BoldUlysses.com

The office door is open to the beautiful spring morning outside. A jetliner flies overhead, the gruff timbre of its turbines a summons to my aspirations of flight. The office is situated under an approach path to the Greensboro airport, a welcome location for me. I want to fly, and fly and fly some more. And not just for the sensation of it–I want to be in command, to be the one for whom all the instruments and indicator lights are purposed. With the necessary training, I welcome the responsibility. It does something for me to be relied on–it’s like continuous low-level problem-solving, and I do love to solve problems and fix things. Lord willing, I have no intentions of abandoning this track to professional pilothood.

I’m just…happy today. No brooding pensiveness that would create a mood condusive to introspective philosophizing. That’ll have to wait for another time. Granted, circumstances and attitudes don’t have to interact, but today, praise God, my circumstances are good and I’m going to let them impinge on my attitude.

Upon waking this morning, but while still under the covers in bed, I made it a point to review everything I had dreamed about, in hopes of retaining it, but…most of it left me just the same. Physical recollection (i.e. immediate writing about it) it almost always more effective.

I dreamed I went with my roommate David to an interview in the city for a graphic design position, just to be there for moral support. The firm was located in an office overlooking a busy street, with a large glass window bounding the front side of the office. It reminded me very much of some of the stores along the Champs-Elysées in Paris. We found our way upstairs and located those who would be interviewing us, a shorter older woman, who would be David’s eventual supervisor, and her assistant. I just sat there and listened as they went over his portfolio. There seemed to be a lack of chemistry and appreciation between the two parties–many conversational threads and questions ended abruptly and there were awkward silences. I wondered if I should say something, and at length I spoke up. For some reason I talked about children’s literature and mentioned how two of my favorite books were (and are) Where the Wild Things Are and How to Dig a Hole to the Other Side of the World, which the older woman happened to love as well. I talked more about the simplicity of children’s books and speculated about how the challenge in writing them many times must be keeping them simple, or creating a compelling story from few elements. She agreed wholeheartedly. As much as I was connecting with David’s prospective employers, I felt bad since I had just come for moral support and not to dominate the dialogue. The meeting dissolved and we all went our separate ways. The older woman, however, followed me out to the parking lot and I had a sense that she was very keen to offer me the job instead of David. I had in mind to ask for $35/hour if she should mention an hourly rate. She drove a silver Mercedes E-Class with a large version of the three-pointed star logo mounted prominently on the front grille, just like the car I saw in real life a few days ago. She let me drive, and I was surprised to discover that although the car was an automatic, it had a clutch pedal for use at low speeds. We drove out of the parking lot and through narrow streets, nearly sideswiping cars while rumbling over cobblestones. I felt like I was driving through Antibes (another seaside town in France) and turned left to drive up a slight hill and through the stone arch in the town’s peripheral wall, and… I woke up.

I spoke yesterday morning in Bible Fellowship (Sunday School) class. Jonathan, our regular leader, was in Arizona helping his father move and called me last Thursday, asking me to lead the group. My source text was Isaiah 45 and while my discourse ranged all over the place (I am much more used to giving short, efficient comments and not so much at extended speeches), the main thrust of my teaching was on adopting God’s perspective over the events on our life, severing our instinctive connection between our circumstances and attitudes and learning to realize how God works all things in our lives for His glory and our eventual good, whether those things may appear typically good or bad from our earthly vantage point. Realizing this in a deep, deep way fosters spiritual maturity and an unshakeable closeness to Him.

I was nervous, and my public speaking skills still leave much to be desired, but in my weakness and inadequacy He will show Himself strong, and I trust that God will use whatever pieces of what I’ve spoken to edify and encourage those in the class with ears to hear. Diane and Larry both ventured several very good and helpful comments, letting me know that people were actually responding to what I was teaching and being very encouraging. Diane in particular–I wish I could express how much it lifted my spirits to see her smiling face sitting there by the edge of the row. Knowing that she has the effect on me that I can phrase things the way that I want to when I’m with her, and explain myself well, that knowledge projected itself into me, lifted my eyes from the podium in front of me and gave me confidence to speak deliberately. Invaluable.

