way when he was smaller.

That marks him a good deal more mature than many in this world, and me from time to time.

One bad trait which I have worked on out-growing, though occasionally lapse into every now and then, is, well... hate.

I talk now in broad terms, but I am Rand the Great and Glorious! That is to say, I strive to know and understand grand things, and few things are grander than the image of God, which can be found in every human soul, and so I talk now in broad terms of hate and love (and Love Divine), but only because these are necessary to capture the infinite (is it truly infinite? No, not going to talk about that now) complexities of the human spirit.

Anywho, with hate, let me say now that I can sympathize with hate. It is immensely romantic to have an enemy. Actually back in the day (by which I mean when I was 5 or 6), I drew upon a vaguely defined incident (from about 4 or 5 or so (perhaps pre-schoolish)) where I was bit by some kid (let's call him Kid A (just because it gives me a shout-out to Radiohead, whose infinite mopiness makes them a bit off of my taste, but who I must admit are immensely good rockers)), and dwelling upon my biting by Kid A, I pretended he was my arch-nemesis who I had every right to despise. I went even further in my imaginary adventures, where often I was a superhero or secret agent of some kind, and pretended Kid A was some sort of super-villain.

Now despite the fact that this kid was only part of my life for I think 1 year of pre-school, I thought my utter hatred of him was well-known and respected within my house. However, one day, when I was 5-ish, I was drawing a map of my speculation of Kid A's location in order to think of ways to curtail his activities, (imaginary adventure, people, just an imaginary adventure, for now...), and my brother stumbled upon me and asked me what I was up to. I mentioned then Kid A and my conception of him, and my brother then surprised me by telling me that despite being bitten by him, Kid A had actually been one of my best friends in my pre-school/pre-pre-school years (really when you're <=5 or 6 you bite everything or everyone, least that was the way I grew up, we worked hard and we bit hard! (only when we were <= 5 or 6, maybe 7, and then there was that time last year in Uruguay...)).

This stunned me, and my mind reeled, and... well I don't remember exactly what I thought then because this was about 17 years ago. But anywho, it speaks to the folly of hate, or at least arch-villain-ship. But my further experience reinforced the former lesson (and also taught me that arch-villains can be your friends). Most directly, I received constant lessons by my parents/school/Church about how hate was bad and love was good. I believed it, more or less. Yet observing those around me, and TV, books+ pop-culture, I suspected that while the general case was love-good, hate-bad, I was allowed a little hate.

Now middle school shattered that. In middle school, almost every year I found a few kids who bugged the crap out of me. They were generally semi-cool kids who teased certain people relentlessly, with on occasion me/my friends being among those people. Sometimes this teasing fit perfectly into my own growing paranoia/self-hatred/depression, well, my developing mental illness, so much so that these semi-bullies became representatives for all my problems with self-esteem.

And it was easy to hate them. Because upon them I could throw all my issues with my unstable mind, and I could then pretend that the problems were finite and external... and would someday go away. But this required me to actually commit the deed of hating. And I did.

The exact details of my hatred are complex and confused, but in short, yes it felt good to hate sometimes. Indeed, it made me feel strong and powerful, to feel that rush of passionate emotion. But in the end, it removed me from the better parts of myself.

When my thoughts were circling around hate, they were less inclined to find the beauty in a summer day, less inclined to realize the creative potential in an interesting event, less inclined to return to the beauty of love. Hate is sin in the purest sense, it is distance from God.

Eventually, I realized I shouldn't think about all this. It was pointless, self-defeating, and distracted me from the real issues of my mental health and my potential to do good with my life, and my potential to enjoy life as well.

Middle school is about 10-12 years in the past for me now. My memory is a bit hazy. But I don't think it was really for idealistic reasons I chose to move beyond hate, I think it was just pragmatism. I was tired of hating.

And then high school came, and I thought about and learned about love in a more profound sense, and advanced my spirituality and my emotional maturity, and became more and more convinced in the centrality of the essence of Love, which is God.

And then somehow, mostly without intending it, mostly without noticing it at first, I began befriending my old enemies. One in particular became a close friend because we both liked comp sci and were in the same class. And then my hate seemed so pathetic.

Even those I hated were carved in the image of God. Everyone, sometimes in tragic ways, has some of the infinite beauty of God. How can you hate that?

But I do at times. Sometimes I feel hate creep back into me. But then I clear my mind and force it away. Because I can be better than that, and I can choose love instead, maybe not just with my own strength, but with God's help all is possible.

