With thine faithless oath to granteth something simple,
Wretched Sleep, hast thou forsaken Morning's Temple?

The sun is not yet up. This Daylight Savings Time time sucks.
I wrote" time" the second time on purpose, because apparently I was writing iambs and I didn't want to backwards-syncopate the rhythm.

I think I'm the only one who cannot help but think of orange juice as liquid cheddar cheese. Repulsive I know. I still drink it for I love the orange juice.

I played a gig at the Governor's Mansion yesterday, for the TSO gala. TSO stands for Tallahassee Symphony Orchestra. No one listened to me, they ate ouderves, drank wine, and talked loudly. I couldn't hear myself. Ironic since the "S" stands for Symphony and the "O" stands for Orchestra. Bureaucrats run everything. I opened with a Haydn sonata (since this was a Classical gig) and was transported to the court at Esterhaza playing nachtmusik and divertimenti. Yesterday also confirmed my long-held suspicion that Jeb is a douche with an ouderve stuffed in his mouth.

I have dubbed that an alternative word for "to blow one's nose" is "exsufflate."

I wish to conclude with one of the most beautiful passages of poetry I've ever read (Shakespeare):

Or, as the snail, whose tender horns being hit,
Shrinks backward in his shelly cave with pain
And there all smothered up in shade doth sit,
Long after fearing to creep forth again . . .

During my senior year in high school, I took piano lessons in pensacola which was a five-hour round trip. I would go every other wednesday--at the end of the half day, get back at 6:30. During winter I would listen to the Jekyl and Hyde soundtrack on the way back--the sun would set before freeport or before Fort Walton depending on which way I was going. I think the musical would always almost finish but never make it before I got home. I'm listening to Jekyl and Hyde now because someone I'm accopanying for NATS is singing "In His Eyes" and it's been stuck in my head. My freshman year in college, Christopher introduced me to the concept recording of the musical which was made before it took off and had a Broadway production. I remember riding around my car and listening to the concept recording with Marisa and Christopher. Marisa had never heard it, and Christopher explained everything to her, and highlighted all the main songs.

These are happy memories. I've been trying to write a poem about memories for a long time--how they haunt me. You know, my freshman year in college might have been the best and worst year of my life. Mike wrote in his most recent entry how he was going to delete his journal. I think that it might remind him of his juvenilia and now he's studying for the LSAT and being really serious. I think that I'm attached to livejournal because it reminds me of my first year in college when everything was exciting, beautiful, painful. Things are more firm now. I know who I am now, the bad and good. It's not as much fun. Really.

Oh, and Mike, I drank one of your beers. I'll pay you back.

My friend Maria (Kirsi-Marja but she's changing her name) from Finnland, attendee of Juilliard is marrying a boxer from the Virgin Islands. Backstory: I met Maria at Bowdoin Music Festival this past summer in Maine. Maria once spoke in a New York accent, but now speaks in a New York-slash-island accent (which is weird), but she's finnish. hrm. She took up boxing around september to beat up her ex-boyfriend in the punching bag. She was training with "Pops" in Harlem (just north of where she lives). And now she and Pops' youngest son (champion boxer) are getting married. His mother has threatened to kill Maria, Pops won't talk to either of them. They're gettin married anyways. I havn't met her fiancee, but Maria's will could kick your ass by itself.

I wish them luck, my finnish violinist friend and her boxing-championg fiancee from the virgin islands.

What I love most: sincere guffaws, the kind that suddenly boom and scare off sadness--a guffaw a day keeps the lonely man away; singing along boisterously (in falsetto) with commerical jingles; sharing a real hug with someone you havn't seen in a while; eating breakfast for dinner--a breakfast with much too much Tony's cooked into the eggs (and drenching the salsa on top like it was dressing on a Red Lobster salad)

I should amend: these are the things I loved most about today.

I learned today the reason why I havn't been able to write recently. TV. I started watching TV and my mind was anesthetized.

