When you have the means to convey a message, but have no message to convey.

Things are changing

As they most certainly have before, and will again. I find for myself, those I care about, the nation, for all these, I find that now we stand at the edge of change. Usually this is where one goes into a metaphor that involves something like darkness at the edge of a steep precipice and a leap of faith, courage and the difference between success and failure. I'm not going there. Maybe that's cowardly, not straining into your divining navel to find out what the future holds for yourself. But maybe it's wise. Much of the stress of life comes from the anticipation of what is to (but may not) come. I don't need it, don't want it. I have an idea of what I should do and I'll do it. There is so much in the present that is worth my attention. So much.

Tomorrow is sufficient for the evil thereof.

aresponsibility

Angels Landing


Sven Taow at Green Valley Gap

Just between this and last semester I took to the road with Jordan and headed south to forsake the world and find the sun. For a week. Climbing, hiking, kite wars, soccer, sun burns, camping and red rock canyon walls. What I like about going south is that no man has a claim on me or my time there. I came and went as I pleased. To go as slow or as fast as you want, no outside pressure yanking you this way or that, is a rare luxury and I took full advantage it. When you have no obligations, no ties, no plans, no time (we have NO time–we don't need it) you can't be responsible or irresponsible and it's beautiful. For me it's an independence that can only come in short, concentrated bursts. For a brief time, before reassuming my life of promises and priorities, before reacquainting myself with success or failure, I am untethered and rambling. I am an island.

Death is a great stone rolled away.

Maybe...

there is little made that is beautiful in this world without planning or practice.

By all means break the rules. Break them eloquently, beautifully and well.
–Robert Bringhurst

Life becomes clear when you can stare at it long enough through a windshield.

I love spending a healthy slice of my day alone in a car, so long as it isn't terribly frequent. I seem, at the time, to be profoundly rational, brave and poetic. The music becomes me. I feel it, a narration of my life, nearly overpower me. I am moving. Ready for life to come at me fast.

Last night I chased the moon down Idaho and into Utah. It lighted my door frame, a waning companion. I took the opportunity to make an offering on the alter of the onramp. I've decided not to share any details; the thoughts came to me when I was alone and I don't want to betray them. In general, I reflected on my life, gathered some resolve and I am prepared to live the New Year.

Happy and Grateful.

If you are not prepared to be wrong, you will never come up with anything original.
-Sir Ken Robinson

Old Testament

A paper I wrote on a possible allegory I found in the Old Testament concerning the relationship and symbolism of the two oldest sons of the prophets.
Read it

Even when life is great, sometimes the only thing that gets you through is a sad song.

Don't Think Twice

Identity is a dynamic thing. Who you think you are can abruptly discompose.
A change of scenery. I am carving out my name again.
Slowly. More timid than careful. Is that me?
I talked with a beautiful girl today until I was called away. I came back but she was gone.
It's best to stay away from edges and bridges. I get uneasy in the fray.
I make an unaffected stab at becoming what I want.
And pressure builds. I build pressure. I watch it steal into my unsure places.
Confidence is sacred. Doubts can be mistaken and Faith is slippery.
With my hands, I am carving out my name.

All I have to do for the next week

is stay alive.

"Ask no guarantees, ask for no security, there never was such an animal."

-Fahrenheit 451

Don't Love the Bucket.

Ultimately, the truth about Intelligent Design vs Evolution is that both of these are ideas. That is, they are human constructions on reality, not reality itself. Ideas are like buckets that we lower into a well fillled with mysteries: the bucket brings up only a taste of what's down there, and the bucket determines the shape. The trick is never to fall in love with the bucket, and remember that most of the truth is still waiting down there in the dark, far out of sight, and always new. -Cecelia Holland Design Intelligence.

For a week following the winter semester I lived in a tent in Beaver Dick Park, a camp ground maintained by the Bureau of Land Management about ten minutes outside of Rexburg. I pictured a period of self-induced isolation, a chance to simplify and soul search, a vision quest. School was over and my only obligation was work. I would start each day by breaking camp. Roll up my sleeping bag. Fold up the tent, put the thermals I slept in and books I was reading in a pillow case. Load it all into the trunk. Drive east to work wearing sunglasses. I change my shirt in the parking lot of EZ-net tools and brush my teeth in the bathroom before I clock-in. After work I spend about four hours on campus on other projects. Drive back to the park. Find a camp site and pitch the tent in the dark. Read. Sleep.

