BoldUlysses.com

I brought Led Zeppelin’s album IV (or “Zoso”) to work today, along with Beth Orton’s Daybreaker, both just to have some new music to listen to besides the radio. The former’s song “Black Dog” is going through my head at the moment…

Speaking of classic rock, having reacquired my turntable from my in-laws, I subjected (her term) Diane to the B-side Abbey Road medley on Sunday afternoon. She still doesn’t share my view that it’s a brilliant, dazzlingly creative piece of music, but I appreciate that she sat through it with me :)

The wind blew the clouds out of the sky last night, leaving a clear view of the stars even in our semi-urban, light-polluted location and allowed a very productive evening of stargazing with the telescope. I had never observed Venus through the telescope before, just not having bothered, and I realized I hadn’t missed much when I pointed the instrument at it last night. The lack of moons and the homogeneity of its visible surface made for a boring view. Saturn, on the other hand, was spectacular, and we even saw the shadow the rings cast as they pass in front of the planet. Wanting to seize the moment, I even woke Luke and brought him outside to see, though it’s questionable what, if anything, he saw and understood in his sleepy state. I remembered my parents taking me to the parking lot of Jordan High School, near our house, when I was seven years old to see Halley’s Comet. I remember being underwhelmed–but then again, after wildly optimistic predictions of the comet’s brightness, the whole astronomy community was that year as well.

I found the Orion nebula too, and gazed at that little fuzzy cloud of gas and dust again for a little while. I love astronomy.

Diane and I have been watching the mid-’80s production of Anne of Green Gables over the past couple of nights. I’ve been enjoying it, although I have to say (and Diane would agree) there is something about watching Anne’s propensity for mishaps that compromises our ability to relax while watching. It just sets us on edge in a way that Jane Austen adaptations (of which I am an avid fan) don’t. That said, the production values are polished and excellent and the casting is superlative.

Here at work, the latest project is a counter display for a breakfast/coffee bar called “Café Trevi.” It is to be sold in high-end bakeries and coffeeshops like Starbucks and Dean & Deluca (which made me think of Donald’s tenure there). They want an old-world, Italian aesthetic, which was kind of fun to design around, especially pre-design research, gathering images and textures from the internet and exploring options. Here are a few of the results.

Sitting here listening to Liz Story’s delicate piano constructions float through the room… Today was the day at work when we’d have “the talk;” i.e. the meeting in which I’d find out their plans for my job at the end of my three-month contract. Turns out they want to “extend” my contract for another three months, and while it’s nice to have steady and fulfilling work, job security is a highly-prized commodity as well. I told my supervisor as much, among other things, but the decision was rendered from on-high, as it were, and he was just a messenger. He’s been pleased with my work of late and wants me on board, but the upper management is less committal. It’s frustrating. In the meantime, buoyed by a more concentrated focus on something I’ve (re)discovered I have a gift for, industrial design, I’m sharpening my job search.

These designs recently went over quite well. The company that represents Nokia is interested in three and have commissioned some Photoshop work to show the displays in a store environment. I think their success is mainly derived from the fact that the company’s aesthetic (simple, clean forms and textures) coincides with my current (low) skill level with the modeling program used to create the images. Heh.

Luke’s third birthday was today. He received a huge solar system puzzle from his Nana (my mom) and a magnetic letters set from Diane and myself. We had the small family party this evening and shared a cookie cake. The large extended family party is this weekend at Tanglewood, a large local park.

The ability of stereotypically scientific concepts and terminology to relate to and explain philosophical ideas has always interested me. Take entropy: the law which postlates that systems within the universe will always tend to progress from a place of order to a place of disorder (the child’s bedroom being the classic example–messes do not clean themselves up; they require an infusion of energy to neaten). The concept is key to the second law of thermodynamics and is fundamental in scientific circles, and yet it handily parallels the degeneracy of the human condition, the way civilizations’ mores decline over time to their present level, among other downward trends.

Another scientific/engineering concept that has correlations to non-scientific life is negative static stability, or the requirement of a system for conscious constant correction to maintain equilibrium (visualize backing up your car at a high speed–you need a steady hand on the steering wheel because it is not self-centering when the car is in reverse, requiring constant small corrections to stay on track). Our lives as believers are much the same way–they require constant vigilance and discipline, supplied by His grace, to be productive and fruitful toward His ends. Untended and idle they will slide into laziness of mind and perhaps unconsciously fall prey to a deviant idea or viewpoint. It takes mindfulness to walk the tightrope between the extremes.

As an addendum to the last post, I’d like to mention that I’ve reconsidered my ringing endorsement of the film. The reason? It’s blatantly revisionist history. From the mouth of the screenwriter himself:

“I was reasonably absurd in my approach. I don’t know how to write a bio-pic and this was one of the best researched scholarly biographies I’d ever read. Instead I wanted to use my understanding of what I’d read with additional research to evoke the grander beats of John’s life. I didn’t want it to be literal. I wanted to take [a] stab at the truth of John’s life, but not by way of the facts.

Does anyone see the problem here? To paraphrase: “I want to portray the truth, but not the real truth.” Not that John Nash wasn’t an inspiring man, but to repackage and fictionalize key moments in the man’s life, in either a positive or negative way, is outright lying. What version of history can we trust when such things become commonplace? The least they could have done was to change the characters’ names. Then it would have been a solid, technically-superior inspirational film. As it is, though, those who don’t take the time to research the real man behind the movie (and I would estimate this accounts for a large percentage of the viewing public) are in danger of being misled. This isn’t as trivial an issue as it might seem–history is not relative. Granted, we all have our respective scopes of experience, but the interpretation of history is subject to the same absolutes as the rest of life. There is real right and real wrong and real truth, and whatever vantage point such an influential medium as film chooses to take on its subject matter, it has an ethical responsibility to get the facts right. I am disappointed.

Last night, Diane and I finally watched A Beautiful Mind. I say finally for myself, since the film had been recommended to me a long time ago, very stridently by my mom. She saw it and was very affected by it since her father, my materal grandfather, suffered from a very similar mental illness for the better part of his adult life until he passed away just a couple of years after I was born. Movies whose protagonists’ main point of greatness lies in their mental abilities have always resonated with me, not because I feel I can relate to them on anywhere near the same level intellectually, but because I do like reason and creativity and aesthetics and philosophy and all the pursuits of the mind. Call it a matter of taste rather than raw talent. In any case, the film was very well made. The arc of the film dealt with the standard “triumph of the human spirit” theme so prevalent in inspirational movies and there were a couple of postmodernish quips like, “We can’t know anything for certain” (said with the contextual meaning “there is no absolute truth”). But the artistic choices and attention to detail in the movie were compelling. Diane had seen the movie before and picked up on more of the details than I did, among them how some of the supporting characters in the movie don’t interact with their environment in ways that make sense later in the movie, but are consistent all the way through. I liked the choice of languid music for intense scenes, underscoring the fact that there was a disconnect between perception and reality. Recommended film that can precipitate significant conversations afterward, not just about esoteric things like how we perceive reality but also about what we would do if a loved one fell ill in the same manner, and the nature of “significance.”

Listening to Radio Paradise this morning (the best internet radio station, bar none) while plugging away at a set of instruction sheets for an OfficeMax gondola display, Loreena McKennitt came on with her song “The Gates of Istanbul.” I hadn’t heard it before, having only had cursory encounters with her music, but enough to enjoy her ability to craft lilting, ethereal, interlacing pieces. It’s an ability that is put to good use in the song I heard, and memories of our family trip to Istanbul in 1993 came flooding back. It was the first only marginally European place I had visited. The middle eastern and western influences met in the middle throughout the city, echoing very much the geography of the place, with one foot in Europe and one in Asia, as it were. I remember feeling a sense of safety in that the people who crammed every crevice of the city were people just like me, with emotions, convictions, habits and so on, but at the same time those very things were unfamiliar or expressed in ways that would take more getting used to. I remember mosques in every part of the city, frequented, it seemed, far more than the dusty cathedrals we visited in greater Europe, something which emphasized their centrality to life the city. I remember being woken early in the morning, the sky only just progressing from a city black to lighter shade, by the cries of the callers from the mosques’ minarets, calling the devout to morning prayers. I was reading C.S. Lewis’s The Great Divorce at the time and the effect of it all created a surreal mélange where exotic city life, an all-pervasive but false religion and an excellent novel about the afterlife wove themselves together in my mind. I wasn’t losing my faith–far from it; I remember an almost overwhelming sense of betrayal when we visited Justinian’s Hagia Sophia, converted into a mosque, and saw the enormous circles inscribed with Arabic calligraphy fixed to the tops of the pillars along with the shoddily (compared to the Blue Mosque just across the street) erected minarets at the four corners of the building. The building’s glory had been usurped to serve a false god and mixed with a sense of awe at the vastness of the place was a sadness over what it had lost.