I am nostalgically happy--not nostalgic for happiness--I'm happy and nostalgic, nostalgically happy.


And they lived happily ever after . . . .

If none of you have ever listened to opera, well, you should listen to "Recitar" from Leoncavallo's Pagliacci. And then, um, be opera fans, I guess.

Speaking of Opera, the final Jeopardy question this afternoon was about composers: this composer moved was the first to stage La Scala about his native Italy in Vienna in 1766, or somthing like that.
Everyone guessed Verdi, which is 100 years off. I guessed Allesandro Scarlatti, I was 100 years off the other direction. The correct answer was Salieri.
Jeopardy.
(Music History.)

My monitor is chirping like a chorus of chicadas. wheeeeee whooooooooom, wheeeeeeeeeeeee whoooom, wheeeeeeeeeee
It's gonna blow up soon (knock on wood) and I won't have money to buy another. Humph.

If you don't have a niece, get one soon, cuz they rock. Smiling and eating and screaming and pooping and smiling and banging and smiling.

My sister, brother in law, and niece have lived in New Orleans for the past year. My brother in law is in the Coast Guard.

My sister and brother in law went to Haddysburg the night before the storm made landfall. My father went and picked up my niece. It took him nine hours to get back to Georgia, he had met my sister halfway. My sister went with her husband to Haddysburg; he couldn't go to Georgia because he might have been declared AWOL.

The Northeast side of the eyewall passed directly over Haddyburg. As the eyewall passed over the hotel my sister and brother were staying in, the hotel began flooding, the wind ripped off half the roof and tore most of the room doors from their frames. My sister and brother were inside the building when this happened.

When my brother in law drove to Georgia today--it took him 20 hours--a tree limb fell on the car in front of him, he dodged it and ended up in a flooded ditch. He had to break into the other car to rescue the people trapped inside, push his car out of the flooded ditch and give the other people a ride. My brother's car--normally red--is coved in mud. He had to stop in Andalusia to buy new tires, his had been shredded.

80% of New Orleans is submerged, there are four breaches in the levees. One of them--a levee for Lake Potchartrain--is 200 feet wide.

If you can stomach it, look at the photos at Washingtonpost.com. I don't know what to say.

I went from JFK through Queens to Washington Heights in Upper Manhantan, an all Hispanic neighborhood, do you know love? I had this immediately for New York. Love. Do you know home? I found home. Tom took me to his favorite tree in Central Park the day I got there, then I had a lesson in Steinway Hall that evening on 57 Street. I've been looking for Home since I was born. I found it in one day. I flew back to Tallahassee today, I miss New York like you would miss a lover.

It hasn't rained in two weeks where I live on Old Bainbridge and the trees are wilted and sag with oppression. I live in a swamp that's been covered in a layer of concrete and asphault.

There is one single wasp that lives on my patio. His name is Harry and he flies around my head when I smoke a cigarette. I don't like Harry because he is a wasp. I am prejudiced against them.

Harry is a loner. What is he doing when he flies around and sits on the wood panelling of my apartment or the steel railing on my patio? He should go sit on the sagging Magnolias like the dragonflies. Maybe Harry doesn't like the dragonflies.

There was a big spider crouched where the wall meets the roof in my bathroom last night. I thought that he was dying and had come inside to be alone, but when I went to pee at 4 AM this morning the spider was in the bathtub. I couldn't have that. I killed him with my shoe. It took five swings before I got him. He skirmished like a giant was trying to crush him with a three story building.

I didn't want to kill the spider.

It is dreadful to know that you might not be spectacular, that your dreams might not come true, that your fantasies might just be fantasies. Isn't it? To tell the truth, I don't have such fantasies. In fact, I almost never think beyond the next several weeks, hardly ever beyond the next year, and practically never beyond that. I think I either don't ever expect to live that long into the future, or I have so much to handle during the week I am paying attention to that I don't have time to think what might happen afterward, or maybe it simply isn't important to me. I think it's some of all three.

