The moon

Tonight the full moon does its thing in full view or behind the intermittent clouds. Today I had my car towed unjustly, missed church, paid a mere (yet painful) $40 to get it back, did four loads of laundry, had dinner with my parents, and saw The Revenge of the Sith. People have been driving crazily today; this seems to happen with every full moon. I left the movie at about 8:30 feeling oddly unsettled, like I had skipped class on the day of a test or I had forgotten the birthday of somebody close. Now that feeling hangs on by the skin of its teeth, though I have beaten it largely away with Celis Grand Cru. Right now my CD player is hanging on a song, trying to play it and failing. Damn you, full moon.

Yesterday, however, was a fabulous day. I awoke at 8:30, made myself pancakes and coffee, chatted a bit online, cleaned and straightened my apartment, and then went to Fair Hill with Merry for a lovely walk through the woods, water, and fields. This included the removal of shoes and socks and wading in a stream, and the examination of a bizarre, vaguely Easter-themed shrine built into a shallow cave. The shrine boasted a cross, a stuffed bunny, a stuffed cat, and number of odd little items whose nature I cannot recall. Our hunger was slaked at Los Caporales, and our entertainment needs fulfilled by Blade Runner and Arvo Pärt (in succession), accompanied by Aecht Schlenkerla Rauchbier and Lindemans Framboise Lambic. I'll give you one guess who drank which.

Merry is truly the greatest blessing in my life in quite some time.The story begins out of order, at the end of this past March. Some close friends of mine concocted a scheme to bring Merry and I together. If you allow me to back up again, this time about fifteen years, you will learn that the first time that Merry and I met was through Merry's sister, who at the time was dating one of my (still, even today) best friends. At that time Merry and I talked a bit, but she was thirteen when I was sixteen, and I cannot say that we were close. Ten years ago was the last time that Merry and I spoke before this past March, when we resume the story, this time in proper order. My aforementioned friends presented their idea that I should meet Meredith, and though I hadn't spoken to her in ten years, and I was not feeling particularly disposed to the idea of dating, something within my spirit said, "That sounds like a great idea." My mouth said the same.

Now, after nearly two months that have passed in the blink of an eye, and which have included dates, shooting stars, church, Spongebob, a broken-down car, a little road trip, and a concert, I can say that I have found a remarkable companion. We share quite a bit, though we have plenty of differences to keep things interesting. Just this past Wednesday, as we lay on a blanket beneath the moon, Merry said to me, "We don't have a lot in common," and I laughed because we do have a lot in common, including our views on church, God, relationships, honesty, music, movies, and foods we like. Our differences lie in areas that are mostly tangental, such as how we categorize favorites, whether or not we have best friends, whether hiking is fun or is an utter drag, and whether spiders are cute or scary.

So what makes Merry a remarkable companion? I could say that it is difficult to know where to begin, but really it is not. It is more difficult to know where to end. Merry is a kind person, not in the sense of simply expressing kind things, but rather that her expression is always honest, and that honest expression shows a great deal of kindness. She has definite feelings about people she likes or does not like, but she does not make unduly fast judgments. She does not let an innocently mislaid comment, an unfortunate circumstance, or a simple mistake sway her judgment. The judgments she makes are built over time and are made with thought and heart. Her heart is powerful, and those she loves, she loves fervently. She has definite opinions, but is not afraid of ideas that may conflict with or complicate those opinions.

I think that one of my favorite things about Merry is that she does not disguise herself in order to make an impression. She is who she is at all times, and this allows me to also be myself. I don't often have a hard time saying things about myself, but I tend to sculpt my behavior to the situation I am in. I often feel like people make judgments based on signs and indicators, and this makes me afraid to be myself, as if I might accidentally do something or say something that would lead to an imperturbable conclusion. With Merry, I feel that I can simply be myself spontaneously, and I do not need to screen myself. I just allow my self to flow naturally from me, and there it is, and she still likes me.

Writing about Merry feels like writing about the strokes in a painting. I am a dissector, one who breaks things down into their components in order to describe them and understand them, but with her I cannot do ths. Well, honestly, maybe I could, given a few days of free time. But I don't feel like that is necessary. I will paint in broad strokes and leave the details up to the future.

The Damn Music Thing

So, as you have read below, sha passed me the music baton. It is amazing both the convergence and divergence of musical tastes between people who may share things in common. Friday night I spent two hours doing one of my favorite things -- just listening to music and doing nothing else. There is so much music that I love, and so much more that I need to hear. Anyway, here goes...

Total volume of music on my shit-ass computer: 29 GB. This does not include the music on my work machine, which is about 5 GB, and the music on the server at work, which is about 30 GB. There is some overlap between the three.

The last CD I bought: Jim Bianco, Handsome Devil.
The last legal download: Kitchens of Distinction, Capsule
The last (possibly) illegal download: Ryan Adams, everything beyond Heartbreaker, which I obtained legally.