I’m sorry. Windows machines just seem dishonest.

I’m a Mac user at home, but have to use a PC equipped with XP Professional here at work. I’m not a diehard Mac-only person; I’ve always tended toward the “live and let live” paradigm, but certainly, given the choice, I’ll gravitate to a Mac.

My computer history has been marked by peaceful coexistence. I appreciate the myriad virtues of Macs while being aware of their limitations in terms of software and expense. Likewise, I appreciate the wide array of applications available and inexpensiveness of PCs while not turning a blind eye to their deficiencies in, well, everything else.

But I’m sorry. I make every effort to keep my computers clean, organized and uncluttered (a much easier task with Macs), but this PC at work gave me the blue screen of death a few minutes ago, and during the last phase of the reboot cycle something struck me that crystallized my dissatisfaction with PCs.

The desktop had come up, the icons were present and the mouse cursor was clear and not busy. Everything appeared ready to go, but when I clicked on an application to open it, the computer thought, and thought, and thought some more, doing what seemed like additional startup processing when it had given me every indication it was idle and ready to go. I hate that. When the desktop on my Mac at home comes up, the computer is fully ready and clear to devote itself to opening an application–none of this, “Oh I’m ready. Wait, wait a minute,” nonsense. It just smacks of dishonesty, and there are touches of it elsewhere in my experience with the OS. Perhaps this is my own ignorance speaking, but when a crash is imminent due to lack of memory, instead of just giving me a warning box telling me the situation and letting me close an application or three, it reroutes resources, works behind the scenes to keep the computer running, albeit slower, until it deteriorates further and the whole thing goes down. I’d rather be immediately aware of the limitations of the current configuration rather than an attitude of, “Everything is fine; carry on.”

So. It seems my penchant for Macs revolves around a moral issue. How appropriate.

I thought that the morning alone would be ideal for smooth flying, since the air is cold and the sun hasn’t yet had a chance to heat up the earth and cause turbulence-producing convection. But flying with Larry yesterday evening showed that the morning doesn’t have the market for smooth air cornered.

It had rained all day so the temperature was uniform and chilly. The skies cleared in the afternoon and the wind was absent. I don’t think I felt a single bump as we tooled around the practice area. Wanting to take up Diane soon, I planned my flight with Larry as a sort of reconnaissance flight to find her house, and it was surprisingly obvious. I descended about 7-800 feet above the ground and circled around it a couple of times. I was going to fly down to Lexington but decided to just land at the closer Twin Lakes. The air made it easy for me and I greased it on, both at Twin Lakes and later returning to Sugar Valley. Landings like those are real confidence boosters, more than anything else in a flight.

Flying with Larry had the potential to be a little intimidating, seeing as how he is a retired airline pilot with many thousands of hours of experience (I have a little over 60). But he loved it and said I did very well. From what I gathered, he hadn’t flown in several years, and said he felt “like a kid in a candy store.” A major difference between the kind of flying that he did for most of his career and that which I do is that when he flew, he would invariably have a premade flight plan for every flight, locked in. The kind of flying that I do, navigating by dead reckoning and landmarks, is a lot more free by comparison (though more choosy in terms of weather conditions). So he enjoyed that freedom as well. Great flight.

Kind of depressing that one of the most otherwise beautiful love songs ever written (and, incidentally, a song that’s been running through my head over the course of the past few days) would be so profoundly existential. I suppose it could be interpreted in terms of life goals and ambitions; in other words, Simon could be saying that his love for her undermines his belief in selfish ambitions he held before her. But that is more difficult to support than the more obvious interpretation (a loss of faith). Given the underlying theme of many of Simon’s songwriting during that period (and the culture, really), I can’t say I’m entirely surprised by the existentialism.

