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.

Exile

As I am feeling out of sorts and out of place, perpetually, this seems appropriate, is it perfect ready? Perhaps not quite, but it has come along and fits my feelings well, and I AM RAND!

Exile

It doesn't really matter
My thoughts, my feelings, my fantasies
They are divergent from reality
Never resting on solid ground
My actions are feeble
Constrained by fear and impotence
Like breath against a hurricane
The mechanics of fate overwhelm me

Perhaps I should travel in exile
To a foreign land
Where my skills are rare and my talents novel
Where my actions are exotic and my faults mysteriously
To a place where I can be king and dictate the fate of others

But that is but a thought, a feeling, a fantasy
Divergent from reality
And it doesn't matter
Not at all

-Rand McRanderson

A meditation on Morrie

Something I wrote for a class on Tuesdays with Morrie, but an opinion which I still hold more or less today:

“Someone asked me an interesting question yesterday,” Morrie said now, looking over my shoulder at the wall-hanging behind me, a quilt of hopeful messages that friends had stitched for him on his seventieth birthday.  Each patch on the quilt had a different message: Stay the course, the best is yet to be, Morrie—Always No.1 in Metal Health!

What was the question I asked.

“If I worried about being forgotten after I died?”

Well?  Do you?

“I don’t think I will be.  I’ve got so many people who have been involved with me in close, intimate ways.  And love is how you stay alive, even after you are gone.”

p.133, Tuesdays with Morrie

 

I find that idea comforting, but ultimately I can’t believe it. Being remembered requires the people who know you spreading your name, otherwise when they die you will be forgotten.  Even if they do spread your name around your identity will become blurred after being passed down through generations.  Eventually, people will stop spreading the vague rumors of a man they never even knew and you will be forgotten.  The memory of a man can live on a generation in the memories of those who loved him, and perhaps can live on another generation in their children, but memories fade.  Few many people remember their great-great-great-great grandfather, and those that do are likely keepers of a family history that some unlucky afternoon will be burned in an unexpected blaze.  Few can remember everyone who his father befriended, and even fewer can remember those people in addition to the people his grandfather befriended.  Names fade over time, faces fade over time, and memories fade away, over time the memory of a man becomes scrambled, jumbled, or forgotten.  After a person dies they are forgotten, maybe not in the first generation, maybe not in the second generation, but as time goes on they vanish from the minds of man.

The memories of some men can find a degree of immortality in history.  Those who do great deeds their names are fused into our common heritage.  Genghis Khan, Alexander the Great, Mao, these men are ingrained within the memory of civilization.  Yet even these names can pass.  The history of man goes back in some cases 5,000 years, but the people whose memories survived all that time are hazy shadows of people, only known for being depicted on a temple wall.  The majority of figures, so incredibly famous in their own times have vanished, others are so entrenched in myth that they are no remembered only the legends.  Some emerge, but for how long will the history of mankind have room for them.  In another 10,000 years will they be remembered?  Perhaps, but maybe just as foot notes to those who did greater deeds.  How many great Khans have been forgotten under the shadow of Genghis Khan?  At the height of their power they might have been the greatest on earth, now their memories have vanished since the memory of Genghis Khan is so much more attractive.  Yet even his memory could be forgotten in another 10,000 years.  Ultimately, 10,000 years is nothing compared to all the years yet to come, and these great men have just bought themselves a little extra time before being forgotten.

The world forgets its heroes, it forgets its villains.  Times change and these things become irrelevant or at best academic.  The accomplishments of men, those too become blurred in the millions of years history.  If “the beating of a butterfly’s wings in Tokyo can eventually change the weather in New York City” (Bartleby.com) then a million years of butterflies can cause storms to destroy or mutate everything a man created.  Our legacies, the memories of our name are controlled by the fickle currents of time.  We cannot trust that our memory will go on after we die, we cannot trust our legacy will be remembered, all we can do is live a life we can be proud of and leave the rest to history.

Because it cannot begin again when its never over

But then again, does not life die ever night and rise up every morning?

No?

Just checking.

Given the lack of clean endings between phases of life (after all how many romances have been denied a proper death by pleading is it really over?), there is consequently a lack of clean beginnings.

Thus despite long delays, the new www.therandshow.com comes to life with not a roar, though neither with a whimper.