But I brought this up because it seems to be something troubling a lot of my friends--I hang out with the artsy types, they live for acknowledgement. (Artistic value is granted by the audience/public/critics, not the artist.) But I think all people want this acknowledgement that they're good at something, that they have value. That value is just expressed in different ways.

I was listening to one of the contemporary Christian radio stations tonight. And, you know, I could say that I was repulsed by the commercials that I heard, like the one titled "Supernatural business" (I don't think I have to go into it), but that's the easy thing to get upset about, because it's the most apparent hypocrisy. But what struck me the most--this is something I've been ruminating on for a while--is how contemporary Christian culture is a near replica of normal (secular) culture, except "Christianized." The radio programs are identical to normal radio programs, there's Christian bookstores, Christian business catalouges (in Panama City, there's a list of businesses owned by Christians so that, if you so choose, you can do local business only with those who know God--I saw this list with my own eyes), Christian colleges, Christian schools. But they all have the frameworks that were originally established in the secular world. You see, I believe that contemoprary Christian culture acts as a haven for complacency. In this haven, one possesses all of the amenities of contemporary life, without the worries of contemporary life. If God loves you, you have value. Always. If God is in control, then there is no need to be concerned about major problems in national and international affairs, because God will take care of it. I'm not referring to charities, because charities are like treating the symptoms instead of the causes. We are all complacent, I know, but in contemporary Christian culture, you are given "credible" reasons to be complacent.

I read Foreign Policy magazine. Every issue depresses me. And when I read this magazine or others like it, a line from Radiohead's OK Computer always runs through my head: "informed but powerless."

You know that we don't have government for the people and by the people, right? That's why such a line can resonate with us.

When I was listening to the Christian radio station tonight it started to receive bad reception. I exclaimed in jest, "Jesus, let me hear your radiostation!" Poof! Clear as day.

I am also complacent (and therefore a hypocrite). I am complacent to not searching. There is a tug in my chest, and a voice that if I allowed it to even whisper, would say, "Jesus is real, Jesus is Lord." Being a Christian is hard. For me, it was miserable. And I've had far more happiness since I havn't been a Christian than I did when I was one. But, maybe I would have had that happiness anyway. Either way, I have been mostly miserable on both sides, it is the lot God has assigned to me. But I don't search because it will be hard. I am not politically active beyond being relatively well-informed and voting, because to do more will be hard. Perhaps the only reason why I continue to do music is not because I love it or even because I'm good at it, but because it is the easiest thing for me to do. And that, ladies and gentlemen, shows how complacent I am. Am I afraid of change? Am I afriad of risks? I don't know. I think I don't stray to far away from my current path because I'm afraid I'll hate it and then wonder what the hell I got myself into. When I was in student senate, I hated it. I resigned two/thirds through my term. I also know that my desire and ability to deal with people fluctuates.

But look at this! Me, me, me. Weren't we talking about how the world is going to hell in a hand basket?

I have some other things I want to post, but it needs to be in a seperate one.

P.S. I do not want to insult any of my friends who are Christians, because I love all of them. But I believe that individuals are guilty by association to their culture. This is true for all of us. We all, in many different scenarios, exhibit "group mentality." That is, "I don't need to worry about it, because someone else will take care of it." But I also believe that contemporary Christian culture, in general, is little different from the culture at large and is (as well as the culture at large) just as unGodly as any culture, Christian or not, that has come before it.

You must understand that I have never in anything I have said since I repudiated Christianity intended to say anything insulting, discrediting, or condescending to God. I have never lost belief in God, though my understanding of him has been far from secure.

But it is instulting, discrediting, and condescending when one does not believe what another fully ascribes to.

Complacency.

