I’ll put the emphasis on the evidence, begging for the proof.
Sometimes the hardest thing to believe is the truth.

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I asked God for the chance to do things wrong. I wanted to come to him the way “real” sinners do, desperately needing his redemption. This was probably foolish of me, but it was what it was, and I wanted it. Because if one does nothing wrong one’s whole life, then one does not need God, and I wanted to need him. I wanted to feel that need for him. And then I wanted to feel anything at all, and that led me to do things wrong. Isn’t it funny how God can give us exactly what we ask for?

I am only a small, lost little girl. The older I get, the littler I realize I am. I realize that I am not going to grow any bigger, and I am not going to find my way. Sometimes I’ve wondered if there is even any way to find. Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about a world in which God did not exist. In some ways it would be liberating: We could do whatever we wanted, no guilt! The Bible says this isn’t true freedom, but in a world without God, what the Bible said wouldn’t matter. I am not saying this is the right way to look at things, only one way to look at them. I do not think it is the right way.

I’ve been feeling aimless since I started thinking like this. In a world without God, what am I supposed to live for? What’s left that even matters? Love? But then, without God, what is love? Do we expect to love by ourselves? We can’t do it. Most people in our culture don’t even believe in love anymore. The young and idealistic do. The couples celebrating their fiftieth anniversary do. But so many of those in between just can’t fit it into the routine functioning of the world. They just don’t see it there. And without God, there is nothing to see.

Here is what it comes down to. I cannot cope with a world devoid of love, and I do not wish to cope with a world devoid of God. There are things I can never see with my eyes, but it wouldn’t be faith if I could. Anyone can believe their eyes. It takes something different to believe your heart. I am still learning this. Sometimes I am still dumbfounded by what my God has done. I am human. Perhaps I am wrong. But I would rather be happy than right.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
"The essence of prayer is song, and man cannot live without a song." ~ Heschel

Savior
He can move the mountains.
My God is mighty to save.
Forever
author of salvation
He rose and conquered the grave.
Jesus conquered the grave.

So I am nineteen today. I can't really think of any songs to usher in this new year of my life. "17, 18, 19, routine...." Ugh, no, not that one. Anything but routine. Oh, well.

This means I've only got one year left as a teenager. And that makes me sort of sad. I feel like these past couple years have been what being a teenager is about, but before that.... I don't know what I was before that. A work-a-holic or something. Anyway, I'm happy to be nineteen because it is SUCH a better number than 18. It's odd AND prime. Good things are going to happen this year...... I'm really weird, aren't I? But I don't know, it's always nice to have that hope that the best is yet to come.

And this year IS going to be good! At least this semester is! I only have classes on Tuesdays and Thursdays (and one for 3 hours on Monday nights). So, I will have LOTS of time to work on my fantasy book, The Broken Sword. MAYBE if I'm REALLY having a good semester, I'll even post excerpts! But ONLY IF PEOPLE START COMMENTING! Bwahahaha.... bribery... I love it. I also need to get a job. I've got one month of car insurance covered. That's my birthday present. My dad told me he feels weird not giving me anything tangible, but I'm so stoked to have my car on campus that it really doesn't matter to me. I'm gonna sell $200 of meal points to cover October. After that, I really WILL need to be working. That'll suck, but I guess I can't complain. I have the easiest schedule in life and I'm still scraping together 15 credits for the semester. That takes skillz, yo. =P

Okay, off to make The Broken Sword be even half as epic as LOTR.

Today, my friend informed me that she misses reading my LiveJournal. Tis true I have not posted in quite a while. You know, that was all I needed to hear - that someone was actually reading it. I just wanted to know *sob* that somebody cared. Ahem. So. This post is a prelude to whatever I decide to post next.... Even though I have no idea what that may be, because lately I haven't been writing poetry and short fiction. Just a novel. And I'm not leaking bits of that onto the internet. No way.

So perhaps I'll just write about my ridiculous life. I mean really, with my friends, there's never a dull moment. Some of them built robot suits and had a battle tonight, and after, a bunch of us made s'mores and went to the playground because we rock like that. You know what I never noticed before? That train tracks make really scary noises right before and after the train comes. It's like.... SHALING SHALING..... like a sword being drawn, or magic in a movie that has really lame computer-generated sound effects. I wonder if that's just vibrations, or if there's some sort of electricity involved.... I just don't know. It is one of life's unfathomable mysteries. Unless you build tracks for the MBTA; then you might know the answer.

You know what else I wonder? What does "Jet-Puffed" Marshmallows mean? And don't tell me that they "puffed them with a jet," because that's the lamesauce answer. Part of me probably doesn't want to know. It's probably a lot more fun imagining the ways they could puff a mallow with a jet. Maybe they have a factory full of all these jets, and they've got devices that focus the exhaust into these little balls of sugar and suddenly - PUFF! Eeeewww. No wonder I didn't want to think about this too hard. Maybe they just have a system for puffing marshmallows every time they fly a jet; you know, just..... skewer them next to the engine and..... All right, this is getting too weird for me. I seriously don't want to eat marshmallows anymore. I'm going to read Narnia. Good night.