Luke sang his first full, real song yesterday. He was remarkably chipper all day and had a great time at his grandparents house while Diane and I had our weekly date night. During our drive to visit and retrieve him, we received a phone call and heard Luke singing his rainbow song quite clearly. When we arrived, we all sang it together around the dinner table. I was laughing and Diane was crying a little bit, it was so cute. Luke was hesitant and looked around to make sure everybody in the room was singing, but didn’t display the recalcitrance he usually does when called upon to “perform.” He takes very calculated “risks” in the arena of public performance and is still working out for himself when certain things are approved and when they aren’t. Maybe it’s a firstborn thing? I couldn’t help wondering if he had siblings to look to whether he wouldn’t be less gunshy. I suppose we’ll find out when our second is born. And besides, there are plenty of firstborns out there who are relatively fearless. How big a role does birth order play in determining our traits?

Excellent movie recommendation: I Am David. Diane and I watched it last night; she had already seen much of it. It’s a fictional account of a boy who escapes from a prison camp in early-’50s Hungary and his travels across Europe. It does require some suspension of disbelief, but is amazingly character-driven, with whole scenes and encounters existing for the purpose of depicting the boy’s transformation and experiences more vividly, not solely to advance the plot, something I admire in a film. It reminded me a lot of my experience of reading The Giver, existing as a similar sort of fable, albeit one with slightly more realistic overtones. The film is particularly skillful in communicating textures and colors and sensory impressions, which affected me greatly seeing as how I remember experiencing things the same way when I was the protagonist’s age, and even now. It’s worth a view.

Diane’s and my first Total Truth class was at the church on Wednesday. We’re leading a group study of Nancy Pearcey’s book that will run through the early part of June. We were disappointed with the turnout (only 4 out of a church of several thousand, with good “publicity”) but are confident we are where are supposed to be and that God has a specific purpose for bringing each of the attendees to the class, including us. Hopefully as the previous semester of classes ends more will pick up our course, though even if they don’t it’s just as well–smaller groups can be more condusive to better discussions.

We’re off to Chapel Hill for the weekend. Pray for health and travel safety!

I feel sometimes like lunchtimes are my least creative time of the day. I have little creative energy and yet I am compelled to write, the result being nothing more than a dry record of the latest goings-on around the Suffern household. But remembering thoughts and insights worth sharing is a struggle anyway (I really DO need to find a small recording device I can take with me on a run, which is where good thoughts often come), so not much is different here.

Last Saturday Diane, Luke and I, along with Diane’s sister Maralyn and her fiancé Josh visited Discovery Place, a science museum in Charlotte. Luke was wonderfully well-behaved and patient during the moderately long drive, and he enjoyed the museum a lot. There was an excellent kids playspace with water toys and an inside jungle gym, among many other things. It’s nice to just be able to let him run free for a little bit. He liked the giant globe a lot, given his recent geographical fixations. He didn’t take to the IMAX theater so well, though, given that he’s never even been to a “normal” movie theater before and the hemispherical screen and thunderous sound system can be overwhelming for even the seasoned moviegoer. Incidentally, I didn’t take to it that well either, seeing as how the movie was about undersea life and spent the first 20 minutes on invertebrates, which make me queasy. Luke got scared in the first 30 seconds of the movie, I took him upstairs to a small room adjoining the exit and we watched a little more of the movie through the double doors, which effectively reduced the screen size to that of a large television and tempered the sound somewhat. We still left entirely after the tube-dwelling anemones, though. It gives me the willies just to think about them… Goodness.

Diane’s feeling better, thank goodness, and neither Luke and I seem to have caught what she had last week, a particularly nasty stomach bug. I’ll let her elaborate on the progress of the illness if she feels so inclined :) Obviously Luke and I had a lot of together time late last week and over the weekend as Mommy was sick. Fortunately the weather was beautiful, and we enjoyed our little island of clement weather in the middle of winter by venturing outside. We went for walks on both Friday and Saturday and met many people in the neighborhood, all couples almost our grandparents’ age. The last couple we met were owners of a house with a tree in its yard which has been an object of enduring fascination for Luke. It’s a small shrubbery (no Holy Grail jokes, please) about a foot in diameter, trimmed to a roughly spherical shape, and it has acquired the name “Itty Bitty One Tree” (to distinguish it from all the other One Trees out there. Really). It’s about six feet from the curb and being in a neighbor’s yard we haven’t been able to approach it. Every time we walk by we sit on the curb and gaze at it longingly, sometimes picking up some gravel from the curb area, sometimes not. But Saturday afternoon the couple that owns the house was present, and packing up their car, no less. So I had a chance to strike up a conversation and ask if Luke and I could *gasp* touch the Itty Bitty One Tree (I didn’t phrase it like this, of course). He consented and Luke ran up onto the grass and starting orbiting the tree excitedly, pointing out all its features. I think that made his evening, and it was fun to watch.

This has been quite possibly the biggest lunch I’ve ever eaten. Goodness. A full 2-3 pounds of chili, liberally sprinkled with cheddar and crushed crackers along with three corn muffins… I am packed. But so satisfied.

Tonight is our date night. It’s the first week since we began our weekly night out that we don’t have a restaurant to go to. We’ve exhausted our eating-out and food budget for the week, so we’ll probably just stay in, which is just as well.

Had a great phone call from Aaron last night, just wanting to catch up and talk. As I told Diane after the call, he is a very faithful friend. We talked about church, relationships and friends and many other things, among them his moment of weakness a week or two ago when he flirted with the idea of using some saved cash to buy a sports car. He thought better of it, though. I told him I could relate–It used to be a habit of mine that whenever I felt I was in a rut to browse the online car classifieds for a new project. But priorities change for the better (not having a garage “helps” too). More than anything, though, I think I started to get disillusionned with the uselessness of a massively overpowered or even great-handling car in a street context. And track time being as expensive as it is to rule it out as a possibility, the idea of investing resources in a sports car seemed silly indeed. I will say, though, there is something (perhaps characteristically male) about just owning and riding in a car with performance potential. Diane and I have agreed that a compliment about an outfit for a female is roughly equivalent to a male’s being complimented on his car. If we agree that the draw for the male of the sports car is the potential, then perhaps the comparison works in reverse–Could we say that the reason a female likes being complimented on her outfit is that there is potential in that outfit (of what nature I have honestly no idea)? Hmm.

We painted the dining room green last weekend, and not just one shade of green–two, above and below the white molding. While we’re not entirely satisfied with the result of our first attempt (the edging needs to be cleaned up), the color is wonderful and makes the room feel even more three-dimensional than it is, if that makes sense. It’s amazing what color will do. It was a fun experience, too, working on a mutual task and talking about anything and everything in the process.

Valentine’s Day was stellar. For us, it was stretched out over three days, Luke’s and my presents from Diane being given on Tuesday night, mine to Diane on Wednesday and the customary dinner out last night. She is lovely and every minute with her is a delight. How many radiantly beautiful women can laugh with me about the nocturnal badgers of Wales one minute and discuss the philosophy of Hume and Berkeley the next? None, in my experience, and I have her, and she me.