Song I'm playing right now: Kitchens of Distinction, Polaroids

Five songs I listen to a lot, or that mean a lot to me:
1. Te Deum, Arvo Pärt.
2. Every Hour Here, The Innocence Mission
3. Naked As We Came, Iron and Wine
4. Downtown Train (or any number of other songs), Tom Waits
5. Lullabye 6000, The Czars
6. Everywhere You Turn, The Bad Plus
7. Winter Came Early This Year, Andrew Peterson
8. Summer Wind, Cotton Dress, Richard Shindell
9. Anna Begins, Counting Crows
10. Closer To the Sun, Denison Witmer

That's not five? Well, yes it is. It's at least five.

Five people I choose to pass the baton to:
Everyone I know who blogs has already received the baton.
Well, there's one, but her blog is private. (Hi, Merry!)

convergence

So, last week I signed away the next five years of my life to a car. Not that I can really afford car payments, but my old car began a quick downward spiral and I had to get something reliable quickly. I ended up with a 2000 Honda Civic SI. It's nice and zippy, and hopefully as reliable as any Honda. I drove it to Brooklyn this past weekend and it did great. The old Altima barely made it to the dealerships last Tuesday. The clutch pedal was about an inch off the floor and getting the car into gear required near dislocation of my shoulder.

Now that I definitely have no money, I have been afflicted with severe pain from an impacted wisdom tooth. It built over the weekend, and I couldn't eat anything solid all day today. Slmifast is utter shit. I feel hungrier after a Slimfast than I do beforehand. I finally had an english muffin a couple hours ago and survived. It was tasty. So Wednesday morning I am getting both of my impacted wisdom teeth yanked out. It would be nice if I could get some nitrous oxide to help make the cutting and pulling experience less annoying, but it is absurdly expensive, so alert and awake I will be. I wish I had a larger mouth. Can lips be stretched out? I imagine so. If I had been anticipating this, I would have been performing such stretches. I'd get the two good wisdom teeth out as well, but I'm trying to minimize cost, so I will keep them in my mouth so I have more extractions to look forward to. They make brushing and flossing an adventure!

Hopefully I will be well enough for the Echo and the Bunnymen show on Friday at the Chameleon Club in Lancaster, PA. I like this venue immensely. It's smallish and has a balcony, which provides tons of decent vantage points. I've also seen The Vigilantes of Love, The Innocence Mission, and Denison Witmer there. Then on Sunday, I'm going to the Peter Murphy show at the 930 Club in DC. This is a medium-size venue, also with a balcony and lots of good standing spots. I've seen The Human League, Siouxie and the Banshees, Blur, and The Cocteau Twins there. I am thankful for my friend Brian, without whom I would miss so many re-emerging 80s bands. I am also thankful that he buys the tickets and lets me owe him.

Now I will read a bit and then sleep. Crossing to Safety is a beautiful book, steeped in liturature, and I would like to someday write about a few of the many ideas that sparkle on its pages. Who am I kidding? These ideas will pass through the sieve of my memory like a million other ideas have. I've even written a few things down. This means nothing.

some quick thoughts

Today the pastor talked about scripture as spiritual food and the difference between spiritual milk and spirtual solid food (or meat). This was good to hear, and I definitely do want to spend more time in scripture particularly because I've regained my faith in the Bible as the Word of God. The thoughts that were running through the back of my mind during the message, however, revolved around spiritual milk and spiritual meat.

First, I find it interesting the tendency in Christendom to transide neatly from spiritual milk to spiritual cheese without much further progression. Some examples of what I consider spiritual cheese include ideas such as, "Let go and let God," "God said it, I believe it, and that settles it," and about 75% of the merchandise at any Christian bookstore. I would like to explore this concept further, but not now.

Second, I considered my training and upbringing. I feel that I got a lot of meat without ever getting the milk, and I did not know properly how to process the meat, so it did not make me healthy. Before I gained a basic understanding of God's love, I understood concepts such as original sin; justification, sanctification, and glorification; the imputation of our sins to Christ and the corresponding imputation of Christ's righteousness to us; the difference between covenental theology and dispensational theology; Arminianism and Calvinism; etc. I swallowed all of this eagerly, but did not process it fully. Because of this, I did not grow correctly, and God had to dig in deep and tear away what I had become until all that was left was a very fundamental faith. The image of Eustace and Aslan in The Voyage of the Dawn Treader comes to mind.

I think that it takes the heart of a child to grasp the basic purity of God's love both for the world and for me as an individual. I have always felt old, ever since I was a child. But now I feel like a babe in Christ. I hunger for that spiritual milk, and even as I fill myself with it, I find myself hungering for spiritual meat. God give me wisdom, patience, and perserverence.