The steady rain outside today isn’t helping, although there have been redeeming moments. I walked out into the warehouse earlier to go to the front office and the sound of the raindrops on the sheet steel roof echoed up and down the open space, amplified. It’s a sound that doesn’t lose much in the scaling up.

It was a warm evening. Running along the concrete sidewalk bordering Queen street last night, a truck pulled out of a driveway just ahead of me. The driveway protruded from between two low stone walls and the exit was blind until the driver nosed out into the sidewalk. He came from a garage in the apartment building, and the door hadn’t yet shut, giving the truck an unnatural illumination from behind, a warm glow that contrasted with the sharp-edged streetlight reflecting off the hood. He paused, looked both ways, and turned left.

I ran across the mouth of the driveway. In that instant, before I realized it, I thought about the house at the bottom of the street in Vence. Quickly, quickly–stucco walls and heavy wood gates, a monolithic frame, open sometimes, the older son’s name Vincent, ping pong table in the basement, parents’ friends, dinner parties with couscous and veal, dimming the long-wearing light of summer, warm swims in the heated pool in the evening, white tiles and chlorine, grasping the rounded concrete of the edge, a soft glow from the submerged lights–there it is. The connection.

Later in the run I came to another intersection at the same time as a car turning right. I ran behind it out of courtesy and the car sped off, and in doing so I felt the warm breath of exhaust against my lower legs and smelled the familiar aroma of diesel fuel. And again, before I caught myself–driving in the long tunnel of the Périphérique (beltline) in rush hour around Paris two summers ago, window down against Aaron’s protestations but keyed up for the experience of driving in Europe and needing to experience firsthand the environs of the car.

Sometimes I feel like I need two lifetimes, one to experience and one to trace the patterns of memory, in both myself and others.

Que veux-tu que je fasse avec ces émotions, Seigneur? Tu me les a donnés pour une raison, je n’ai aucun doute, mais laquelle? Ça a produit une telle effet dans mon coeur. J’ai du difficulté à croire qu’ils sont inutiles, que j’ai vécu là-bas and ces choses m’attirent tant pour nulle raison. Amène-moi, pas à pas. Je Te fais confiance.

Exhausted. I should be in bed. After church today, Diane and Luke and I drove back to the parents’ house in Chapel Hill for an extended family meet ‘n’ greet. The occasion was Rachel and David’s wedding (next January) and a desire for all the relatives to get to know one another.

It went really, amazingly well, from our end of things at least. Luke didn’t take a nap but he was sociable and very well-behaved the whole time, and was excellent in the car, even taking a nap on the way home (against his best efforts–he’s not yet reached the point where he realizes Sleep is Good).

David and Rachel made him a late birthday present, a fleece blanket with an animal pattern on one side. It’s amazing, really, and we’re beyond grateful to them for it. Thank you guys, again.

Nothing more to read here. Just a placeholder.

Please continue to pray for my roommate David. After encountering some upheavals with regard to his job a week or so ago, he’s at a major crossroads in his life.

My great-aunt Rose died today. She was my maternal grandfather’s sister and lived in Hendersonville, NC, almost all her life. Because of my grandfather’s mental illness and the strain that placed on my grandmother, Aunt Rose took care of my mother’s oldest sister Diana, forming a very close bond. Aunt Rose never wanted to leave her house, but Aunt Diana finally prevailed upon her to be relocated to a nursing home, for her own health and safety. That was only a few weeks ago.