Work hums along. I am (re)learning a 3D CAD program called Form•Z. The designers use it here and it was the first 3D CAD program I learned in college, before moving on to Alias and SolidWorks. I kind of wish I had learned CATIA or Unigraphics instead, given their prevalence in the aerospace industry, but I trust it’s not too late. In the meantime, Form•Z and I are getting reacquainted after some years. It’s not as parametric as SolidWorks, meaning that every feature of a given model doesn’t have a well-defined process of construction that is easily modifiable. The disadvantage of this is that once a given 2D sketch is used to create a 3D model, it is difficult to go back and modify the sketch an inch here or half an inch there, changes which occur frequently in production. The advantage is that it makes the actual model file much smaller and less cumbersome, which frees up program resources for more sophisticated graphics and rendering features. After being so invested in SolidWorks for so long, relearning Form•Z is a bit like learning another language (it’s difficult to “say” the things I want to “say” in the new program using the “phrases” of the old). But I trust my 28-year-old mind is nimble enough to be able to switch between the two easily enough.

Have I mentioned lately that I married a phenomenal cook? In all truth, she has yet to cook something that is less than a resounding success. She herself may be disappointed with the results from time to time, but from a taste standpoint and from the opinions of her husband and son (amply confirmed by the gusto with which we devour the meals), every dish has been a chef d’oeuvre.

Diane and I have been feeling the tension lately that many believers experience between the necessity of using our God-given abilities for His glory and toward socially-constructive ends (speaking out against abortion, homosexual “marriage,” the growing moral degeneration of society) and the peace which must be present knowing that He is in control of all human events. The central question echoes the title of one of the most influential books in our lives, “How shall we then live?” How indeed, with a downward spiral of culture and society anticipated in the Bible but with which we have a mandate (in all obedience to Him) to work against. How do we invest ourselves in the world (to love it, truly), but not develop an attachment to it in the sense that our sense of elation or despair allies itself with every moral fluctuation and we grow resentful of that which God has revealed in His Word about these days? Most believers feel this, I think. Many times (and such is the case for us) it manifests itself as a sense of guilt for living in the culture we are when we hear about missionaries overseas pouring out their lives for the gospel. Diane and I were talking yesterday about it and speculating that this drive toward overseas missions may be an instance of the same drive that compelled men and women in ages past toward the monastic life, secluded in abbeys and monasteries. The new monasticism, in other words: the conscious removal of oneself from one’s “world” (in our case, our culture) with the added desire–always present, I am sure, to a degree in the “old” monastic paradigm–to see His Word go forth. The counterclaim remains that not everyone is called to this, that many of us are meant to remain where we are and minister exactly where we are, but thinking about our position on it in light of the cycles of history, it certainly was food for thought. More on this later, perhaps, when I am not at work.

Reading about Spinoza in Sophie’s World, after an excellent chapter on Descartes. The latter’s philosophical positions were amazingly astute given his total dependence on reason to reach his conclusions. Such was not the case, however, with Spinoza, in whose thought one definitely sees the beginnings of modern relativism. To borrow language from the Truth Project, his conclusions are what came naturally (pun intended) when one rejects anything that could be “outside the box” (of nature–the rejection of a transcendent God). I had a sense that with Descartes, for all his rigid rationalism, we were still grounded in absolutes, and ones that were reconcilable with Biblical positions as well (though without certain specifics of God’s character), but with Spinoza… The tether is loose and we are adrift in relativism, with no basis with which to judge anything, not reality, not ethics, not the nature of existence… And the amazing thing is that Descartes was more rational, more honest with himself than Spinoza by stripping away ALL assumptions and still arriving at a correct perception of reality. Spinoza’s philosophy may have been more appealing for its humanistic character, but it was still built on assumptions (however few) that were patently incorrect. The house looks attractive but the foundations, at least the lowest layers, are rotten.

I have been listening to Radio France International here at work and greatly enjoying it. It reminds me of evenings in the house on Route des Pierascas, salivating over the soon-to-be consumed baguette while setting the table for dinner. My mom would invariably have the radio tuned to the French news station, her version of listening to NPR, present as much for the news as for the chance to attune our ears to the native language. Here at work, when I first found the station yesterday, it took me several hours to get ‘back up to speed,” during which I had a good grasp of probably only 75-80% of the information communicated, but after this morning, I am much closer to where I was when we lived there. It returns quickly.

John called a couple of days ago and it reminded me acutely of what a slack blogger I’ve been. I mentioned to Diane that I never want to get to the point where I’ve gone so long without writing that I actually feel ashamed to write again (at least publically). Hence, this post. No, it’s more than just that–I really do enjoy it, but with the new job a 30-minute zone-out pondering session is unfortunately out of the question.

Speaking of the new job, I am presently sitting in a spacious cubicle at a company in downtown Winston-Salem called ImageWorks Display. I’m a contract employee (seemingly the way all hiring is done these days, at least for someone with my skillset) but I’ll be here for at least 3 months, unless something goes very wrong (which it won’t, LORD willing). I haven’t yet made too many connections with my coworkers but I’m trusting that will happen in time. The work, while intense (the product cycle is exponentially shorter than it was at my previous job), is interesting. I am bridging the gap between design and engineering, much like I did before. In other words, I can manipulate the computer programs the engineers use and make presentations, graphics and instruction sheets from their material, in addition to being able to do straight-up drafting or conceptual design work. I have two computers in my cubicle, a Mac on my left for graphics work and a PC on my right to use the engineering CAD programs, and I switch between them frequently. That said, you can guess which one I am typing on at the moment :)

Luke grows in every way every day. He is learning right from wrong, learning so much and is actually growing more affectionate toward both Diane and me, which is wonderful. He is currently and has been obsessed with the planets and can rattle them all off (in order, no less). He knows both his upper and lowercase alphabets, with all their sounds and can spell basic words. I don’t know that he’s yet fully connected phonetics with reading, but once the light goes on he will be off and running, no doubt.

I miss Diane. We now have a standing date night (Thursday), when Luke’s granddaddy picks him up for a few hours. It has been well-nigh essential for Diane and me amid the busyness, and so refreshing. She is my confidant, my companion and the one with whom I share (and love to share) everything. She grows lovelier every new day we are together.

In other news, recently Diane came across a pair of performers while surfing YouTube for Al Mohler vs. Larry King video clips. They’re called Rhett & Link, and they both live near Raleigh and are NC State alumni. Not only that, they lived not two rooms down from 26A in the basement of Syme dorm, where I lived for a year and a half. I have a good mind to e-mail them and ask if they were there when I was. In any case, they’re believers and were (and still are, I believe) involved in Campus Crusade while at college. They sing, do skits and candid video interviews, among other things. They’re like a wholesome Tenacious D. Diane and I are big fans. Some of our favorites are:

The Walmart Song (live)
Honoring Pluto
Grooms Galore
Invisible Bed Fence
Debate #1

On the airliners.net page title today: We serve both HVN and HEL. Ahh… Pilot humor. So geeky. So dry. How I miss thee.

I told Diane this morning that we have a house of peace. There is no strife; there is nothing unspoken that needs to be spoken, no deep-seated resentment or disagreement. There is quiet. There is no television, and there can be quiet in the kitchen in the morning, and quiet in the living room in the evenings. We have been blessed with a boy who enjoys peaceful play as much as he enjoys running laps around the couch. He is endowed with a remarkable amount of patience, self-regulation and such a wide range of experiences he enjoys for his age.

Surrounding our peaceful house, though, is a bit of upheaval. I was laid off from my job in Kernersville the first week of the month. It was completely sudden, even for my boss (who seemed even less of a fan of the event than I was, if that were possible), and “not performance or personality related” at all, but simply a fault of the company’s ailing fortunes. Almost everyone involved felt it a nearsighted decision, and this was partly confirmed two days later when they “hired me back” as a contract employee to finish up projects I had been responsible for when I left. Today is my last day back. They gave me a decent severance package but I have still been looking for jobs furiously. After enduring a period in which I felt like I was tossing resumes and cover letters and phone calls into a black hole, I secured an interview at what seems like a good company in downtown Winston-Salem. It’s slated for tomorrow morning and it is a big relief to actually have some initiative from the “other side.” My first choice is really dragging their feet, but the LORD will provide opportunities and open doors and guide me exactly where I need to be, and what’s more, will provide for and sustain our little family. He has answered so many prayers already.

