These Days

My brain cramps up when I try to write. Ouches.

The Obamanable Snowman

I was trying to rush home from the 1 after "A Tale of Two Cities" to catch the post-election coverage when suddenly all these windows open people are sticking out their heads cheering yelling OBAMAAAAA and all sorts of madness at neighbors, the sky. It is really quite cool as I live across from a converted housing project with 1200 apartment units inside. Already his name and image are uniting the proletariat. Even Taylor was off the walls when we got home but then I realized she just wanted to pee.

Picked up Broadway's "Carols for a Cure." November means it's almost time for Christmas songs, yay!

A Gauge of Importance

Too busy for ____________ is just entirely too busy.

Fill in the blank! (No, really. Do it.)

Some of mine: contemplation, food, sleep, friends, laughter, repentance, compassion! ...

What Beautiful Scrawly F's for S's

Beinecke releases several hi-res sample images of Edwards' writings.

Lucy

Yesterday I was getting on the 1 train after Redeemer's evening service, and there were 3 rowdy hoodlums in the car -- probably around my age. Early during that 60-block ride from 79th one of them stops paying attention to his friends and begins to stare oh-so-awkwardly, as I try without success to avert his gaze in Maslow's Religions, Values, and Peak Experiences.

I'm stepping off the train now and he grabs the other guy's arm... "Man I saw dat girl in dat movie Keill Bill!" "Awwwww shoooot..."

If I had still been on the train and clever enough I should have said meng I knows you! I seen you in the Gangster's Paradise. Or JayZ's last vid.

The Wilderness of Preparation

Abraham our father,
Was simply told to leave.
Go forth from your land and from your kindred
and even from your father's house.
To the land that I will show you.

This is the setting out.
The leaving of everything behind.
Leaving the social milieu. The preconceptions.
The definitions. The language. The narrowed field
of vision. The expectations.
No longer expecting relationships, memories, words, or
letters to mean what they used to mean. To be, in a
word: Open.

If you think you know what you will find,
Then you will find nothing.
If you expect nothing,
Then you will always be surprised.
And able to bless the One who creates the world anew
each morning.
So it is with setting out on the path of liberation, leaving
everything.

He would even have to discover
The way he would discover
While he was on the way.
Of him it was said, A man who set out and did not know
for which place he was destined. . .

Then there is being alone.
In the most God forsaken place.
Where God visits after all.
Leaving one's house and one's parents and one's family,
And finally the slave pits themselves
For a wilderness of no expectations.
Somewhere where I will learn what I will learn.
Where I can "see" what I will be.

-- Lawrence Kushner

Thanks M.

I am always so floored by professors who listen, as though I actually could tell them something new. Man, good profs make all the difference. I'm looking very forward to more work with Calichman, Levin, Mittelman, Staloff. How did it take so long to find these guys...??

FINALLY found an apartment today. I can actually have 24-hour days again! Without the 2-hour commute cap at the top and bottom of each day.
FINALLY excited about any remaining time at this school.

Shiggity shiggity schwaa.

Today, I learned that
An upside down lowercase
E is called a schwa.