The Sweet Life

I’m easing into my summer life. Between overtime, dating, cleaning, baking, and television, the proverbial plate is full.

It’s not yet June, so I don’t feel like I am wasting my summertime stuck in the house, so I am taking advantage of it while I can.

My favorite part of the brownies is the crispy part, so I figured out that if I make cookies of the mix, the whole thing is crispy. I’m really experimenting so that I can make baked goods for others, but the mistakes are still delicious enough to fatten me up.

I’m rediscovering the joy that is the novel; I had been reading books that were interesting, but not especially enjoyable. Non-fiction just doesn’t have that same sparkle for me. I love reading stories that capture cultures other than my own, which is why I loved Interperter of Maladies. After what I predict to be a short stay with 1984, a book I never read in school, I am finally reading The Gift of Asher Lev. I absolutely loved The Chosen and The Promise, so this should be quite the mental treat.

And then, of course, there is the matter of boys.

I don’t seek them out. As previously demonstrated, my life is both full and satisfying, but dating opportunities don’t need seeking out, something I wish had been true earlier in life. Imagine my surprise that in the ordinary course of events, some boys will just ask, simply because they are interested.

And there is fun to be had; dinners in which conversation, passionate conversation, is participated in by both parties. Movies that are mutually enjoyable, and that tense, but sweet moment at the end, when you wonder if he wants to, and he wonders if you want him to.

And of course the funny moments, when pressed for physical intimacy that goes beyond current familiarity.

“C’mon. Really kiss me.”

“This is the first date. What kind of ho do you think I am?”

Getting My Geek On

I know I’ve been absent, but that’s only because it’s almost May–which means crunch time.

I’ve got papers and problem sets, and just plain problems. But the Undergrad Conference is behind me. I don’t know how to explain to you how incredible it is to talk economics with people my own age and feel a little out of my depth.

It’s wonderful. It pushes me onward. Not that I was that outclassed. I was an expert on my own paper. It was such a rush to explain what I did and why, and what I thought were the interesting underlying questions.

To keep my inner geek happy, I just bought a book on Game Theory and a book called The Wisdom of Crowds.

My inner geek is sleepy now.

Maybe If I Open a Window and Type…

… a post will appear.

Life has both stepped up and down a notch.

I’ve decided to go down to part time for school. That suffocating, completely overwhelmed feeling just became unbearable. So a decision had to be made. And it was. I just hope it was the right one.

Thanks to all of you who have shared good news with me.

I have some good news of my own: I finally got promoted at work.

Yes, that’s right. I have a real job now, complete with 401k and vacation time and all that good stuff. I almost feel adult.

I’ve cracked open Approaching Zion, and I think I am finally going to settle in with it tonight.

I’m experiencing a weird phenomenon, however. I am picking up books and reading them and finding no joy in them.

I’ve started three books this month just to place them back down. Am I just reading the wrong books? Am I really that mentally exhausted that I cannot read? I don’t know how to process this; it’s completely virgin territory.

At the same time, I’ve opened this same window more than once, only to close it, finding no joy and no release in writing. Was my personality somehow removed from my body, and I think I’m the same, but I can’t possibly be, as I am reacting to past stimuli in a way which is completely out of character?

There are stories to be told and insights to be shared, but none of that will be happening here tonight.

Is it time to call an exorcist?

From the Nightstand

I thought this was a great depiction of what my life is like.

Time almost completely blocked out by books, both academic and spiritual.

Can you tell which is winning?

What Once Was Lost

So, it turns out that I didn’t lose all those books I thought I lost. Turns out there were a couple hundred of them–four medium sized boxes. I don’t feel like writing about the circumstances that led to their return. I’m a bad writer like that; I don’t like writing about situations that I’m too emotionally close to.

I also end sentences with prepositions.

Sorry, my pen is broken.

Ummm, Wha?

So, I’m reading this book by Donald Miller, and this paragraph stops me in my tracks:

“So, if the difference between Christian faith and all other forms of spirituality is that Christian faith offers a relational dynamic with God, why are we cloaking this relational dynamic in formulas? Are we jealous of the Mormons?”

I am seriously perplexed. I don’t get the connection. Are Mormons thought by Christians to be formulaic and non-relational?

I won’t even touch the whole are-Mormons-Christian question, but what gives?

Rocky Mountain High

I’m thousands of miles above the ground, or however many miles one is when she is in an airplane. It’s been weeks, months really, since I’ve gotten any healthy amount of sleep, and I’m beyond tired, the fatigue heightening the stirrings in my soul, in my mind, in my troubled heart.

But this weariness is not what weighs me down as I float suspended between Heaven and Earth. It is, predictably, existential angst, whatever that is. I swear I read a book about it once.

The pilot tells us we are 1,000 nautical miles from Salt Lake City, having just passed over the mighty Mississippi, flowing with what I imagine to be the wrath of God.

I’m taking an improptu vacation, Veteran’s Day giving me the long weekend I need to escape.

I’ve been telling everyone I am coming here for a concert, and they all think I am crazy to travel thousands of miles for a few hours of entertainment, but the truth of it is that the concert just gave me the excuse I needed.

It is fitting that Salt Lake is the Mormon Mecca, because it is a pilgrimage that brings me all this way.

I’ve rented a car and a motel room and made no plans to meet with any of the many friends I could be seeing. This is my time in the desert, and time in the desert is best spent alone.

I won’t be hitting the normal tourist attractions. I have no desire to see Temple Square, the Conference Center, or the Tabernacle. As someone who isn’t quite Mormon, but can never really shake the mindset–and with that the requisite guilt of any apostate, there is no appeal. They are not places of spiritual significance anymore, nor do I have the curiosity of an outsider.