Love is always possible.

Anywho, that's more than enough for today, so take it to your head, take it to your heart and remember Rand rocks. Goodnight Folks!

And God Bless.

And when I am freedom will I be a waving flag?

Once again, I am referencing K'naan's superb song, Wavin' Flag. Sometime I'll break down the lyrics and point out possible references to K'naan's native Somalia and the awful situation there, but I would probably need to do a little prep work before that. One must not claim historical authority when writing on a topic without some backing.

Yet I often find myself drawn to that song because it speaks to freedom, something dear to my heart. Of course, freedom is hard to define, and one definition, which I reject as illusionary is that freedom can only be achieved through the loosening of bonds and obligations. I find that a perverse philosophy that leads only to self-nullification.

However, I find myself dangerously close to that place.

Out of college, secure job-wise, more money than I really know what to do with, and with most of my siblings established in independent lives, most of the old obligations that once bound me are fading. Those that remain, to my Church Youth Group, to my parents' vision for my life, to tradition, etc. are actually somewhat loose, though at times they seem to snap tight at me, and I, on occasion, find that to follow them too strictly or too fully would be diluting of who I am or simply unnecessarily painful. Still I make an effort, though probably I ought to make more, but if those are the only obligating forces in my life, well, I'm likely to find my life rather shallow and unhappy.

And then what of Rand, the great and glorious? What of that greatness and glory? Well I am a student of False Bravado and do believe in great and grand dreams. I am also ever the fan of the fairer gender. And while both these topics seem out of reach at times, they are something to aim for, and that aiming does bring some obligating force, some urgency to life.

Except...

Except, all that urgency centers around me. Yes, it centers around me doing good stuff and being good to people, but the central notion is that I have some gift to share with the world, or at least some specialness to share with a wife, and sometimes it's hard to maintain that. Consciously, I can tell myself that, but in the chemical roots of my emotion, boiling through my subconscious into my doubts and self-hatred, I don't instinctively believe in myself. Heck, I don't instinctively believe I deserve to live, but I think I've pushed that pretty far down (though the meds help, but always, all good things flow from God (but more on that below).

So I'm left with a struggle with my subconscious, which undermines my efforts and makes it far more difficult to cite some proof against my doubts.

But all of that... that's crap...

Let me make something clear. We are not dictated our natures by our emotions. My chemical imbalances do not have a right to grant or deny my future. They effect things certainly, but the fundamental decisions of life are made by ourselves. And by God, who then gives us a choice to follow Him. The choice isn't always spelled out in directly religious terms, after all, you can have the faith to move mountains, but if you do not have Love, you have nothing. Love, I believe a choice to follow Love, not as a particular relationship or circumstance, not as a simple emotion or need, but as an ideal, as a cause, as a force, as beyond description... that is the path of God.

That's my urgency. And from that flows my ambitions (though focused by what I believe God wants for me) and from that flows my belief in romance (for if nothing else, romance is a beautiful work of God's great art) and from that flows my love for people (in God's image, what else do I need to say?) and from that flows a belief in myself...

I feel tempted to hate myself at times, at times to be apathetic and uncaring toward myself, but while I try to steer away from self-centerness and arrogance, I can confidently say that I am loved by God. Personally, passionately, infinitely. God even sent his Son to die for me. Yes, this is the Love offered to all mankind, but God has no limit and neither has His Love. And if God deems me worthy of love, who am I to disagree?

This is my belief, and this is a religious one, but to those of different religions or the non-religious let me point this out. If you are capable of love, you are capable of something immensely, infinitely beautiful. Don't doubt your self-worth, don't even consider throwing it away. Even if it doesn't seem that way at times, everyone has a capability for love, even if they choose not to use it, or choose not to see it. And that makes us worthy, beautiful, and gives us an obligation to spread love.

After all, if Love is to conquer all, why not we do the conquering for it?

Perhaps I do not fully mean this, but here's a statement capturing the ideal to which I aim.

I love you all, take care of yourselves and each other.
(not that I won't be doing that myself, lest you mistake me for someone using that classic goodbye, I am not going anywhere, at least I don't think so, at least not profoundly, at least not yet)

So take it to your head, take it to your heart, and remember Rand rocks. Goodnight Folks!

And God Bless.