The limbo period between Christmas and New Year’s is speeding by and we’ll be off to Chapel Hill on Monday. The annual New Year’s Day multi-family get-together is that afternoon and this will be our little family’s first year in attendance, though I doubt we’ll be able to stay the whole time, what with Luke’s bedtime and all. I am looking forward to spending a little time at my family’s though, having not been back there all month.

We did get to see them, though. They were gracious enough to drive out here on the 26th, spend much of the day, exchange presents and have dinner at a local restaurant with the contingent here. Among others things, it marked the third in three waves of presents laid before an incresingly bewildered little boy. The first wave was obviously Christmas morning, and about halfway through his stocking he was thoroughly confused as to what was going on, what with the gift unwrapping, the new toys and the candy too… He didn’t know which way to go, though once he focused on something he was loving it. That afternoon we visited Diane’s family nearby and unwrapped more presents, spending the evening with them. So it was an eventful couple of days. Luke got Lincoln Logs, Tinkertoys, an easel, a tricycle, a playmat, books, a foam noodle castle set, tons of candy and many other gifts. I was overjoyed to get BT’s latest as well as a globe, a booklight and a copy of the 1828 edition of Webster’s dictionary (something I had been greatly wanting).

More ponderings and musings to come. Just checking in…

This Christmas will be decidedly different from the 26 that have preceeded it, and joyfully so. The preparations are set. Luke will receive an avalanche of gifts from all sides over the course of the next few days, but thinking about my own experiences and finding myself unable to recall a Christmas without my brothers (which would rule out anything before I was six), I am confident that this deluge of gifts will not precipitate an expectation that it will always be so. And it will be exciting to see him discover his new toys.

Amid the bustle of preparation earlier, Diane and I took an impromptu moment to dance. Beth Orton’s exquisite “The Sweetest Decline” was playing softly on the newly hooked-up stereo (which we have been greatly enjoying) and we shared a very welcome unscripted event in the midst of so much planning and bustle and anticipation. It’s often the moments we don’t anticipate that resonate so strongly later.

Merry Christmas, everyone! Pictures to come, promise.

It was a time in which
winter failed, ignominious streams
plummeting toward a vague concern,
coldness replacing the worn
strain, clasped around her
neck like so many Coventry
embraces. The Peloponnesian War
had just ended, and your
irises were dying in perfectly
straight rows. Unbeknownst to
us, rather than abdicate, the
plush residence became a
commune, collapsing amid
stranger days. They were not worth
the parchment of heaven, but
continued in deference to a
lighter king, perhaps seventy
to one. Whether she knew, a
nocturnal Pilate would overcome
and rend all chances for
their proffered reunion. But the
child could not wish for this, instead
she kept a set behind, carried
in plaid and paisley, gently checked
the felt for dust and remnants of
the ethereal places. If I had known,
all my quelled convergences
perished in time like so many
tender supernovae, would a lush
consciousness posit something
greater? Even in a quarter of the
atomic turn, gallantry knew better
than to seize the quickly-fading
orbits, preferring Corinthian stone.
Absolute progeny, petals and my
love would concede, and Plutarch’s
sequence of creeds turned downward
like so many angels. But to build on?
Only her yielding arms enclosed the
transcendent sheath of my heart,
but to never falter when the lesser
sun’s arc merited the precision of
her spire? That would be a victory indeed.

For the Present is the point at which time touches eternity. Of the present moment, and of it only, humans have an experience analogous to the experience which [God] has of reality as a whole; in it alone freedom and actuality are offered.

— C.S. Lewis, Screwtape Letters

I love how Lewis explains this concept in the context of exhorting believers to trust God in the present moment for exactly what they need, rather than getting wrapped up in an anthropocentric vision of the future or being chained to the past. He argues, though, that even “living in the past,” as it were, is preferable to a fixation on the future and its uncertainties, since the past is done and thus more “eternal” than the future, in the sense of its unchangeableness. Of course he makes the concession that we should plan for the future, but only to the extent necessary to secure our obedience in the present. I would quote more but the above blurb is all I can find on the Internet and the book is at home.

It sparked a train of thought about the nature of God’s being, though. I don’t know why I am so compelled by this. It’s along the lines of an earlier post about concepts that cannot be understood except through experience. No matter how good the analogy, being grounded in human experience, composed of things restricted by three spatial dimensions and one temporal dimension, it is always incomplete. I will not be able to understand God’s concept of time until I am in His presence. And yet I try. Have you ever tried a wooden block puzzle fifty times in similar ways until your mind contorts itself around the problem a different way, you understand the unifying concept behind the puzzle and from then on can’t remember how you could have thought differently about it? My mind scratches and claws for that breakthrough contortion, that universal that will explain the particulars of the paradoxes. Approaching the gap of understanding from the angle of the particulars is fundamentally backward (but something the philosophers have been doing for ages).

My current train of thought revolves around unifying the concept of change and physical/spiritual duality that makes up our being. The above quote explains eternity, as God experiences it, as an eternal Present. If God is always in His own Present, as it were, it would account for the unchanging nature of His character and Being. But God is not static in this world–He is dynamic in His actions vis-a-vis human affairs and (in a larger sense) sustaining the universe. How can Someone Who experiences an eternal, unchanging Present have a dynamic influence on everything within our experience of time? I think part of it is allied to the nature of His existence as Spirit. God is wholly spirit; we are part spirit and part physical. We experience time physically–when I move my hand there is a past, present and future to my motion, and our spirits experience time in the “physical” sense as well–I intuitively understand this law of the universe which I inhabit. And yet… There is something “static” about our spirit. It can have no direct influence on the physical things of this world and through the years, though I accumulate experiences and memories, the essence of my spirit remains largely unchanged. There are many verses in the Bible that exhort me to “be transformed by the renewing of [my] mind” (and other similar spurs to effect dynamism in my spirit), to change it so that it accords more closely with His. God’s “physicality” is nonexistent and therefore static in that state, and His “spirituality” is His entire essence and therefore is the dynamic part of His being, since He does act. To us, our physicality is predominantly dynamic and our spirituality is overwhelmingly static unless transformed, renewed, “made dynamic” by Himself. Maybe this will be our experience of eternity? A continual spiritual dynamism where our bodies are eternally unchanging but our spirits move and live and act in Him, just as His does? I do not know how this would be. Random unfinished thoughts…

In any event, take it all with a grain of salt as it is based mainly on the writings of a man (Lewis) and not on the Bible. Still… It’s a recurring theme.

Eleven has just slipped by and the house is quiet on a Sunday evening. I haven’t felt down on Sunday night in ages. The sensation has been replaced by a feeling of transition into the week, nothing more. I ran earlier for the first time in a week and a half. As I told Diane, I had forgotten how much I missed it, even after only that long. To me, there is no more pure exertion–all I need are running shoes and a stretch of road or trail. I can think, I can pray, I can breathe in the night air and duck under tree limbs, feet pounding the pavement rhymically. Something about having the part of my mind that controls physical activity firmly occupied frees the part inclined to more abstract thought. Snippets of poetry, minor revelations, good ideas, trains of thought that would do well to be fleshed out into posts or more–all these rise to the surface of my mind like wheat separating from chaff in the wind. I’ve wished more than once I had a miniature tape recorder to remember things with, but that would still be cumbersome. The irony of the fact that good ideas come to me during the run is that I’ve not come up with a plausible solution for recording them. One day…

Diane and Luke and I are learning each other, growing into a family, by His grace. We’re learning how to run a household, how to be each others’ advocates and true companions in every way. Luke is settling in, showing himself to be remarkably adaptable for his age, still very two but learning and growing so fast. Even after just the week we were gone on our honeymoon we were astonished at the changes in him. He is his parents’ greatest delight and challenge and we love him immensely.

