...

life is a torment of possibility

loaves and fishes

IAD: Dulles (dullest) Int'l Airport circa... 10:49 p.m. last night (26 min after my flight was supposed to have taken off):

situation: ground stop. no one is coming in or leaving. all places to eat or drink have been gated off, except for McDonald's. having been at the airport since 6:30 and not eaten, and knowing that i have a potentially long night ahead, i wait in line for 20 min, chatting with flight attendants headed to denver. i reach the front, order my food, and hand the cashier my VISA... well, apparently there is ONE mcd's left in the whole modern world which does not accept this traditional form of payment. having no cash and no money in my bank account, i walk away hungry and dejected. before i get very far, i hear "hey! hey you!" i turn to see one of the gentleman flight attendants i had been talking to fishing in his wallet, "i got cash!" embarrassed, I thanked him but declined, but he insisted, "you don't wait that long for nothin!" very humbled, i accept his $2, and the next thing i know the guy on my left is thrusting ones at me! now moritfied, i try to refuse but i am outdone. the woman next to me reminds me to pay it forward, and the voice of the generous flight attendant behind me says, "it's all about the loaves and the fishes". shocked and ever so pleased, i turn and affirm that he is absolutely right.

what a powerful reminder of the true meaning of the common parable of feeding the 5000: God will, indeed, provide... sometimes in very small, very miraculous ways. i thank the man again, and he gives me a big hug! best tasting quarter pounder i ever had... i smile all the way back to my gate, and in this moment nothing can get me down.

faith in humanity restored.

quizzical quotables + balloon physics

"eternal sunshine of the spotless mind: each prayer accepted, each wish resigned" [pope]

i know what that means now, and i am laughing at myself. importantly: be careful what you wish for. more importantly: be careful what you pray for.

"maybe there's a god above, but all i ever learned from love was how to shoot somebody who outdrew you" [jeff buckley]

my life is a sick joke of shortened wavelengths— from excited anticipation to anticlimacticism in 0.2 seconds. but right now i feel like a balloon someone stopped blowing up just as i got full: symphonically deflating.

my life has been seasoned with phenomenal moments and phenomenal disappointments. i'm not bipolar nor am i complaining— i am just irony incarnate.

"in my beginning is my end" [t.s. eliot]

...

ack- nothing like anxiety in the morning. mixed with an overdose of caffeine it can be lethal. it is amazing: no matter what drug you are on- when your future hinges entirely on one event [scheduled late in the day] it will ruin all means of pacification. i am like a jittery time bomb. zoloft sucks. it's different when something unexpected happens: you don't know it's coming so there's no build up- only shock and then the aftermath. when you are instead aware of a crucial-potentially-life-changing moment there is violent dessication to the nerves. i speak only for myself really. hopefully someone can relate...

clouds in my coffee...

too many thoughts. too many words existing to replace my own...

"words strain,
crack and sometimes break, under the burden,
under the tension, slip, slide, perish,
decay with imprecision, will not stay in place,
will not stay still."

oh, t.s.... you exist to assist me.

wrestling with this wide wild world

from beach bliss to fly-agaris at baybridge...

"human kind
cannot bear very much reality.
time past and time future
what might have been and what has been
point to one end, which is always present."

running parallel

irony, coicidence, whatever you want to call the beauty of parallel universes.....

like today i opened up a design magazine we received randomly in the mail only to find an article on design based on the SENSES... i found it thrilling. there are always those little things here and there that get your heart racing. kinda like the beginning of the movie magnolia... just on a smaller scale...

i'm diggin it...

nobody knows noses

memory is a very perplexing phenomenon (more on that and t.s. eliot later in life...) one thing i cannot reason is how we remember smells. there is no storage of impirical data for a smell. sight makes sense- images seem to stay so well in your mind, sounds and music have a large chunk of the brain reserved, touch is stored in the finger tips and taste in the tongue. but the inside of your nose just doesn't seem like a legitimate means to hold a record of smells. such as... the inside of a car when it's pouring rain, skin after smimming in a pool, cookies in the oven, a campfire...

one thought is that smell is usually connected to the other senses- you see, touch and taste food, you can see the ocean, feel the sand between your toes and breathe the salty air. next 2 thoughts... 1. gasoline is something that you do not taste or touch (let's hope) or even really see- but the smell of a gas station is unforgettable 2. what about blind or deaf people? is their sense of smell is more accute because they are not distracted by sights or sounds? or because they can't rely on sight or sound, does their ability to smell suffer? my final conclusion.... i picked the wrong science project to do in 8th grade.

an odd ode

from caribbean fare to costa rican dreams i bring you beverly in all it's glory: the city of bars and broken hearts. nestled between towns of the rich and the one with the witches, a friday night here will cure a sober mind and bandage the wounds of unwantedness. take heed men of essex and salem: we come, bearing ourselves: the most non-average bar women you'll ever meet, and we will not go home with you! (but we do accept drinks... thank you)

ah beverly, i miss the walking-distances through pseudo white-trash neighborhoods, your false artsy students overhyped on caffeine and nicotine, your boston meathead men smelling of beer, and your gentle persuasion of gordon alums. no fear- soon i shall return...

london underground

the universe moves in traffic patterns, until a pattern is interrupted by casualty and the world stops to remember what's really going on here. the tragedy in london today halted all transportation in the city, ended lives and gave pause to a watching world.

we cycle, we are a monotonous, we move with subway trains and work schedules through the grind of the system. we can blame that system for making us forget what is important, why we are here. it takes death and tragedy on a noticeable scale to stop that system. but only for a short time until we are cycled back into an alternate reality.

what gets me the most is that this wasn't an attack on "the system", or "the man", or even heads of state. it was on working class londoners in a city prepared to host the next olympic games, a city who is vying to help poverty in africa. it doesn't make sense... and it's not supposed to. to understand the minds of those who can do this would be an experience in a truly deranged state of being.

trafficking

ever notice how the universe flows in traffic patterns? commuters into and out of cities, the rush north, south or beachward on holidays... driveways, highways, byways... our life is governed by the limitations of roads and where they take us (or don't take us), the scenery they provide and the traffic patterns we fall into.

expectations

a strange sensation occurs when you realize that your life is viewed not through the perception of others, but rather their expectations. when one day you are confronted with "that's not how I thought your life would be" while you are still rubbing your eyes and yawning trying to figure out what's for breakfast- thinking life was fine, it was what it was and what it was was good. but evidently, that's no longer allowed. what you do- no, things that happen to you have to fit a certain expectation or your spectators go home disappointed. i say this: i'm running the show, i am the show, and there's no money-back guarantees. it may not be what you wanted it to be, but at least i try to keep it interesting. i just don't understand how someone can hold it against you if your life doesn't fit into their vision. unpredictability is a bitch, but it's real.