Rather in an increasingly common spirit in internet-land, I am semi-publicizing, a semi-alpha-release of the new www.therandshow.com. In addition to reframing and reorganizing all my posts from this blog, you may find other wonders, like comics, programming tips, and amazing bric - and also brack!

Anywho, I am immensely tired, so the lack of percise sensimentality worries me not, after all, who said I wanted to make sense? Really, all I want to do is fly!

More or less...

Anyways, 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.

And I knew if I had a chance I could make those people dance

And maybe they'd be happy for a while.

I'm far from ready to say Bye Bye Ms. American Pie.

In fact, I just might write a book of love someday, I DO believe in God, because the Bible tells me so, and music will save my mortal soul... I think I've over-exhausted semi-jokes based on references to American Pie Lyrics.

But my friends, the music can't die, no matter what they tell you.

Anywho, those lines "And I knew if I had a chance I could make those people dance / and they'd be happy for a while" are classic. And like most great songs, they are classic in such a way that resonates within your soul, in a grand general sense but also in a specific personal sense. For me those lines often renew my sense of drive in my writing.

Many a writer will make grand plans to change the world, to influence great leaders, and indeed, I have a hope that my writings might help shape culture for the better. But those dreams are just hopes for happy accidents, take them seriously and they become nothing more than vanity (But isn't everything vanity?).

After all, we are subject to random variations in fame, popularity, and all such. And while I do believe God intervenes in this universe and intervenes personally for me, I do not think that every intervention is for me, and some indeed might cost me (but still they are always the right ways for the universe to work, above all else Lord, thy will be done).

Yet then again, being a writer, being an artist, being a programmer, it's not about grand influence. Yes it's about the art, but the art could exist solely in your imagination if it is just for art's sake (though that is a bit of a condensation of certain thoughts I have on art, condensed and vastly simplified because that is a post for another day). Yet the dream of being able to give some joy, to spread some beauty to other people, to make those people dance, if only for a little while... that justifies the creative process, and when all my creativity and hard work seems for nothing, I often am able to just remember those little smiles I've given to people and it all seems okay.

And indeed, it is more than okay, if you can spread some joy, even for the least and lowest of people in the world, after all, these are Christ's brothers and sisters, and if you can make them smile, Jesus too will smile. And if you can do that, all the empires and powers of this world just seem pretty irrelevant.

Always remember my friends, you're better than this world, after all you were created by someone far beyond it. Never let it take you down, and if you ever need help, remember you can always call on me, and even when I fail, there is always God, and if you trust in Him, He will deliver you. But that's enough semi-mystic Christian revelry for this session.

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

And God Bless.

Happy Reunion Day!

For this post I have plenty of possible material. I could whine, I could apologize, I could shout in fury, but that would ignore the fact that today is Reunion Day.

Honestly, I was planning a post on half-a-dozen other topics this morning when I found out it was Reunion Day.

And by now, the hair-scratching over what I'm talking about should surely be boring into...

Anywho, what I'm talking about is that today is a celebration of the Reunion of the Syro-Malankara Catholic Church and the universal Catholic Church (the capitalizations here are... well, broad and random guesses of what should be capitalized, I'm Christian, that's just how we roll).

A little history.

To summarize (immensely), is because of intolerance, stubbornness, and various other factors, the Malankara Church broke from the Catholic Church in the 16th C., and then through dedicated hard-work, especially by the Servant of God Archbishop Geevarghese Mar Ivanios, this breech in the Christian family was in part healed. But there is so many of these breeches.

It really is a shame, the divisions in Christianity, because, when it comes down to it, Christians got to show the love, and to have these walls between us, that's blocking up the love.

I jest, but in all seriousness, I do believe in the Love of God, and it is that Love which redeems souls, the only real part of humanity that is of any importance. How then can anything be placed above that Love to justify its divisions?

Love rules. You gotta accept it, swallow your pride, bandage the wounds, apologize, beg, do what it takes, to spread the love. That's why we're here. And that's the only real way to measure the worth of life when push comes to shove, the love you bear and the love you share.

And it isn't always easy, but if God's with you, can even your own weaknesses stand against you?

In then end, all I can say is I will try to love everyone, the best I can, and in doing so love God the best that I can, and in doing so...

I could go on into endless Christian mysticism rants, but let me just say Happy Reunion Day!

And may God Bless you allS.