Our company Christmas party was held Friday night at the Piedmont Club, a rather posh executive club on the 19th floor of a downtown office building. On a chilly night, even for December, I wore my (only) suit with a red tie and Diane was lovely in a black dress with a white pattern she had purchased specially for the occasion. All in all, the event was fairly underwhelming, the major impression I derived from the evening was just my utter confidence in my wife. I was proud to have her by my side. She is breathtakingly beautiful, articulate, with well-formed and expressed opinions and a disarming openness in social situations such as that one. She was perfect. I, on the other hand, made a bit of a hash of dinner conversation by being more reserved than I was during the initial mingling time, but all in all it was good for both of us.

Don’t worry about the future; or worry, but know that worrying is as effective as trying to solve an algebra equation by chewing bubblegum. The real troubles in your life are apt to be things that never crossed your worried mind; the kind that blindside you at 4pm on some idle Tuesday.

Baz Luhrmann’s “Everybody’s Free (to Wear Sunscreen).” His original version is addressed to the class of ’97, my high school class, and I downloaded it in college and hang onto it for nostalgic reasons. It’s diverting but I certainly don’t hope the above excerpt comes to pass, especially seeing as how it is almost 4 p.m. on this (near) idle Tuesday.

We finished almost all Luke’s Christmas shopping on Saturday afternoon and selected a tree as well. We don’t yet have many decorations and we’re letting our collection grow organically without investing in mountains of artificial baubles and trinkets to hang. We do have a star, though–a lighted one. I lifted up Luke and he put it on the “vewy top,” much to his delight. He has an advent calendar, too, with chocolates in it. He’s learning lots about delayed gratification; let’s just say that :)

Diane and I went on a date earlier, our first partaking of the Eppley family babysitting services, a service they were overjoyed to provide, missing Luke as they do. So not only was Diane’s and my afternoon refreshing and recalibrating, Luke had a ball too. His grandaddy and his aunt and her fiancé took him to the park, his favorite fast food restaurant, to the mall where he got to ride the elevator and merry-go-round, to a grocery store and through a car wash. All of which, cumulatively, produces roughly the same amount of enjoyment and excitement in him as a trip to Disneyworld. He returned to us abuzz from his adventures and none too eager to go to bed.

As for our date, we saw The Nativity Story, a wonderfully-done retelling of the New Testament narrative. The movie treats the story with a real dignity and authenticity (in the non-postmodern sense), is unabashedly biblical (many explicit references to Jesus as Messiah and God incarnate), and although it feels a little staged near the end, the overall realism of the details and the portrayed humanity of Mary and Joseph in particular are very affecting. Highly recommended. Will probably be on our video shelf eventually.

In other movie news, can I express how excited I am this movie is being produced? I adore the book, have read it several times and always find it compelling in so many ways, not just for the creativity and esoteric mathematical-ness of it, but also for its allegorical success and richness of philosophical application.

I specifically enjoy the book’s depiction of the idea of whole bodies of knowledge unattainable without direct experience. I haven’t been able to find a more accessible illustration of this than when the book’s protagonist, the Square, is allowed to experience three dimensions, something inconceivable in his world, and then returns and attempts to explain his revelation to his compatriots. I have a strong conviction (without a direct biblical reference) that much of what occurs in our supernatural realm is like this, that many things we deem absolute paradoxes in our current state of worldly experience would be the most plausible things imaginable if only we were allowed to glimpse, for a minute, the dimension, the plane of existence in which they occur. This, to me, is a highly exciting proposition. It undergirds a lot of my anticipation of heaven.

The Truth Project meeting last night was unequivocally good. Diane made the house beautiful, as she always does, and seeing our friends again after the hiatus of the wedding and honeymoon made us very happy.

We discussed God’s attitude toward labor and work and through that His perspective on the poor, and also arts, the media and culture. Discussion after the video was lively as most everyone has readily available opinions about those things. Sprinkled throughout the video series are “experts” who give their take on the issues being discussed. A featured expert last night was Gordon Pennington, an international consultant who used to be the marketing director for Tommy Hilfiger. He is very articulate and demonstrates a firm grasp of the influences that shape culture nowadays. See the video clip here. For those who can’t see the clip, here’s a transcript:

We’re at the nexus of tremendous complexity where we need some defining principles. We need truth more today than we’ve ever needed it.

No generation has ever been more manipulated than the generation that lives today, and they know it, and they’re savvy, and they’re adept at living in this technological environment that they also distrust even as they feel compelled to use it. People are responding to an array of stimuli that is simply overwhelming today. To filter that out and to protect oneself requires a kind of understanding, awareness, discipline and resistance that’s very rare. If part of living in the modern world today means that we’re going to be exposed to ideas that we find repugnant, malevolent, dark, wicked, then what do we do to challenge the predominant institutions, the predominant powers that control these images?

We should be the great conscientious objectors who always want to return to a place of truth, to a place of vulnerability to that truth. Most people don’t really want to know the truth if it means being disappointed along the way, so “eat, drink and be merry,” be distracted, entertained and amused to death. The risks of pursuing truth are tremendous. And what could be a greater adventure than to risk everything in pursuit of the one thing that endures? If truth isn’t worth all that, then it probably isn’t truth at all.

It’s done. After almost six years, this is the end of this journal. Diane and I have set up another journal elsewhere and will be posting from there. We like the idea of keeping friends and family abreast of our life and thoughts as a new family but want to be more selective about the readership, rather than just having a solely public journal. The internet is a big place and the stakes being what they are, we’re going to screen things as much as we can while still exercising our creativity. Thank you all for your loyal readership here. LJ has been a big part of my life and I will, of course, continue to keep up with many of your journals. God bless.

p.s. — The post’s subject line is a reference to a certain Abbey Road song.

Diane and I watched The Last Unicorn last night. I hadn’t seen the movie in a good twenty years and was eager to see it again, remembering how affected I was by it when I was younger. My impression of it after the re-viewing is decidedly mixed. The script is quite poetic in bits and has surprisingly affecting moments, but there are several scenes (the harpy sequence and the tree) that are definitely not appropriate for kids, even older ones. And Jeff Bridges’ voice work as Prince Lir is really underwhelming. But overall it was a good sojourn into cinematic nostalgia.

Our first Truth Project home meeting after our wedding and honeymoon is tonight. The topic is God’s perspective on labor, work and creativity. We want to be conformed to His standard in all things, to be more free and more who we were created to be, and for Him to be glorified not just in the process (which implies a side effect) but first of all. Whether or not our personal sensibilities are fulfilled or our lives enriched, as it were, let Him be praised and glorified.

…with LiveJournal, here we are. In retrospect, this was a long time coming. Even with the necessity of reckoning my older writing to another stage of my life with the advent of marriage, putting some distance between myself and LJ is a beneficial thing in other ways. And not just because of history–I want to look forward, not back, and having my archives from there, readily accessible, felt stifling at times.

So here we are, together. We’re excited you’re reading about our lives and thoughts. We hope you will find this to be a place of warmth, rigorous introspection and reflection that seeks to extol Him above all. Join us as we seek His face in all the diverse contexts of our new life together. Welcome!

She made me lunch today. We had stew and noodles yesterday for lunch and she packed me some tupperware containers of that along with some hummus and pita bread. I can’t remember being more satisfied after lunch. She is wonderful and so thoughtful.

Everything went so well. The snafus were confined to the details and the major events and themes were resounding successes and even exceeded our expectations, by His grace. At the reception in particular we were concerned about uncomfortable strangers having to sit next to one another, but in several instances people and families who had remarkably similar backgrounds and interests conversed around the same table. On the honeymoon, too, even though we weren’t able to stay at the cabin the whole time (for divers reasons), we found a wonderful hotel in Hendersonville. And during our visit to Biltmore the weather was exceedingly rainy, something that just gave the otherwise standoffish ostentation of the building a cozier feel. Other than those redeemable hiccups, everything went so well. The ceremony was beautiful and meaningful, the reception perfectly attended and the honeymoon had just the right balance of activity and downtime. We read C.S. Lewis together, worked on puzzles, and baked cookies. She gave me a crash course in Led Zeppelin and we discovered another George Winston album at a big used book and music store. So much time close to her was a cool breeze after the stifling level of activity preparing for the wedding. Not that that’s entirely over–we still have thank-yous to write–but the transition into this new place we’re both discovering was ideal.