Dear brothers and sisters,

Currently, I drown in work. My gasps of air are found in coffee and energy drinks. Speaking of energy drinks, have you ever read the label's on these things? The one I've been drinking is called "Monster" (bottled in Canada) with a Wicca-looking slash through the "o." This bad boy not only has 100% your daily value of Vitamin C, Riboflavin, Niacin, Vitamins B6 and B12, but also such mystical ingredients as L-Carnitine, Taurine, and Ginseng (my personal favorite) for which there are no daily recommended values. But the whopper is the 2500 mg of "Energy Blend." The bottom of the can says, "Consume Responsibly--Limit (3) cans per day. Not recommended for children, pregnant women or people sensitive to caffeine. These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug administration. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease." Except fatigue Mr. Monster, my Canadian friend. (Can't you picture a WWF westler? "From the frozen tundra of Canada . . . MOOOOOONSTEEEEEEEEEEER!"

On Thursday I had to write my Music History paper. I wrote it on how musicologists are stupid pompous asses. I started Thursday afternoon (it was the first chance I got to write it) and finished 40 minutes before class Friday morning. During that forty minutes I could have chosen either to shower or eat breakfast. I chose breakfast. Then I went to my music history class and we watched a Monteverdi opera. My music history teacher (he's a doctoral student--the fat one with the industrial earrings if you dont' remember) turned the volume up like it was a hardcore show. I yelled (I was delirious), "Way too loud dude, waaaaaayyy to loud." He didn't hear, I guess. Then he was telling us something and he had to yell to be heard over the early baroque trumpets going "DAH DAH DAH DAAAAAAAAAAHHHHH, DAH DAH DAH DAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHH." I yelled back at him, "DO YOU KNOW WHY YOU'RE YELLING?" He didn't hear that either, I guess. So I left.

I'm playing a recital with Angela Tuesday, it's been a huge committment recently, but my Early Keyboard Lit paper is due Tuesday (which I should be writing right now). I emailed my professor tonight to plead for mercy.

When the going gets tough, the tough just wanna sleep. And other various platitudes, or anti-platitudes.

To begin, I just bought coffee from the Library and was drinking it here at my computer when I discovered a puddle of brown liquid on my keyboard. At that moment I witnessed coffee drip out from under the lid onto the coaster where the cup was sitting. How awful to be that coffee cup lid and fail at the one thing your existence was designed to do. I must confess, I often feel like that lid, and so I couldn't possibly get mad and say something profane and disgruntled. I felt sympathy instead.

Anyways, my friend from Hong Kong (which is actually irrelevant) and I were talking a week ago about how drab our practice rooms are, and that they're like little tiny prison cells, which they are. I said that we should put posters up on the walls. So, I put two posters up in one room: one is a Monet print and the other is a deep focus photograph of some artsy things. I also put a 6-foot tall fake tree in another room. I then posted notes in all the practice rooms explaining what had happened and encouraging the others to do likewise so that we might transform out dreary cells into cozy living areas that we wouldn't actually mind going to. Well, yesterday someone put up the first other poster, a portrait of Stravinsky; and another was talking about putting lamps in the rooms so we wouldn't have to depend on the flourescent lights, though I'm not sure if she'll actually do it.

In other news, love can be painful--like a heavy throb in your breast which keeps you laying on your bed when you'd rather be throwing a frisbee or reading Walt Whitman, but love is something that we all want and need which makes love a thorny thing.

I am often afflicted with love, which, I think, makes me more sincerely human.

The long awaited FSView Spring Break Preview finally arrived in yesterday's issue. The review declared the best Spring Break destination this year to be Panama City, located on the gulf coast of the Florida panhandle. According to the FSView, Panama City offers parties "pleasing to even the most experienced Spring Breaker." Matt Britton, "executive president of sales and marketing," said that he expected 400,000 Spring Breakers this season. FSU Freshman, Joel Handler, is quoted as saying, "If you want to do Spring Break right, you have to go to Panama City."

I must agree with Joel. I've spent every Spring Break in Panama City since the age of 3, and the place--to quote Jennifer Mancebo--turns into "nothing but a gigantic party with a lot of drinking." Indeed, 1 out of every 3 cars will have a beer bong hanging on the radio antenna. Two-seaters are transformed into seven-seaters via the pop-the-trunk-and-cram-who-the-fuck-cares-we're-drunk-as-fuck method. Pizza joints stay open 24/7 and drivers are restricted to driving under 10 mph to avoid hitting drunk walkers. Girls Gone Wild Spring Break vans are sited a dozen times per day.