Now to get a glimpse of pure-Randness witness this conversation between Rand and Dav

Rand (7:43:48 PM): Hey Dav, check out www.therandshow.com

Dav (7:51:15 PM): hey Rand

Dav (7:51:19 PM): 1sec reading

Rand (7:51:26 PM): reading like a fox

Rand (7:51:32 PM): Which would be pretty cool

Rand (7:51:45 PM): Dav, get me a READING FOX!

Rand (7:52:14 PM): I just wanted to point out the whole domain name thing, Jy actually bought me a domain name for my birthday

Dav (7:53:56 PM): sweet!

Dav (7:54:02 PM): thats cool

Rand (7:54:07 PM): yeah, I know

Dav (7:54:45 PM): and yeah, i read the post...latest 2

Rand (7:54:59 PM): oh thanks

Rand (7:55:20 PM): I'm actually preparing a post I should finish by tonight about the Simpsons

Dav (7:55:28 PM): haha awesome

Dav (7:55:35 PM): but idk what i think about seeing so far into the future

Rand (7:55:54 PM): yeah, I do worry about the future too much

Dav (7:55:55 PM): idk, i like to take things as they come i guess, and id like to think i might shift my paradigm in life one or 2 times

Dav (7:56:04 PM): yeah, idk,

Rand (7:56:41 PM): The thing is though, the current point in my life is really sort of future-focused since a big shift in my lifestyle is just about to happen

Rand (7:56:52 PM): Like just about to happen

Dav (7:57:13 PM): yeah

Dav (7:57:28 PM): but idk

Dav (7:57:37 PM): having goals like that are great for the long term

Dav (7:57:50 PM): but like, planning your immediate life wrt those goals can mess you up

Rand (7:58:15 PM): wrt?

Dav (7:58:38 PM): with respect to

Dav (7:58:40 PM): *

Rand (7:59:56 PM): True, but when it comes to job choice, location choosing, etc., these are things that are going to have to be choosen within 2 or 3 months and that are going to be important in determining my medium-term life

Dav (8:01:00 PM): yeah but

Dav (8:01:15 PM): you shouldnt necessarily look at all that with respect to your longlong term goals

Dav (8:01:16 PM): idk

Dav (8:01:22 PM): speaking of which

Dav (8:01:28 PM): have you ever considered getting a phd?

Rand (8:01:34 PM): I have

Dav (8:01:45 PM): like, i heard some of your sentiment re: free time and meaningful outsideofwork applications

Rand (8:01:55 PM): And Achacha's been pushing me in that way

Dav (8:02:02 PM): and ambar was talking about stuff like that the other day wrt his phd and leaving princeton high school

Dav (8:02:07 PM): oh yeah?

Dav (8:02:24 PM): idk, sounds like the free time and getting ta's to do all your stuff is up your alley

Rand (8:03:14 PM): yeah, and some of my professors have told me that professoring is a good day job for writing, but I'm kind of tired of college right now, and the academic world seems a bit too static and servile

Dav (8:04:06 PM): idk, in the long term it becomes pretty dynamic and...(bossy? haha)

Dav (8:04:26 PM): because if you become a professor, you can get your opinions respected in general community, etcetc

Dav (8:04:44 PM): but i mean, tbh i think anything you take relatively soon will be pretty static and servile

Dav (8:04:57 PM): like, youre just at a pt in life where you need to accept some of that shit

Rand (8:05:32 PM): perhaps, although getting respected in the general community is pretty rare due to some of the walls between acadamia and the general world

Rand (8:06:11 PM): Well many other jobs would also seem somewhat static and servile, but in college I'd have to invest a lot more of my effort and worth into the work

Rand (8:06:53 PM): And I feel like this is a time in my life, perhaps the best time in my life, to experiment with dynamic opportunities

Dav (8:07:06 PM): dynamic opportunities like?

Rand (8:08:21 PM): Well, spending a good deal of side time working on projects, et al., but also seeing if I can find a job where I feel really like part of a team and like the company and its products are a real product of my work

Dav (8:09:35 PM): yeah idk, i just feel like that's really rare

Dav (8:09:44 PM): the confluence of all that at least

Rand (8:10:05 PM): Maybe, but like I said, this might be the best time in my life to do some trying different stuff

Dav (8:10:05 PM): i think most of the work you take now that can really take you someplace is gonna be rel. lower tier

Rand (8:10:52 PM): Eh, in the end if things don't work out, I can always go back to college in 2 yr.s or so

Dav (8:11:23 PM): i guess, but idk, in the final analysis youre gonna have to make some big decisions, so idk shifting too much might hurt you