Wow..... That was actually a legitimate length for a post. I feel awesome. Oh, LJ, how I missed thee....

La la la
I'm coming home tomorrow!
I mean tonight!
Good thing. I only have $6 left on my meal card.

My room looks so sad and lonely without all the posters and clutter. Everything is in boxes. It feels so existential and surreal. A whole year of college! It's gone! Where did it go?? I've heard time only speeds up from here on in. How unfortunate that high school took a short lifetime to complete, and college goes by in a week!

I found all these old drawings and crappy poems I wrote in high school. Digging through the strata of another life. That's not me anymore. And yet it is. I feel like 2007 was the year of the real me. 2008 has not measured up so far. I need summer to re-define myself.

One more day. One more test. One more assignment to turn in. One more meal in Lane. One more hug goodbye for all my favorite people.







On a side note, moving is great fodder for creative thinking and writing. I hope I can find some time for that tomorrow.

Henceforth, "Round Pond" shall be called "Beaver Pond." Look at it. It's sort of shaped like a sideways beaver.... with his tail, and his head close to the ground....


View Larger Map

Have you ever thought about waves? How they always come into the shore? And how somewhere way out there, in the middle of the water (if you could get there), there might be a spot where there aren't any waves, because they all radiate outwards from that exact point? Ever thought of that? I wonder. I wish I could walk out there and look. But I'm not as cool as Jesus and I can't walk on water, so I guess it shall remain a mystery.

Do geese live forever or something? I mean, aside from if you are a hunter, have you ever seen a dead goose? What happens to them after they die? Where do they go?

Is anyone concerned that I am asking this about geese and not people?



So there's this paper. I'm working on it now. It's for my Christianity, Character, and Culture class. The more I think about the name of that course, the more I think they named it that solely because it could be abbreviated "CCC." Anyway, I think this paper would be going a lot better if I had read the books it's supposed to be based on. And if I didn't have to turn it in in less than two hours.

Hey, I watched the movies, okay? And I participated in the discussion. I know what happened in the books, more or less. All Glenney really wants is a well-written paper with a clear thesis, not a book report. So long as it mentions one of the things we read or watched, it's all good. Although I wish he wouldn't hold me to such an exceptionally high standard. It's mad stressful and doesn't seem quite fair. Come on, this is CCC, people! This should NOT be a big deal.

All right, ALL RIGHT. I'll stop procrastinating now. The geese flying past my window just really got me thinking about the bigger questions in life, you know?

Soooo I just ordered 6 CDs. That's about $100 of music right there. How much am I paying? $17. Shipping and Handling. So good it must be stealing... and yet, it's not.

Further Seems Forever - Hide Nothing
Run Kid Run - This Is Who We Are
Rock Kills Kid - Are You Nervous?
Dream Theater - Octavarium (yeah, I got that one from my friend; time to get it legally, because it's that good.)
My Chemical Romance - Three Cheers for Sweet Revenge
Needtobreathe - Daylight (I hope it will be almost as good as the song by BSS).

I can't do my homework. I don't know why. I took a walk and it was awesome because it was 60 degrees outside. I'm glad I went when I did, though, because tut tut, it looks like rain now. Anyway, I've got to finish my New Testament reading for small groups tonight or I won't get any extra credit for that class, and Lord knows I need it. But I'm really distracted.

Oh! Weirdness right here. Have you ever heard of synesthesia? It's when you mix up your senses. For instance, people with sound --> color synesthesia might see different hues when they hear a particular tone or timbre. Weird, right? There are other forms that cross touch and taste or cause you to see letters and numbers as different colors. I know it sounds trippy. And it can happen to you if you do hallucinogenic drugs. But thre are people who actually have this condition genetically. My friend Andrew brought it up last night and I was thinking about what kind of sensory overload you'd be getting at a rock show. After that, I looked it up on Wikipedia and found this:


Number form synesthesia
Main article: Number form

A number form is a mental map of numbers, which automatically and involuntarily appears whenever someone who experiences number-forms thinks of numbers. Number forms were first documented and named by Francis Galton in The Visions of Sane Persons (Galton 1881a). Later research has identified them as a type of synesthesia (Seron, Pesenti & Noël 1992; Sagiv et al. 2006b). In particular, it has been suggested that number-forms are a result of "cross-activation" between regions of the parietal lobe that are involved in numerical cognition and spatial cognition (Ramachandran & Hubbard 2001; Hubbard et al. 2005b). In addition to its interest as a form of synesthesia, researchers in numerical cognition have begun to explore this form of synesthesia for the insights that it may provide into the neural mechanisms of numerical-spatial associations present unconsciously in everyone.

Does anybody else do this? I always assumed that everyone did, but I guess I'm just weird. I do it with history and music, too, although that wasn't mentioned in the article. But thinking through from AD 1 - 2008, there is a definite map-like shape to the progression of time, and when I listen to an album of music, it has a sort of shape or direction. Some songs have shapes, but mostly it takes a whole album. I remember listening to this one cassette when I was little and thinking the songs had a really weird shape.

And now you're all thinking I'm a crack baby or something. Hahaha... yeah. Sorry. O_o

Going to go try and focus on my Achtemeier text now. Blehhh.