It wasn't the vision quest I had hoped for. Too much to do, too many friends, too much civilization, not enough discipline. Whatever the reason, it wasn't.

It was good though, anyway, to get out and live in that manner where preparation equals comfort, and decisions have significant, timely consequences. The custodial elements of life require careful attention. Living, being alive in the physical sense, can be a craft, an art. Like preparing a meal can be. It feels good to foresee a problem and solve it. To be independent. Like a person who can save his own life.

Don't take life too seriously. No one makes it out alive anyway.

On Novelty.

Let me hear no more of that absurd maxim: "We need the new, we need to follow our century, everything is changed." Sophistry--all of that! Does nature change, do the light and air change, have the passions of the human heart changed since the time of Homer? "We must follow our century": but suppose my century is wrong. Because my neighbor does evil, am I therefore obliged to do it also? Because virtue, as also beauty, can be misunderstood by you, have I in turn got to misunderstand it? Shall I be compelled to imitate you!
-Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres

Saturday morning reading...

How many times in life can we make decisions that are important but will not hurt anyone? Are we obligated--maybe we are--to say yes to any choice when no one will be hurt? We use the word hurt when talking about things like this because when things go wrong it can feel as if you were hit in the sternum by a huge animal that's run for miles just to strike you.

The Only Meaning of the Oil-Wet Water, Dave Eggers.

Finished a book last night and I am sad.
I always am at the end.
suddenly conscience of my mortality.
Like burying a friend.

Determining Determinism revised

God, it is believed, posses the remarkable trait of knowing all things past, present and future, namely--omniscience. And while this and other "omni" beliefs about God's character facilitates man's ability to have a perfect trust in God, they simultaneously create some problems with other doctrines that are equally important in man's interpretation of life and relationship with God. Omniscience seems to contradict, if indirectly, with the principle of free will. The idea that there is a being with a certain, exact knowledge of a future action leads one to question if that action can be changed, or if the action is already determined to happen.

An article I read supporting determinism stated the problem similar to this:

God knows that a man will cause action E to occur at a later time. There is no way to maintain God is omniscient AND allow the man to cause a different action to occur instead of E. Thus it is, as are all things, determined.

Now the theory of determinism may be more complicated than this, and I am not pretending to know all the complexities that may constitute it, but as I have described it (or as it pertains to God’s omniscience) the theory seems to fall short of its mark. I don’t know of anyone who when faced with the omniscience problem actually believes that they have no choice. Everyone thinks they have the power to choose. This denial can be contributed to either an illogical emotional response to the idea of determinism or that the evidence doesn’t back up the logical puzzle as stated. It is the latter grounds for denial I wish to look at.

Determinism is defined by a concept of omniscience that gives God the ability to know all actions. From this comes the question ‘can I choose to act other than God knows?’ The answer is no, which seems deterministic. What this concept of omniscience fails to acknowledge is that God knows all choices and actions that are caused by them. This makes it possible for God to know what future events are to come because of choice. The question then becomes ‘can I choose other than I will choose?’ The answer of course is no, but the reason you cannot is that it is logically impossible to do something other than you do. If you allow God to be truly omniscient there is no discrepancy between God’s knowledge of the future and mans ability to choose according to free will.

Who Says Words With My Mouth?

All day I think about it, then at night I say it.
Where did I come from, and what am I supposed to be doing?
I have no idea.
My soul is from elsewhere, I'm sure of that,
and I intend to end up there.

This drunkenness began in some other tavern.
When I get back around to that place,
I'll be completely sober. Meanwhile,
I'm like a bird from another continent, sitting in this aviary.
The day is coming when I fly off,
but who is it now in my ear who hears my voice?
Who says words with my mouth?

Who looks out with my eyes? What is the soul?
I cannot stop asking.
If I could taste one sip of an answer,
I could break out of this prison for drunks.
I didn't come here of my own accord, and I can't leave that way.
Whoever brought me here will have to take me home.

This poetry, I never know what I'm going to say.
I don't plan it.
When I'm outside the saying of it,
I get very quiet and rarely speak at all.
--Rumi

Do I contradict myself?
Very well then I contradict myself,
(I am large, I contain multitudes.)