Rand (8:11:48 PM): meh, they say most people don't end up in the career that matches their major

Dav (8:11:49 PM): just in the sense of starting the progression later

Rand (8:12:18 PM): And I've got some decent job prospects and a lot of routes I can take up later if I want to

Dav (8:12:56 PM): i guess, but i think the whole free time and meaningfulness is pretty unrealistic

Rand (8:14:20 PM): I dunno, people manage it, and I'm risking very little since I'm still aiming for a job that can build more work-centric skills and some nice pay

Rand (8:14:48 PM): Sometimes you gotta take a little risk, especially when the risk is little and the potential is good

Dav (8:15:24 PM): yeah praps

Rand (8:15:47 PM): alright I need to go and get meself some eats and such

Dav (8:16:02 PM): k, gluck w jobs

Rand (8:16:07 PM): thanks

Rand (8:16:21 PM): good luck with the hw and all, and tell Jz to beat you up

Dav (8:16:56 PM): haha ok

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Let me sing these songs of freedom... but not right now

Determined far past a fault into a virtue and past that into... something, something, obscure pop-culture reference... I continue my experiment with living in the moment.

But to be truthful, this has to do with more than living in the moment. Intertwined with an out-of-moment perspective has always been me looking forward and back with my hopes and ambitions. Just as important an element of this experiment has been living without my usual grand ambitions. Essentially, for the moment I've tried to scale down my thoughts and maybe consider normal ambitions, and a normal life, and in particular the path that was set out for me at birth.

Get a good paying job
Get a wife
Have kids
Do family stuff

It's not a bad life by any means, and it is certainly one I'd recommend for many people and even many of my friends. It certainly beats drinking till your liver explodes and you're too much of a drunken slob to be any sort of husband/wife or father/mother. Sadly I worry about some of my friends on that path.

But the perhaps advantage of living in the moment and without grand ambitions, is that you just accept those sort of sad things. They are out of your control, yes, but more importantly they are outside your sphere of activity, maybe (although with helping friends kick a bad habit... but then that depends how strong and close the friendships are (I'm not sure I have that many friends that are that close)).

So that is the experiment. There were elements of weariness, and even spite that compelled me to try living this way, but I find that is far too little justification for turning my entire life upside down like this (in terms of activity my life has changed very little, but this has in fact turned my life upside down because one's experience of life is determined by one's perspective and that perspective has been heavily inverted). And if I am doing this just to avoid the costs of my grand ambitions, the recurring failures, despite the fact that most of the grandness of the ambition is internal, and the worry, and the anxiety and the obligations... well, that's a bit of a burden, but not so much as losing your parents, or taking care of a child, or any number of other experiences other people go through, and it is certainly less of an obligation than a cross. So essentially I would be sinning then.

But the core reason (at least this is what I'm telling myself, hopefully truthfully) for this experiment is to see if the ambitious path is right for me. Or perhaps a more humble one, or rather since part of my ambition is too be more humble, a more simple one. That is to say, ought I live in the moment, or live with the future often on my mind? Should I concentrate and find joy in the small things, or should I connect even the small things with the big picture and find joy and direction through that? I have often grappled with this choice, and dabbled with both sides, but largely chose the path of larger ambitions than smaller ones. However, there is something to be said that you can't judge a life until you've lived it, and the life of smaller ambitions I admit is not without merits... and my life of larger ambition is not without faults, many of which have been very clear of late.

In the end though, this is not about which path I find more happy moments on, but rather which path is the one God wants for me. Or in more secular terms, which path is my real purpose on. Perhaps the answer to that question will not come within the next 3 days (I was going to have this for another week but I realized that certain problems would arise if I decided to go back to larger ambitions and then dived straight into a rather busy weekend), but I think overall this experiment has given me some valuable food for thought so far, and probably the next few days will as well. Even if I do go back to living ambitiously, I think I've learned at least some useful techniques. And if it turns out my life is more correct in smaller terms, well...

In the end, one must do what is right, or at least try to, the best he can.

Vacation is not quite what I wanted

Despite my bold decree of understanding my place in life, I find myself questioning my approach to things. Perhaps this is just a temporary befuddlement before my ascension to true fooldom, or perhaps this is just another mutation of my alternating bouts of determination and confusion or perhaps it's all just a lack of confidence. Or perhaps it's all just cowardice.

