Unrequited

I haven't found myself in this predicament often, but I have experienced it enough to fully realize the agony of every passing moment; and the fact that, it is in fact, only moment by moment I must watch go by that only until satisfied by an eternity, will this predicament see fit to pass...

Unrequited...means invisible.  It means un-thought of.  It means not remembered.  And the cruelty lies in the truth that you are clearly visible.  You are thought of. You are remembered. Dearly.  It is a weight that by an unseen force makes me fight to keep my head raised, insides in control and eyes trained on what is in front of me; rather than looking, searching for you.

Unrequited stretches beyond an inconvenience; an inconvenience can simply be forgotten through distraction.  How pleasant.  But the stark difference with you is that no matter the trouble, frustration or disappointment before me, I cannot forget. You.

To you, I am not remembered.  To you, I am not even merely a passing thought.  Though I shout inwardly, I cannot even whisper outwardly because I am, before your eyes, unseen.  And as you travel through your days; progressing through your li
fe, you are free & happy to ride the wings of time traveling to wherever the winds may take you.  But I.  I must hoist you upon my shoulders, wresting you from the residence you've erected in my heart and bear the burden of you until that moment.  Moment by moment. For an eternity, until you are gone.



Chopin Nocturne No. 19 in E Minor
Trois Gymnopédies: Gymnopédie No. 1

The Garden

I just recently started a new devotional called, Solo by Eugene H. Peterson.  The neat thing about it is that along with using The Message translation, the format forces the reader to meditate on sections of scripture in an unconventional way.  With a lot of the devotionals I've used in the past, I always felt some far-off pressure to memorize every verse I read or incorporate an extremely structured application.  Of course there's nothing wrong with that and in most cases, a good thing, but I found that I would miss out on the essence of allowing God's Word to sink into my spirit and learn about Him in a new way.  And when I say, "just started," I mean I'm three days in; but Day 1 has already left an impression.

It covered Genesis 3:1-10; where the serpent deceived Eve, she and Adam sinned and God confronted them in the garden; the overall theme being, reconciliation with God.  How do we run from God?  How do we hide from God?  When are we most tempted to hide?  But the part that took my breath away was as I read verse 8, "When they heard the sound of God strolling through the garden in the evening breeze, the Man and his Wife hid in the trees of the garden, hid from God."

I can remember as a kid, living in California and especially Illinois walking outside by myself in the evening and feeling the breeze blow across my face and neck.  And in my innocence, I never doubted that God was in that breeze and He was allowing me a special moment to bask in his presence.  Through my childhood, adolescence and now as an adult, the quiet of evening holds such a special place in my heart.  Because something God started thousands of years ago with His first creation, He still does with someone as insignificant as me.  For me, the stillness of night and the cool breeze of evening is such an awesome place to spend time with God because He's there and He never fails to remind me of that.

And I can't help but wonder, with God and His millions of variations of variety, how other people experience the same thing I do.  Does it come at sunrise, while driving in the car, during a run or working with their hands?  When does God stir your spirit?

Can Someone Provide Me the Address's to the Members of the Film Academy So I Can Send Them All an IQ Test?

Yes, a complete departure from my usual topics but I love movies so, why not?

Best Picture: True Grit, Black Swan, Inception, The Social Network, The Fighter, Toy Story 3, The King's Speech, The Kids Are All Right, 127 Hours & Winter's Bone (who??).

My prediction for the winner is The King's Speech.  It's Switzerland. Of course anyone with an ounce of deductive reasoning would know full well that Inception should be packing up each and every award and shipping it home to Mom, but the Academy rarely operates off of sheer logic and the responsibility of recognizing great films.  They'll avoid the obvious showdown between The Social Network and Inception (politics vs. creativity) and we all remember what happened last year with Avatar and The Hurt Locker...eccckkkh.   But let's talk about some of the other nominees, shall we? Ahem-let me try to say this calmly...

The Kids Are All Right --???????  Are you KIDDING ME??  Are you kidding me.  Sure, it's an unconventional story; a married lesbian couple raising two kids in some beautiful state (California I'm thinking...wasn't really paying attention) dealing with the normal issues of their kids becoming adults, enduring a marriage relationship that's gone stale and navigating through the awkwardness of reuniting with an estranged father aka sperm donor.  So, help me understand.  Just because it was shot with one of those cameras that makes the picture look grainy & "independent film-ish", made regular references to gay porn and did like many low-budget, indy films tend to do and leave the audience with a list of unresolved issues, it deserves an Oscar nomination??!  And let's not forget, Annette Bening AND Mark Ruffalo both picked up Best Supporting nods!!

Now, if you can sit here, look me dead in the eye, keep a straight face and tell me Annette or Mark's performances were as breathtaking as Amy Adams' or Christian Bale's in The Fighter, Jeremy Renner's in The Town or even Geoffrey Rush's in The King's Speech (and I haven't even seen The King's Speech yet, but Rush delivers standout performances in just about everything he does, so he gets a S/O from me.  Yeah, yeah that's not fair.  Well, life's not fair.) then you just might get the first four words out before I throw a three-legged bar stool in your face.  Legs first.

Let there be no misunderstanding--I LOVE Annette Bening; The American President & American Beauty?!  And I like Mark too; sort of. Um, The Brothers Bloom or Shutter Island...I guess.   But this year wasn't their year.  Without a doubt, Annette had more than one moment of hilarity & heartbreak, but mesmerizing?  Like an Oscar-worthy performance should be?  Sorry, but no.  And concerning Mark...what are your feelings on him replacing Edward Norton as the Hulk??  That'd be a more interesting conversation.