Still in the process of setting up the new journal…

I’m getting married tomorrow.

I’m ready. Completely. As I have repeated often in the previous couple of weeks, her dad is completely right when he says that if we are nervous about anything, it’s the wedding and not the marriage. And it’s not even an lavish wedding at that–far from it.

Karl, George, Bret and I went to Elizabeth’s Italian restaurant for lunch today. No matter what I get there, it’s always good. Say what you will, Europeans know how to celebrate with good food and wine. I felt very appreciated and included in the circle here at work.

When we return from the honeymoon, we’ll be starting another journal together, name TBD. Yes folks, after almost six years, I’ll be retiring spaceship. Stay tuned.

Good new music. Ambient breakbeat, with stylistic nods to Squarepusher, Orbital and Aphex Twin. “Cleared Up Sunset” is very good.

Went to get our marriage license today. Absolutely no waiting and I had already filled out the forms online so the process was expedient. Luke was enamored of the parking deck and enjoyed pressing the buttons for the elevator. He is a such a sweet, well-behaved, intelligent little boy.

On Sunday night, after reminiscing about old Disney feature-length cartoons we used to watch over and over as kids, Diane and I watched Beauty and the Beast while putting together wedding favors (a major percentage of this wedding is DIY). I have to say the film has aged remarkably well. Some of the animation wasn’t quite as sparklingly good as I remembered it, but I think we’re spoiled by new technology and computer animation. There is a warmth and authenticity to the film’s palette that is very endearing. She and I both agreed that a lot of the drama seemed much more compressed than we remembered as kids; that is, emotional moments seemed more drawn out, with more dramatic impact, when we were younger. Maybe our attention spans have grown? The film’s 90-odd minutes seemed much, much longer when I was 10.

That said, the romance in the film has actually grown more affecting now that I have more personal experience with that range of emotions. When I was younger those feelings were on the horizon, tentatively experienced but still very far off. I didn’t shy away from those scenes–far from it–but I didn’t understand them to the degree I do now. The humorousness of the slapstick in the film, on the other hand, has lessened sharply :)

Here’s another one for my list: BT’s album ESCM, specifically the track “Remember” (although there are several on the album that were very influential). I first came across the album in the fall of ’97, during my freshman year at NCSU’s Design School. I had a fledgling interest in electronica but didn’t have avenues for developing my interest. Another student in my freshman design studio was an electronica buff and had been for years. We built a tenuous friendship around that single mutual interest. He turned me on to the KLF, Apollo 440, Underworld, the Platinum on Black series, Orbital, the Crystal Method (not all of whom I kept up with or even liked) and above all, BT. ESCM had just come out and when I bought it I found it to be creative like none of the electronic music I had listened to thus far. Far from a monotone series of linear beats with a successive layering of sound, the music had a variety to it that meshed perfectly with my burgeoning interest and the emphasis on creativity that pervaded Design School. BT seemed to exploit the full range of sounds, tempos and effects available, borrowing from several different genres and creating something new, the way the best musical innovators do. He still is, too–this album looks positively stellar. As for “Remember,” for best results find a system with sufficient bass, crank up and close eyes.

Diane and I attended a debate Friday evening at WFU. The subject of the debate was the question, “Can morality exist without God?” and more specifically, the issue of whether a transcendent, personal God is necessary as a foundation for our sense of morality. It was highly enjoyable for both of us, even though we were on the edge of our seats, so to speak. As neither of us are overly into sports and we share such a interest in the fundamental questions of existence and worldview, we joked that an event like a debate is the rough equivalent of attending a sporting event for us. It certainly was in terms of anticipation.

The two debaters were Drs. Bruce Little and Walter Sinnott-Armstrong, the former a professor of philosophy of religion at Southeastern and the latter a philosophy professor at Dartmouth. We were obviously biased in favor of Dr. Little, but Dr. Sinnott-Armstrong acquitted himself well, all things considered. His main failing was a result of his rejection of a transcendent moral source. He was forced to construct a synthetic moral framework from examining the particulars of human behavior without being able to focus on the essence of what makes man the way he is. In practical terms, this means he used many examples from the world as foundations for his thesis, trying to arrange them into a cohesive picture of man’s moral state, instead of starting with a proposition of man’s moral state and explaining the world from that direction.

The general movement of his argument was from the particulars to the universals, something philosophers have been trying to do for thousands of years without success but the only possible approach if the Christian worldview is rejected and the thinker is intellectually honest and consistent. It was certainly an elusive approach in terms of the subject of the debate and one far less intellectually rigorous than the one taken by Dr. Little, but the inevitable one if a transcendent moral source is rejected.

Diane made the excellent point that a semantic clarification at the beginning of the debate would have been very helpful, specifically between the terms ethics and morals. As R.C. Sproul pointed out, the etymology of the words speaks to the source of their meaning: ethics deals with the ethos of things, their essence and thus a refers to transcendent values, while morals come from the mores of the people and represents more typically the values of a given society in the here and now. They’re not interchangeable and more precision on that count would have been nice.

A great point made by Dr. Little, in his closing statement, was that, “Facts are not self-interpreting.” In other words, one cannot claim to have a perfectly empirical, dispassionate worldview. Those who claim to only “trust science” and what it tells us about the world inevitably make meaningful judgments about the facts they encounter based on their worldview. We all have assumptions we bring to the table, no matter how impartial and open-minded we claim to be.

Two more weeks. As I told Diane during our lunchtime phone conversation earlier, I can’t dwell on the actual number of days left for too long. It’s not that I’m not excited–far from it–but I begin to fixate on the magnitude of the concept, thinking about all the permutations and possibilities, then thinking about my thought process in thinking about the possibilities, then thinking what other people think when they’re thinking about the thought process that is derived from the possibilities… And so on. I have to nip it in the bud and move on to the next subject of thought.

It’s an all-day rain. Nimbostratus. Diane and Luke and I have the weekend mostly to ourselves, which is just as well as we have lots of odds and ends to tie up with regard to the big event. Bret’s computer is playing old Counting Crows here in the office. Adam Duritz’s plaintive voice meshes well with the timbre of the afternoon. My 27 years seem very long today.

I remember rainy days in England, visiting my best friend Timothy in his house near Leamington Spa, perched on a cluster of windswept, grassy hills rising out of the patchwork of countryside. I remember their clothesline in the backyard, running my fingers along the wires pensively as my hair caught the gusts. I remember the small-windowed church at the end of his road, which must have been older than almost anything on this continent, and the skewed, weathered gravestones with dates that reached back to the 1600s and before. I remember scooping up cow chips and riding the quad around his neighbor’s small farm, herding sheep through a small opening in a long fence and doubling over with laughter as they all tried to crowd through the gap simultaneously. I remember eating English sausages and potatoes at an outdoor dinner party on a summer evening, torches all around pushing back the obscurity of dusk and making place for the warmth of company and conversation. Only 13 years ago. I wonder where I will be 13 years from today?

My dad came Friday afternoon to help me work on the house’s yard. We spent time together that evening, getting Krispy Kreme donuts and just talking, something we hadn’t done in a while. Saturday we made good progress on the house, although if you came by you’d hardly know, seeing as how it’s still quite a mess. We removed all the trees from around the house (I used the chainsaw extensively), got someone to come and grind the stumps for us, and spread quite a bit of mulch. As I said, it’s still a mess, but sometimes messes will be made so that the house will ultimately look cleaner and neater.