Anywho, perhaps to sort things out, perhaps just because I'm tired, I've decided to take a kind-of semi-vacation sort-of from myself. As odd as that concept sounds, it is rather concrete in my head, and it centers on a certain absence of worry on many matters and a certain dialing back on my introspection at certain times. All of that may not have helped enlighten you as to what I'm talking about, but the point is this state of things obliges me not to parse it exactly as to be able to explain it. Oh well. Sufficient to say, I've decided to restrict the effort I spend on thinking about how to live to certain areas where my decisions on how to live actually matter, such as family, some of the friends I keep in contact with, writing, and my spiritual life. Though how much this restriction on the other areas will affect the life of the unrestricted areas, I am a bit concerned, but as per this state of less worry, I'm not going to freak out over it.

So far I must say, it is kind of relaxing, kind of calming, and it kind of sucks. I find myself with less worries, and less of the bitter falls of depression, but life's less enjoyable, less hopeful, less moving, so far that is at least. This is despite fairly good conditions of life to be enjoyable/hopeful/moving. I'm also a little scared that this apathetic attitude toward much of my life is moving me away from God, though I'm hoping a strong prayer life will keep that from happening. But I'm still thinking that this experiment is worth continuing, partially because it's different, and I've had a lack of difference in my lifestyle, but more importantly because it's a possibly viable alternative to the way I've lived for the last several months (if not years depending on how one defines styles/philosophies of life broken into periods), and ultimately it allows me to compare and contrast and either re-evaluate my way of life, or approach it with re-newed focus.

At least that's the hope, and at least that's what I'm hoping's behind all of this.

It may just be though that I'm tired. Which is okay, we all get tired, as long as you make sure you're going to get up (to that end, I'm going to put a forced end to this experiment/vacation in about 1 1/2 wks, probably then I'll go back to the fool-hardy (or perhaps fool-hard) life for maybe about 2 wks, and then well, think about things...).

What I'm really worried about though, is that I'm giving up on life. But in the end I still have faith, hope, and love. I'm still working for the man upstairs in the end. Maybe though, I'm just doing a little bit of different work for a little while...

perhaps, perhaps, perhaps...

So take it to your head, take it to your heart and remember Rand rocks. Goodnight Folks!

And God Bless.

Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, I the fool

I think I have found my calling in life: to be a holy fool.

There is I think a demand for this sort of role, in recent time especially, as often narrowly worldly, often disguised as pragmatic or practical, wisdom is often preferred over the more truthful and divine. The holy fool, at least ideally, acts opposite to this condition, embracing with full force the very traits of the Lord's wisdom that appear foolish to the world or run counter to the world's wisdom.

For example, the holy fool ought enthusiastically love all people, considering them all as friends and even like family, (I'm not claiming my achievement of this, mind you but I'll get into that more later), or at least with that potential. The impression I get from the world at large is that this is an unnecessary indulgence, and a dangerous one at that. That it is acceptable and, indeed healthy, to hate and despise others. Even the potential for friendship is seen as something that must be earned and even then not necessarily allowed. But that attitude is backward to the holy fool, for the former is the way of the Lord, even if it appears foolish to the world.

I wish I could cite this example as one of my actual traits fully developed and perfected, but too often I am dismissive of others, sometimes I fall bitter to bitterness, and very often I hold back a degree of deserved intimacy from even those who I am closest too. So in regards to this open and honest love for all of God's people, no, here I do not measure up to the ideal of the holy fool.

But even great authors write crappy novels, and even great actors stink up the joint. (As Charlton Heston pointed out to Joey, "it's okay to stink, the one thing though that you must remember is NEVER take a shower in my dressing room"). However, the ideal of the great author encompasses a level of practice and craftsmanship that would make a crappy novel impossible, and a great actor ideally would act with such precision and talent that no character would be misplayed. But in reality all but God are fallible, and so even the greatest will admit to only imitating greatness. But in that quest to imitate that ideal, what glory, what grace can be achieved.

So it is with the holy fool. The ideal may only exist in the mind of dreamers and long-dead Russian novelists, but it is still worth chasing. I may not have reached the state of feeling only love and no hate like the holy fool, but I will try, and I will keep trying. For while this is very much a case of aiming for ht heavens, my father taught me that if you aim for the heavens you might at least be able to reach the gates.

Or else you may at least come close enough to grasp the Lord's outstretched hand, though for that one need not leap far, just to jump with hope, love and faith.

So take it to your head, take it to your heart and remember Rand rocks.

Goodnight Folks!