Well, as anyone can see, this subject hits quite a few nerves with me; I couldn't even get to the Best Actor category!  Until tomorrow everyone...

Why Is The New Year so Exciting??

Not a very hard question; but an interesting one. A few days ago, a friend of mine tweeted, "No more heartbreak in 2011!" I concur. Wholeheartedly.

I secretly hope the New Year will bring about my carefully buried hopes & dreams; shining opportunities; the kinda stuff you see in movies. I haven't quite figured out why it's "secret" yet. Sort of the same thing like when you're blowing out the candles on your birthday cake and right away everyone asks, "What'd you wish for, huh? Huh??" And you simply shrug it off, giving them a, "I wished for world peace," vibe when you really just unleashed the rapids of your soul in 2 milliseconds & locked it right back up again. YOU know...

But then I get out there and play the game the same way I've always played it. Definition of insanity? True. So, I guess for the first time, I'm beginning to understand the process that life is. People, putting myself at the top of the list, don't like the process. Job search, weight loss, finding "the one", being debt-free, acquiring wealth, overcoming rejection (eeegaadds, 2010 was a pretty tough year concerning that)...I could digress for hours about rejection but I won't because this is a blog and not a couch in an office. So this year, I've decided to embrace the "process." And I'm kinda excited about where this new mindset & God's direction will take me...

Is This For Real?

Hypothetical situation...

I want to you "close your eyes". Of course if you do that, then you can't continue reading so I want you to act like you're closing your eyes, clear your head and imagine this scenario.

You got up today and you're in a good mood. Today's your day off. You've got a couple of lazy hazy errands to run in the AM, and then you're going to meet up with friends later and spend the rest of the day out and about. So you're in the shower, trying to piece together your outfit for the day; something a little nicer than casual and easy enough to move in but bottom line: something you know you'll look good in. It's always so much more enjoyable spending some extra time in the mirror when you don't have to go to work...

Your gas tank is on E, so first stop is to fill up. The attendant at the gas station who you're pretty sure hasn't showered in a week & in between ringing up customers is whooping at his 5 inch portable TV over Jerry Springer re-runs, is giving you bedroom eyes while trying to lick his lips like LL. Even LL hardly does it anymore. "Ok," you think, "Whatever".

Next stop is the grocery store and as you're checking expiration dates on a half gallon of milk, a gentlemen who could easily pass for an extended relative of Frodo Baggins begins asking you random questions like, "Do you eat pork and have you ever seen the Queen Mary in Long Beach, CA?"#ifeelweirdnow



Finally, you make a last minute decision to grab a quick workout so you won't feel so bad about the confectionery nose-dive you fully intend on making later on. Now, all of the hot-shot 25-30something guys are spending more time looking at themselves in the mirror than at you but once upstairs on the treadmill when you're spitting all over yourself in the middle of an interval sprint, a very nice young man who could fit into your jeans twice decides to unveil his soul and reveal to you that he's been admiring you from afar for quite some time now.

Math is not my forte, I will admit. But looking at the equation here, 1+1+1=3, right?

Question: Should we determine our individual level of physical attractiveness based on the type of people we get consistent attention from?

The Essence of We

Ok, I'm sure all of us at one point have heard the phrase, "When you have sex with someone, you take a piece of that person with you and they take a piece of you with them."

Essence of self is lost.

So the more one has sex with different people, the more one loses themselves, giving their essence away.

Apparently then, in today's world, the reason SEX is so important, so necessary, so rushed into with a blaze of breathless excitement is because we have given so much of ourselves away already, there just happens to be nothing left to offer. To share. To discover. To talk about. In truth, what else is there besides sex? Honestly. Because without the protection and guidance of Christ, traveling bleary-eyed down the pathway of life we manage to back ourselves into a corner, empty-handed, having by this time, slowly poured out the "essence" vial that contained who we were and what we consisted of; Through, quite simply, the multiple acts of sex itself. . .

Perplexing

I have no idea if anyone else feels this way or if I'm about to stomp all over a verbal landmine; well I probably am. This is completely off the topic of what I originally sat down to write about but whatever...I'll get back to it. As with almost every other human being in the world, I have a bunch of weighty and not so important thoughts trouncing around in my head and I'll hold them in for months, sometimes years for fear of once expounding upon them in public, I'll be met with a silence that could send Edward Cullen to the grave and then I'll be forced to wallow under a label of ignorance for the rest of my life.

For instance, when I was in college, I took a journalism class in which our professor was a huge U2 fan and a total "favoritist". Not sure whether or not Webster agrees with me on that one but given the fact that "bootylicious" was added to his esteemed pages a few years ago, I won't let it worry me too much. He wouldn't even try to cover up the fact that the prettiest girl in class could have defined journalism as the act of hiding a bunch of diaries under her bed; he still would've given her an A. Needless to say, I tried really hard to pay attention and would agonize through the duration of a class period on whether or not to contribute to a group discussion. Every now and then, I'd luck out and sound halfway intelligent, but most of the time I'd start talking and simultaneously battle out an inner dialogue running through my head. You know, that exact moment when you open your mouth to say something, knowing you have no idea what the heck you're talking about but you have to keep going (otherwise instead of coming across as merely being nonsensical, you would look like Emma from Glee, fully operating in her spiritual gift of social awkwardness). So, you just have to Thelma & Louise it; finishing your incoherent thought, tearing off the side of the cliff, hair tousling in slow motion, perishing in fall explosion of flames brighter than a 4th of July fireworks finale. All in the time frame of 5 seconds. And everyone's staring at you looking slightly confused and uncomfortable. Anyways, I started writing today with a completely different thought on my mind...about using the people who approach us as a gauge to determine our own attractiveness. A fatalistic attitude??