Our honeymoon planning is in full swing. We’ll be staying in my aunt’s log cabin in Zirconia, NC (near Hendersonville). We’re planning a nice day and dinner at the Biltmore House but not too much else. I hope to do some stargazing in the clear mountain night air and perhaps we’ll do some hiking, but above all the theme for event planning is flexibility. We’re very much looking forward to it. It’s difficult to simultaneously become close as a couple in the midst of wedding planning, house moving and little boy raising, as rewarding as those are. Time for the two of us alone is like gold. Ultimately, though, especially with regard to the honeymoon, the closer the two of us are the better it is for Luke and family life in general.

when the world looks back,
when the face looks after that,
I can see a lot of life in you.
yes, I can see a lot of life in you.

She got her hair trimmed today. She sent me pictures from her phone because I couldn’t wait to get home to see it. Have I mentioned lately that I am marrying the loveliest woman in the world?

1. I’m starting to get really excited about family life. Not that I haven’t always been looking forward to it, but the sense of anticipation is more palpable when things start converging and falling into place. To use an unabashedly androcentric analogy, it’s like a giant assembly kit–the first step is gathering the pieces, and the second assembly of said pieces into the finished product. Getting hired permanently, wedding plans being taken care of, reading about (and knowing firsthand) the virtues of homeschooling through James Dobson’s book, talking last night about supplementing our income with some work-from-home ideas… These are the pieces. It takes effort to assemble it into a workable life, to be sure, but there is a sense of satisfaction derived just from knowing all the pieces are present. God has provided every one. He is always faithful.

2. Diane and I came across this series of articles the other day and have been enjoying them immensely. Granted, the bookending of the dialogue with narrative is a little hackneyed, but the quality of many of the conversations is compelling and chock-full of sound reasoning and propositional truth. I liked this one particularly. The central question lines up well with the main topic for a debate our home group will be attending in a couple of weeks.

3. How do people move to another country? Why don’t we see more people doing it? Can it be as simple as resistance to change? Is it the difficulty of learning another language? Those two things aside, what other points of resistance are there? The money issue is of course always present, but let’s assume a livelihood can be secured. Could it be some preconceived notion about a possible way of life? People have the same needs everywhere. I would venture to speculate that many people operate under the subconscious misconception that food or water or some other necessity will be incredibly difficult to find, or that survival itself will be arduous. But people need these things and business and commerce spring up everywhere. Almost everywhere you go there will be grocers and banks and water and electricity. Diane and I have been talking a lot about Switzerland lately. Even in Lauterbrunnen, a remote little hiking village Aaron and Donald and I stayed two nights at, we found a bakery and a butcher immediately and purchased good food for dinner. There is a “support network” that makes civilization possible no matter where you go. And I’m sure those of you who have traveled even more broadly can attest to this too.

Felt my second earthquake last night. News report here. Tuesday morning the garbage trucks drive around in the wee hours of the morning, emptying the large metal dumpsters in the office complexes near me, and every time they set one down again the resultant metal *BOOM* can be heard throughout the neighborhood. Last night at 5 a.m. one of those booms coincided perfectly with the earthquake and it felt for all the world like a bomb had gone off nearby. It startled me awake and I sat bolt upright in bed. I remembered the garbage trucks’ habits and chalked up my bed’s shaking to the fact that I had awoken so suddenly. It did take me a few minutes to go back to sleep, though.

Diane and Luke and I spent the day making this shell of a house into a home. My roommate Harsha is in India until just after the wedding and left a desk and a chair here, but has otherwise vacated his room, so the house is entirely ours. We are beginning to populate the spaces with our presence, or more precisely, Diane is, since she above all has purview over what makes this house a home.

We’re shuffling rooms around a little bit. I spent a large part of the day moving furniture and other heavy items whilst Diane cleaned and Luke tried, but tried, to get his hands on the candy jar that is several shelves up in the dining room. Luke, ailing a little bit, took a long nap and after he woke up went for a long walk around the neighborhood with me. In the meantime, Diane cooked an amazing turkey roast dinner, complete with white wine and tiramisu. After dinner, Luke sauntered off into the living room to watch his movie and she and I stretched out the experience, talking and being close. I lose myself in the expressiveness of her eyes, perfectly framing her very worthy insights. She is so lovely.

The world is so big to Luke. I thought about this on the way home from Diane’s parents’ house a few minutes ago. I remembered car rides with my family, trusting my parents implicitly and absolutely, to the point where my mind could wander free and settle on details of a road sign or a constellation of streetlights. Especially at night, the world had a sleepy-eyed bustle to it that seemed larger than life. The unimportant details disappeared in the darkness and the choice of what to fix my attention upon was more easily made. Paradoxically, it felt more safe. And even in the daytime, I would notice the corner of a building every time we passed it on some familiar route and I would often know every shrub and restaurant and curve by heart, but my mind did not have the constraint of having to remember the exact driving itinerary, the schedule of the day or the obligations that awaited us when we arrived. Destinations and narrow routes floated in a vast ocean of unknown.

I suspect it is much the same way for Luke. I notice trappings of it when we go on walks, especially ones to unfamiliar parts of the neighborhood. He is quite the chatterbox now, constructing nearly full sentences (he had a repertoire of only about 20 single words as recently as July), but when we venture off a well-traveled street, he becomes quiet. He searches for something familiar to rest his mind upon. I help him, pointing out a friendly pine tree or a yellow fire hydrant or a manhole, and he repeats my designation. The act of finding something recognizable, “understandable,” makes the place familiar, and every time we pass through that location he points out his “anchor,” moving from one to the next. He takes the familiar and uses it as a tether into the unfamiliar, like a jellybean trail in a forest.

He prayed for the first time over dinner. We do “praying hands” before each meal, clasping our hands together and issuing a prayer. Luke will usually mimic and participate, though he almost always peeks, but earlier he fussed a little bit while I prayed. I didn’t think much of it until a few seconds later when Diane and I observed him clasp his hands together, close his eyes, head bowed, mumble for a few seconds and then say, “In Jesus’ name, amen.” We were overjoyed in our approval; Diane cried a little bit and I was emotional, being very proud of him. In retrospect he probably fussed because he wanted to pray himself. Milestones…

Dreamed last night that I was out camping and in a clearing, near dusk, I saw Aurora unmistakably fly overhead, an isoceles triangle with podded engines above and below the wing.

I’ve been hired here at PMI full time. I was working only 25 hours a week but after much persuasion and advocacy on the part of my boss (always an affirming thing), they agreed to hire me full time with benefits, based on my performance and my changing needs. Pilot training and singleness necessitated and allowed a bit more flexibility in my work schedule, but as family takes first priority, the new job situation is a big answer to prayer. We will live modestly, but I can provide for us on my salary alone. God really does provide for us at every turn, giving us exactly what we need.

Diane and Luke and I went to the fair a couple of Sundays ago. Other than the disconnect fostered by the fact that we were trudging all afternoon around the fairgrounds on the one day of the week it’s good to rest and recharge, it was very fun. We pushed through Luke’s naptime and he was wide-eyed with wonder at the commotion and fanfare. He and I rode the big slide together and he rode the merry-go-round twice (once with me and once with Diane) along with a couple of other rides. During the last few rides he would close his eyes and cant his head to one side in the cutest manner imaginable. Diane and I were doubled over with laughter and speculated as to why he was doing it. It was his first real experience with cotton candy, too, and after some initial apprehension he got his fingers properly sticky enjoying it. Having him there made it much more enjoyable than it would have been otherwise.

Do you feel like the art of conversation is dying, or has been lost entirely? I do sometimes. Diane and I frequently discuss the growing isolationism in the culture (the latest manifestation being online video services, which have well-nigh eliminated our need to go the video store and actually interact with people). In large part I think the practice of conversing revolves around the idea of asking meaningful questions of the other party, and from personal experience–very objective, I know–I can recall many groups and individual conversations in which I’ve been involved where very few questions were asked. People rely on making statements about themselves which they hope will produce a reaction in the conversation partner, and when such a reaction does not occur (as happens frequently when two people have no initial common ground), they simply make another statement and the conversation quickly disintegrates into a protracted monologue unless the partner can elbow their way back in.