Walt Whitman, Song of Myself

Got a skateboard to ride when things are going slow. It keeps me young. Every chance I have to be out on the pavement I take. Saturday night, waiting for friends to show up to go to the rodeo, skating outside of the apt. I attempted a jump over a sidewalk. I landed on the front end of my board, shooting the rest of the board up into my nether regions with crippling force. I ran until pain overtook me and I collapsed, a mass of flaccid flesh in the grass. Two and a half hours later I announced my recovery and proved it by braving Missouri's most ferocious mechanical bull. I've walked like a cowboy ever since.

When each day is the same as the next it's because people fail to recognize the good things that happen in their lives every day that the sun rises.

The Alchemist, by Paulo Coelho

The shortest pencil is better than the longest memory.

This
WiRld
is gOod
100%
A sign taped to a door.

In my social problems class we discussed the problems in "zion". This text is a look at two kinds of mormons and how they approach things differently.
What the Church means to people like me

sometimes damn is just the best word to use....Dammit.

Censorship or Righteousness?

There has been much discussion recently about "Art" in BYU-Idaho's newspaper. Some works of art depict controversial topics, activities that go against taught morals, and content that is otherwise questionable. Each article set out to examine whether these things are permissible because they are art and expression, or if they should be shunned, avoided, or censored. (As a point of interest: each article ended on almost identical, disappointing neutral ground: "decide for yourself.")

I know where I stand on what I think is beauty and what isn't, and there is certainly some "art" and "entertainment" in the world to which I am morally opposed. There are others who would disagree with me. I know some would take a more conservative side than I. Others would say I am too stringent on moral grounds. With all this disagreement on beauty and art, what can be done to oppose what I consider degrading, amoral material from being distributed as art? Or should it be opposed at all, seeing that I expect others to respect what I consider art? Can I oppose it and expect what I consider art to remain free from censorship? Can I do nothing and keep a clean conscience and good standing before God? Can art be beautiful AND depict something you are morally opposed to?

What do you think?

I don’t want to start by talking about the weather.

I was walking on a campus path, a transition from one class to another. Next to me, walking, was a round black girl. I walked past her.
She said “you made nice comments.”
I gave a reflex, dead “thank you.” I glanced at her and continued to walk.
I wanted to talk to her. Say something. For no other reason than to acknowledge the appreciation I felt for her compliment. I didn’t turn to face her. I wanted to. The moment passed but I thought about talking to her even after we went down separate paths.

In other lives I spoke with her. Asked about her thoughts. I was warm.

But I didn’t talk to her. I said “thank you,” and regretted.

Along for the ride?

"To live only for a future goal is shallow."
-Robert Pirsig
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.

Right now is just as much a part of eternity as whatever we don't know about that's coming later. Live for the now. Not because we aren't mindful of eternity, but the opposite. Because it IS eternity. We are living eternity.

There aren't any rules around here - we're trying to accomplish something.

--Thomas Edison




"Schools teach you to imitate. If you don't imitate what the teacher wants you get a bad grade. Here, in college, it is more sophisticated, of course; you were supposed to imitate the teacher in such a way as to convince the teacher you were not imitating, but taking the essence of the instruction and going ahead with it on your own. That got you A's. Originality on the other hand could get you anything-from A to F. The whole grading system cautioned against it....eliminate the whole degree-and-grading system and the you'll get a real education.
...The abolition of the degree-and-grading system produced a...negative reaction in all but a few students at first, since it seemed, on first judgment, to destroy the whole University system. One student laid it wide open when she said with complete candor, 'Of course you can't eliminate the degree and grading system. After all, that's what we're here for.'
She spoke the truth. The idea that the majority of students attend a university for an education independent of the degree and grades is a little hypocrisy everyone is happier not to expose. Occasionally some students do arrive for an education but rote and the mechanical nature of the institution soon converts them to a less idealistic attitude. "

--Robert M. Pirsig "Zen and The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance"



So has the grading system failed us? Only producing imitators. Or has it been silently serving it's designed purpose? Was it designed to make followers instead of leaders? Students ignorant that they are being made to be sheep in shepherds clothing? There are two graduates one who has learned that success means doing exactly what he or she has been told, and one who has learned by taking new, untested approaches? Which would you hire? Which would you rather be? I can't say I am completely opposed to the system. It certainly solves (probably over-solves) the problem of too many Chiefs, not enough Indians.

A theory on Matriculation

It is important that students bring a certain ragamuffin barefoot irreverence to their studies. They are not here to worship what is known, but to question it.
--Jacob Bronowski

(guilty of Ragamuffining)