If you wanna find me this Spring Break, you can find me in Panama Flippin City, Spring Break capitol of the mothereffing world.

I think God picks days to punish me especially. It's absurd how one small and careless remark can set my emotions on a downward spiral, with little thing after little thing jumping on the bandwagon until one great big thing finishes it off. What's more absurd, however, is my internal dialouge throughout all of this. I turn the whole damn thing around in my head, change perspectives on myself, I'm the good guy then the bad guy, I half-jokingly conclude insane things about how God is punishing me for so and so and then chastise myself for thinking God would really care that much, then I feel guilty for thinking that my stupid bad day is worth as much focus as I'm giving it and that I should be thankful because in the great balance of the universe, because of my bad day, a starving child should be eating dinner when he normally doesn't, then I think that my day isn't really bad at all and that I should stop feeling so bad about such petty things.

Oh my, I wish we could all visit another person's thoughts. Self-focus is crazy, but it's perspective--it's me and it's you.

Therefore I am contemptible. I can see myself for what I am but I can't break through the lens and I can't pull the strangling fingers of my emotions out from around my neck. But everyone else is contemptible too. Oblivious to me because of their own self-focus. And that hurts, especially because I know it would not be the same if things were reversed--I can see the lens, remember, but I can't break through it. Not too many other people even try to understand that there's a lens at all. Empathy is a most trying process.

Before I begin with the (very) obligatory first day of school post I would first like to offer an example of how little sense I have. But (the real) first, I need to give some background information for my example. I've developed some sort of rash on my left hand and knuckles which I finally determined to be an allergic reaction from the charcoal in Parliament cigarettes. I know, who puts charcoal in cigarettes? Anyways, as I was applying aloe vera onto the rash I quickly noticed that instead of the cool, highly viscous green liquid soothing my hand there was a rush of a burning blue fire-waterfall. I had, infact, poured half a bottle of listerine on my hand, arm, and most of the front of my shirt. That's why, ladies and gentlemen, the bottle specifically directs the user to keep the product out of the hands of children.

Moving on to the obligatory (yet still highly entertaining, I hope):

My classes, in short, suck. They blow, they motherfuck.

Theory IV (honors): Nothing entertaining here, except that I might move to a non-honors section, etc. etc.

Sight Singing IV: I passed the written exemption exam today for this class, and if I pass the sight singing part tomorrow I will be done with sight singing FOREVER.

Music History I: BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH. This class is taught by a short fat doctoral student who could easily weigh 300 pounds. He was wearing a suit with these hideous industrial earrings which were at least 3/4 an inch in diameter. Five minutes into class he was sweating profusely and fanning himself with his notes. What was he thinking wearing a suit?? Fat + bad a/c + suit = disgusting. Also the scores and cds that were ordered at the book store aren't the ones we're using in class and one of the textbooks which is referred to as "optional" is on all the tests and all the homework assignments. Doctoral students.

Early Keyboard Lit: The guy who teaches this class wears the squeakiest shoes. I don't know if I'll ever be able to concentrate on what he's saying...squeak...squeak.

Intro to music tech: I'm dropping this class like the Jews dropped Jesus.

Poetry Technique: This is the class which pushes me to 18 hours. It's the only class I wanted to take in my whole schedule. I also get to visit my old friend the Williams Building to take it, and the stereotypic writing technique gang (technique is the class you take before you can get into a workshop, I took fiction technique last Spring). I walked into the classroom and into twenty pairs of leering eyes. There was the girl in all black with red and black hair with her nobody-understands-me-and-they-better-not-try-to face on; the cornor-girl in shabby clothes scrawling in a spiral-bound notebook--I could sense her proud vibes, "See, I'm already a poet." I made my way to my seat and the whole class sat in utter silence for ten minutes. We all darted our eyes around nervously, we'd been found out. We wanted to be poets.