Additionally, the cadence of conversations leaves a lot to be desired. I’ve done this myself. I’ve been so wrapped up in completing a thought, point or statement that although I paused in my discourse to allow the other person to speak, I will immediately pick up after they’re done, giving, at the most, a cursory nod to the observations they ventured without really taking into account the substance of what they’ve said. It’s amazingly easy to do. If we would slow down and give the other person the credit of thinking about their observations, meaningful exchanges of ideas and opinions would be more commonplace and we wouldn’t feel so rushed in talking to others.

Good conversation technique takes practice, as do logic and critical thinking, disciplines that are rapidly disappearing from our society. If one of the fundamental underpinnings of a democratic system of government is literacy, and if we define literacy as not only the ability to grasp the concept behind the things we read but also to use our knowledge to encounter and impact the world, then the erosion of those key exercises of literacy is profoundly undermining and weakening our culture.

I miss Diane. Yesterday was a rough day emotionally, for reasons external to the two of us, and after increasingly busy days here at work I am very much looking forward to spending a quiet evening with her. She is so lovely, and I find rest in her beauty and tenderness. I never knew how essential those things were until I found them in her.

He piled upon the whale’s white hump the sum of all the general rage and hate felt by his whole race from Adam down; and then, as if his chest had been a mortar, he burst his hot heart’s shell upon it.

From Moby-Dick, by Herman Melville

I came across this while checking my e-mail. Gmail has a constantly-updating strip for links above the mail listing, and one of today’s links was a Melville quote. I clicked on it, and found, among others, the passage above. We studied American Romanticism in high school English, but we never read the book quoted from, instead focusing on more easily digestible oeuvres like Bartleby.

I kind of wish we had read it, in spite of its length and difficulty. There are universal themes running throughout it, which would of course have been lost on those of us with more ephemeral fixations (which describes most of us as teenagers), but they would have remained and brought themselves to bear later in life. That’s how a lot of early reading is, I think. Much like the music we listen to, we don’t always realize the songs and works of poetry and prose we experience are having the effect they are until circumstances converge to expose their influence.

Today I find the quote and themes expressed in the book, specifically ones about purpose and meaning, to be very much in line with recent thinking. Ahab’s purpose, the meaning of his life, was exaggerated, but on a smaller scale the kinship of our spirit understands his obsession, being made of the same stuff, as it were. We have the same capacity to ignore the only Source of transcendent, true meaning and to give place to the pursuits which are all too eager to rush in and fill the void left behind.

Sometimes, when I don’t have change and have to use a dollar bill in the Coke machine just outside the office door, I maliciously hold the dollar bill for a second or two while the machine tries to suck it in. I justify it with grandiose overtones, saying it symbolizes in a token way my rebellion against the ever-increasing glut of automation in the world today, but really it’s just kind of fun.

Diane sent off our wedding invitations yesterday. It will be on November 11th. Talk about crossing the Rubicon… Wedding invitations are well-nigh irrevocable. People ask me whether it is “scary;” I always respond that while I am not scared, I have a healthy respect for the magnitude of the institution and the changes that will occur in my life. But even so… I would be lying if I said hearing the invites were sent off didn’t precipitate a deep breath and a determined, “Okay.”

Work plods along. Some days I feel very much like I am fighting against the current of complacency. It is so easy here to sink into the routine of work, home, sleep, work, home, sleep, etc. Something rises in me, grasping for meaning to transcend the day-to-day. Everyone goes through this process, whether consciously or subconsciously. We might be self-aware enough to step back and realize we need transcendent meaning in our lives, or we may immerse ourselves in work, home life or any pursuit without stopping to ponder why it is we have such a strong compulsion to invest ourselves in that pursuit.

We need a transcendent source of meaning, though, without any undercurrent, however buried, of futility. This does exist. It is a false logic to ascribe to a belief system simply because it gives life meaning (I could worship a rock or a tree and say it gave my life meaning); I am a Christian not because it gives my life meaning but because the Bible is true. It’s the difference between tacking Christianity on as a sort of hobby-like appendage to my life and building my life on the reality of the Word. Where do my assumptions play in? Do I allow the Bible to define my assumptions (God exists, He has spoken into His creation, man is fallen, etc), or do I spread my Christianity like a gloss over assumptions (there is no absolute truth, man is basically good, etc) that are no different from the rest of the world’s? There’s the rub.

The second approach necessarily creates a discord between the spiritual and rational elements of life. It requires a “leap of faith” from the rational part of our lives that governs our day-to-day, but cannot supply meaning, and the spiritual part which has no relevance to our daily existence but gives our lives meaning and feeds our spiritual vacuum. Francis Schaeffer originated this concept, Nancy Pearcey built on it, and the more I learn, the more I see the wisdom and wide applicability of it.

The stars have been brilliant the past two nights. I walked out to my car from Diane’s, just as I do every night, and from the bottom of my tree ravine there in the street I looked up and saw Cygnus flying majestically in the ribbon of sky above. Cassiopeia was in full tilt and Vega was near the zenith. Fall stars… Orion will be back soon.

I haven’t flown in about three months, since late June, if I recall correctly. My time has been occupied with such truly joyful tasks as building my relationship with Diane and Luke, a relationship that ought to occupy the front burner, and does. But my eyes still turn toward the skies frequently. I was surprised this chilly morning in putting on my leather jacket for the first time since April at how the emotions from that time came flooding back with the texture and scent of the leather. I remembered long cross-country flights, the end of the semester, warming days and most prominently, the hesitant first steps into my relationship with Diane. The convergence of overlapping memory and emotion overwhelmed me to such a degree–and I have such an enthusiasm for that sort of thing–that I couldn’t wear the jacket. The senses remember more than we think they do.

I want to fly regularly, but at $90/hour from the local airport, the cost is prohibitive. That said, there are other avenues, such as the Civil Air Patrol that offer much lower rental rates (in the order of $30-40/hour) in exchange for volunteer assistance, something I am more than happy to provide. The latter rate is sustainable. We’ll see.

Back in the office after a busy morning. I had a quiet lunch at Panera to slow down, and read some more in James Dobson’s excellent Bringing Up Boys, a book it’s taking me inexplicably long to finish so I can pass it on to Diane. The chapter I read dealt with the balance of work and home life, and how we are far, far too strung out, on average. As a society we are thoroughly overcommitted, on the whole, and a state of what he calls “routine chaos” exists in most households as they rush from one event to the next.

Some bits of the chapter were particularly apropos for me. Discussing the reactionary trend in the ’90s away from two-career households and back to single-income families, Dobson says, “The men tended to press ahead with their professional commitments until they had achieved an ‘acceptable level of flexibility and autonomy in their careers.'” (he quotes a pertinent magazine article) This is a good synopsis of a career goal that recognizes the paramount importance of being a parent.

Another extended passage was encouraging:

Your task […] is to build a man out the raw material available in this delightful little boy, stone upon stone upon stone. Never assume for a moment that you can “do your own thing” without serious consequences for him and his sister. I believe this task must be your highest priority for a period of time. It will not always be required of you. Before you know it, that child at your feet will become a young man who will pack his bags and take his first halting steps into the adult world. Then it will be your turn. By all expectations, you should have decades of health and vigor left to invest in whatever God calls you to do. But for now there is a higher calling. I feel obligated to tell you this, whether my words are popular or not. Raising children who have been loaned to us for a brief moment outranks ever other responsibility. Besides, living by that priority when kids are small will produce the greatest rewards at maturity.

This has implications in the other direction as well. We have an absolute responsibility to sever our dependence–financial, emotional, social and spiritual–on our parents, not only for our sakes, but for theirs too, so they have all their resources at their disposal for whatever task God has called them to do for this next season of their lives. Many people have gone too far or not far enough in this direction–we are still family and I love them and will always want to spend time with them, but still… How exciting it must be for them. The satisfaction of having completed their task, and having done it well, the benefits of wisdom and maturity and the new possibilities that open up… Looking up at the looming, albeit lush mountain ahead, I can only imagine what that will be like.