My secret nemesis loads steak knives pointy side up into the dishwasher and unloads forks into the wrong compartment of the silverware tray. He is a plague upon my being--or she, whatever--a plauge!
When I read your posts I hurt on the inside.
--"Paul", responding to Should Women Wear Pants?
The outsiders, stand by and see, or think they see, the convert entering with bowed head a sort of small temple which they are convinced is fitted up inside like a prison, if not a torture-chamber. But all they really know about it is that he has passed through a door.
--G. K. Chesterton, "The Catholic Church and Conversion"
Q: Youth is wasted on the young.
A: So is life wasted on the living?
I've put on The Orb's Adventures Beyond the Ultraworld, Disc 2 (a damned seminal album). Ambient gooves radiate from a secret mushroomed lair on the back side of the moon, where mixing with the airborne dust at the edge of the sunrise to sparkle. Tipsy vibrations and stoned aliens watch on with lazy eyelids, moving in smooth rhythms that inspire writers to write about undulation.
In gainesville, Josh has updated his site. I am reminded of how much of an enigma he is, and how little I know him. A few minutes later and I wander into thinking about how very well I don't know any of the people I live with, and how instantaneously twelve months has sneaked past. I catalog all of the friends I have made and left behind. Why do I commit to leaving florida just when I am ready to call it home, and why do I react to the leaving with the missing?
There are people to love everywhere, I suppose to myself. Or by moving away right when everyone else settles down, am I passing on the one opportunity to grow old with old friends who I will eventually discuss our medical problems and dead acquaintances.
I feel some kinship with pioneers, runaways, immigrants, and the men and women who have populated the various American metropoli. I share in their heroic spirit, participate in that primordial normadic calling. I feel good; I'm ready for a good cry or a cigarette or a run through some warm florida downpour--it's like I've been drinking.
Today is friday the 13th of February, Valentine's Eve. Tomorrow will pass "as per usual" and the next thing I know it's March. By the end of March I will have not been joined to the Catholic church through confirmation, confession, and eucharist at the Easter Vigil. In early April I finish Pimsleur Mandarin III, with vague plans to travel to China someday. By late April my research is written up, and in May my desk and my computers are handed down to a new student. I pass along what know-how I can, and hope that not too much is lost.
I will graduate, probably one of the last non-Ph.D. students to come out of the Computational Engineering Laboratory. Days later my grandparents shuttle me up to Pearisberg, VA where I set off on the Appalachian Trail once again. One summer and thirteen hundred miles later I walk off Kathadin and into the Naval Undersea Warfare Center in Rhode Island. There I join a sonar research group and discard my eperience with IC design and test.
Over the next few months I get a security clearance after only some akwardness. At the same time, I join the nearby Maronite church and am eventually brought into full communion with the rest of the Catholic world.
But then what?
1
Kit and I grew up together for several years in Saudia Arabia, and our families remain friends. Unless I've got my childhood memories mixed-up, my father has pictures of us camping out in the Arabian desert as babies. She has since grown, married, and birthed the singular Liam Sebastian Trzebunia-Niebies. Stories from the labor and birth are on ebunia.com. Her writing is honest, funny, deeply down-to-earth, and she's a storyteller with stories to tell (Plus, I want to note, her website is verified XHTML 1.0).
2
Joe, from Meet Joe Convert is an articulate Catholic who has blogged the first two years of post-conversion life. I wish had his self-reflective insight or articulation. He writes personally, with lovingkindness and without triumphalism.
3
Melanie hangs out at the house, dates my roomate Josh, and has seduced Yin away from the gym and into the Salsotecas. Her Livejournal steams out from her consciousness with the attendant randomly quirks and kittyblogging.
Being attacked by wild animals in an ancient arena while onlookers throw stones and make wagers and the heat of a thousand suns pounds on your head like a drum is a harsh mistress.
--another bit from Captain Parker's Imaginary Polar Expedition to tide the blog over till the next long rambling religion entry.
comment spammers: 1
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Mt-Blacklist is up and running. I've saved one comment spam (and de-URLified it) for posterity. All I had to do was bribe Joel into installing the Storable perl module.