I’m here stuck in the middle, looking for some kind of resolve to this struggle that has encompassed my entire adulthood. I’m approaching 25 and this is more than the Mayeresque quarter-life crisis.

I read My Faith So Far between Providence and here, and I have the Seven Storey Mountain for the return flights, always hoping to find answers in others’ struggles, in their journeys from longing to faith to confusion, to faith mingled with confusion. Having been stuck in confusion for so long, a short respite into quasi confused faith would be enough to relieve this pressure, at least long enough to get my bearings and approach God with something more than panicked despair.

I read of Patton’s time at ORU and smile, remembering those cold afternoons when Veronica, Trevor, Jessica and I trudged through the slush in Harvard Square, down Church Street to the chapel, wishing that they had built it closer to the T-stop.

“Hey, if we have faith, we can make anything happen, right?” one of us would say.

“Yeah, if we really believed it.”

“Like move mountains?”

“Sure.”

“What about chapels? Do you think if we all prayed hard enough we could move the church building closer to Harvard Square?”

“Why not?”

“I don’t have that kind of faith. It would never work.”

“Yeah, but it would be nice, wouldn’t it?”

And as silly as it was, I wanted to believe we could move mountains. We all knew we were being stupid. This isn’t really what is meant by faith moving things. At least, I don’t see it that way. Moving a soul is so much more powerful that moving even the largest mountain. Rocks do what God tells them. Souls have free will.

Like when David and I would talk about angels and how they love and praise God with all they have every single day.

And I would always say I’d rather be an angel. It would all be so much easier. Screw free will. I want to love God willingly. I don’t want to have to fight myself every step of the way, Original Sin tripping me up, as I try to negotiate a perpetually dark wood.

I smile to myself just thinking of that image and how apt it is that I stay stuck in the darkness. I love the Inferno, and the Purgatorio comes in a close second, but I never did get through Paradiso. All that happiness and worship and love couldn’t keep my attention. The irony slays me. Maybe I should just be thankful for my humanity. Angelhood sounds boring.

Slap Dash

So, Linds and I got into some kind of argument, as we are wont to do. I was probably right.

In a moment of frustration, she attempts to insult me. What does she say in her meager attempt?

“Market Economist!”

To which I reply, with equally insulting intention, “Keynesian-influenced Marxist!”

Oh, we are just so cool it hurts.

_______________________

 

Walking through downtown with Tim and Morgan, I tell Tim about a book he really should read, because he’d love it.

“Is that the one by the guy from Killing the Buddha?”

Blank stare. “You know about KtB? How long have you known about it?”

“A while now.”

“And you never told me about it? Did you not think I’d like it?”

“Killing the Buddha is like a religious experience. Each must find it in his own way.”

Jackass. My way could have been through YOU. And I say jackass with all possible affection.

 _______________________

 

Talking to Lindsey after a tough day at Wendy’s, making sandwiches for what seemed to be all of New England.

“You know, it’s really humbling to realise you can’t be good at everything.”

“You don’t realise it now, but you sound like a complete jerk by saying that.”

I’m puzzled. “But I just said I know I can’t be good at everything.”

“Yeah, and it took you till you were 24 to realise it?”

“Good point.”

In fairness to myself, I know that I’m not good at a lot of things, but it still escapes me on a regular basis as to why I can’t be good at everything. I really think that hard work and determination should mean that if I try enough, I can be good at everything. Sadly, this has not proven to be the case.

_______________________

 

The other night I couldn’t sleep, so I went on a long walk.

As it turns out, I live in an area teeming with religiosity.

In walking distance of my apartment are an Orthodox synagouge, a Society of Friends Meetinghouse, and Episcopalian, Catholic, Pentecostal, and Baptist churches.

How cool is that?

Why Crystal is Not Allowed in Bookstores

I realize that my picture taking skills are lacking. It is a camera phone after all, so here is the list, all bought this morning, when I should have been studying anyway:

• Thank You For Smoking (DVD)
• Jesus Land
• Through Painted Deserts
• The Seven Storey Mountain
• The Philospher’s Handbook (I like a little philosophy with my religion)
• The Tender Bar
• The Memory Keeper’s Daughter
• Clay Aiken’s Latest CD

I would link them all for you, so that you’d know all about the books and who wrote them and such, but I am too lazy. Amazon them yourself. Amazon should be a verb, just like Google. You read it here first.

By way of explination and defense of myself, I haven’t bought any books for a while, and I need to replace the couple hundred I’ve lost to the fact that the One Who Birthed Me was holding a lot of my books for me, but then she went and stole my identity, so I don’t expect to get them back anytime ever.

And there are less books than should be on the list, because I FORGOT (the horror!) that part of my purpose in going to the bookstore was to look for that new translation of the Inferno. The one with the reference to The Devil Went Down to Georgia. I kid you not.

Anyway, one of the books was actually free, in one of those buy two get one deals. Through Painted Desserts was an impulse buy, because it sounds like Killing the Buddha, which I loved. But I may be just setting myself up for dissapointment, because obviously it can’t be the same and what I really what is more KTB.

The Seven Storey Mountain was what I actually went in for, and the Philosopher’s Handbook caught my eye and serves to balance all the religion. Thank You For Smoking needs no defense. Best Movie Ever. Okay, maybe not ever, but totally awesome.

And there really is no defense for the Clay Aiken, but I just couldn’t resist.

::hangs head in shame::