Your LJ pal,

Rob

So my cat was sitting on the couch looking intently out the window. I stepped in front of him and he quickly shifted his head laterally six inches the other direction in order to see around me. I started snapping my fingers and shifting my body two feet to the right, then two feet to the left--my cat shifted his head in the opposite direction each time. It was the greatest thing that's happened since I've been home--my cat and I were dancing, I wish i had a videocamera--I could have won on "the world's funniest pets" or something.

I spent the morning at Books a'Million where I read the entire New York Times, seven magazines, and several sections of different books for free. I then decided to purchase a $40 gift certificate for my mom's birthday. As I signed the dotted line--plunging my checking account under $100, though that is irrelevant to this story--I realized for the first time the truth of what I was doing (I've been getting her these gift certificates for years). I was locking my $40 of capital into Books a'Million. I wanted to get her a book, but I couldn't decide on what so I bought a gift certificate effectively giving a profit to Books a'Million. There are so many other places to purchase books which are so much cheaper, but they can't compete with Books a'Million vaster selection (though in my opinion, very meager selection). Why couldn't I have just given her the $40? It's essentially what I was doing, except fettering the money to a specific cooperation in which the money was disguised as a gift (it says so: "gift certificate"). I was duped.

To continue on my anti-corporation rant: The article in the times today about Bush's plan to privatize social security had only one paragraph about the other insignificant aspects of Bush's plan which include "overhauling the income tax, reducing regulation of business and restricting lawsuits against corporations." Now, according to Bush, this is all for small business: "The cost of frivolous lawsuits in some cases make it prohibitively expensive for a small business to stay in business" and "Those who have been hurt ought to have their day in court. But a judicial system run amok is one that makes it really hard for small business to stay in business." I don't know about you, but I find it hard to understand how the loosening of accountability mechanisms for big business will help small business prosper. But, I just must not understand because our President, God bless his benevolent Christian soul, is merely trying to make the tax code "simpler and fairer." Of course, he never specified for whom he was making things simpler and fairer.

I thought that this finals week would be the easiest I've had so far. Hmmmm.....well, it didn't turn out that way. I drank coffee tonight for the first time in 6 months. BAD BAD BAD BAD BAD BAD idea. After I finished I realized why I don't drink coffee anymore--I'm super agitated, my hands are shaking a little bit. Caffeine and I just don't get along anymore. I just thought tonight, because I was a little tired, that coffee would be the thing to perk me up. I just made myself a strong drink to calm down.

I need this semester to end. Most of us need this semester to end. Except some of the freshman here--is it wrong to feel less than love when two of the freshman who live next to you say they're going to see a movie when you've spent the entire last two days working on your 20th century keyboard lit folder and you're only halfway done?

I've been so stressed for so frequently this semster, especially recently, that there's a zit on my hand. Can that really happen? How can you get zits on your hand?

I also figured out why so many of the classes for music majors are 0 and 1 and 2 credit hours. Because if the credit hours reflected the amount of work the classes actually require, we'd all be registered above the 18-hour cap every semester. Way over. They're trixy bastidges.

Until later, with love.

Today I arose at 7:30 on a fitful night of tossing and turning. At 8:30 i begin playing the piano. I continued to play the piano until 8:00 this evening.
Alright, I took little breaks now and then. I performed a solo (practice) recital for a bunch of old people tonight at Westminster's Oaks, an "Active Retirement Home." The place is really a neighborhood with some seniors in homes, others in more intensive care units. The place even has its own hospital. They were a good audience. Clapped longer than I expected them too.

The piano was meh, the room I played in was as HOT AS WHERE THE DEVIL'S FROM. I sweated like a mother. Beads of sweat were dripping from my brow onto the keyboard. Bleh, you say? Ha, you weren't the one playing. Everything went ok considering the circumstances except for the Bartok. I forgot to, um, think when I started playing it, so, um, it was kinda sloppy, yeah. You have to BREATHE before you begin playing stupid head.

This was a prep recital for the gi-hugic competition i'm doing Friday. yep.

In other news. When I was coming up the elevator from the laundry room just now a bunch of girls were talking about how so-and-so is so totally hot. Now, I happened to know that so-and-so was gay, which isn't exactly a hidden fact, but all the girls were freshmen. Thus, I shared with said girls that said so-and-so was gay. They didn't believe me, so I described so-and-so to them to make sure it was the same so-and-so (it was) then said, again, that he was gay. With this we arrived at my floor and with a chipper, "It was nice talking to you!" I left the girls to their silly prattle.

There has been so much that has happened to me these past few months--well, really, the past year and a half. But, I've started to understand the last year and a half the past month. I havn't been able to articulate it at all. I've changed a lot. I don't think the me of 18 would recognize the me of 20. But, that's not true, through the all the change my core has remained the same: my soul, I think.

Here is one of the most important things to understand about me: I am extremely emotional. I used to hate it, but I've accepted it now and it's become possible to live with myself when I wake up and go to sleep.

Mike, i hope you change the world. You have the constitution to do it. I used to think I could do it--that I could stomach government, but I'm disillusioned with policymakers now. The only way I could change the world is with poetry given to me by God and I don't if he's gonna do that.

There is just something . . . something there that I just can't get. I don't even know what it is. But I can feel it in my stomach.

I can make myself happy and unhappy. I just learned that right now. It has to do with thinking about certain things, hopes and fears. I think about something that upsets me and I become really depressed. I think about something which gives me joy and there it is. Amazing. Screw psychiatrists.

No, there's always this faint feeling that I'm about to fall a million miles into a black abyss and be eaten alive by a thousand self-mutilating thoughts.

My thoughts though. I think too much.

I have some of the greatest friends any person has ever had.

I should always remember tonight as the night when I was the most nostalgic ever. I think the temperature change did it to me. It was 85 this afternoon. It was 49 tonight.

Goodnight.

I feel old. I see all the freshmen that I live with run around careless, they've been released from home, they're on their own, they're young and there is so much to do, so much fun to have. I feel disgust at them sometimes, but I think that I'm also jealous. I've never been able to be careless and free, always tied to something. My Dad, when I was a child, used to say that I came out of the womb 35 years old.

And then there is this thing I always find myself in: life. Maybe God is a practical jokester: makes these creatures (us), throws them into this huge puzzle with stimuli of all extremes and says go and figure out what in creation is going on.

When I was a Christian I had a bad personal relationship with God. I spent a lot of my time angry at him but I held everything in--i've always held everything in. My Christian love was rarely sincere, it was more like a sense of religious obligation. What I really wanted from God was peace and he never gave it to me. He always gave me the opposite and then he gave me the intelligence to study the Bible and see it as a collection of religious traditions which are not always coherent with each other or with the various expressions of Christianity which call the Bible their own. He showed me how I was wrong about him. Maybe it's beautiful that God can speak to so many different people and mean so many different things all through the same book. But it's not beautiful when those different groups of people kill each other over it.

But, you see, my sense of peace was contigent on the existence of absolute truth. Though, even when I possessed absolute truth I never really had peace. And when aboslute truth was taken from me, I felt--for months--like I was physically unravelling, I shook within afraid I would crumple from the inside out.

Since then I have still experienced joy and pain. But joy is of God and pain is of the world, right? No, no, listen to your local evangelical. People can only get happiness from the world because it is a reflection of heaven--the world is the fallen remains of Eden. Real joy, however, can only come through God.

Not true, the most joy I've ever experienced was completely unrelated to any spiritual or religious context. You could even blame some of that joy on my "mental illness." Surely God has nothing to do with that.

I cannot understand an aloof, contradictory God who has given us a world so utterly confusing, both beautiful and terrible.

I've realized recently that all I really want out of life is to love and be loved in return. Everything falls into place from that.