My maternal grandmother Justine (“Gran”) is now the only one left of that generation in my family. It motivates me again to record her story before she passes. She’s in her mid-80s and still very mentally sharp, but her body is understandably becoming more feeble. She still lives on her own in Raleigh and we see her quite a bit. Last summer at the beach, during our yearly extended family get-together (always different combinations of relatives), we ate at a local seafood restaurant and Gran and I sat across from each other. We’ve always had a good relationship and conversation has invariably been easy, but during that luncheon, I asked her questions about my grandfather Samuel, who I never knew (he died when I was very young) and how they met just after the war. She obligingly shared her recollections about that and much that came to pass afterward. We were in our own world, her sharing and me absorbing as much of the family history as I could, and the rest of the lunch party got up to leave around us almost unnoticed. My mom later told me that Gran had never told anyone, not even her own daughters, about much of her life. I want another conversation like that. I don’t want those things to be lost.

I know some (most?) of you can’t stand Ann Coulter, and I’ll admit sound bites and television appearances aren’t her strongest arena, but this recent column (thank you, Diane) by her is quite good. She uses hyperbole generously, but the points she makes through it have merit.

It touches on an area of postmodern thinking concerning ethics that I’ve had bouncing around in my head for a long time. That is the shift in ideals from doing what is right to doing what is consistent. In other words, if you remove the concept of absolute right and wrong from your view of ethics, then the highest ideal to which to ascribe becomes consistency–being “true to yourself,” in other words. If we dismiss the notion that there are concrete standards of right and wrong by which society as a whole operates, the pinnacle of ethical achievement becomes consistency. You may do things that are “good” or “bad” according to the outdated notions of absolutes, but as long as you are consistent with your own ethical code, as long as you are “true to yourself,” then you’ve succeeded. In popular culture, we hold in higher ethical esteem the flawed anti-hero with no redeeming qualities, but who lives consistently rather than the old-fashioned protagonist who struggles and stumbles in coming to terms with his inadequacies in the face of moral absolutes. How could those outdated, unfair ethical notions be so cruel to him? Shouldn’t he just be able to live however he pleases?

And what becomes the polar opposite of consistency? Hypocrisy, just as Ms. Coulter alluded to in the column: “The unstated rule is: If you’ve done it, you can’t ever criticize it.” And granted, hypocrisy is almost universally construed as wrong, even by those who believe in ethical absolutes–certainly the ultimate, convergent ideal is to do right consistently, but when given a choice which do we value more highly? Let’s allow people to change. Let’s try to discern, “Are they trying to do right?” or “Are they trying to be consistent?” If nothing else it may foster an inkling of understanding between the two sides of the ethical fence.

1. Fascinating series of photos chronicling San Francisco in the immediate aftermath of the quake 100 years ago and now.

2. This site was sent to me a couple of days ago. I’m not usually much for sites like that, and some of it is a bit alarmist (I’m very skeptical that most of this will come to pass), but much of it is pretty level-headed. It’s…sobering to read.

3. Coffee Theology yesterday evening was fantastic. Our topic for the week was the necessity of Scripture; in other words, that reading the Bible or hearing its message of salvation is essential to become a true follower of Christ, and also to grow spiritually in our walk with Him. The case was made that our innate sense of the existence of a Higher Power, or even the universal “moral compass” embedded in each of us (our conscience) only supplies us with part of the picture–we need to read or hear the Bible’s message in order to come to a knowledge of God’s plan of redemption through His Son.

4. Vivid dreams last night. I dreamed so lucidly for so long that when I finally woke I was sure I must have been dreaming for hours and hours. I dreamed that I was at the airport, talking with Mr. Kelly (the lead instructor) and preparing for a flight, and a very odd-looking plane landed as I was walking out the back to take a look at the windsock to get a sense of the prevailing winds. My dad arrived and I took him up for a little local flight. I remember tooling around for a while until I realized that the engine had cut out. Even in my dream I immediately set best glide by trimming the airplane and began the restart procedure. It didn’t help at all and the plane simply glided down in a spiral for a gentle landing in a firm, grassy field. I had more than enough room for takeoff if I could only get the engine started. I cranked and cranked but thought I had flooded it. I even got out and tried hand-cranking, to no avail. Finally I got back in the airplane, on the right side this time, and cranked it some more. Eventually the engine sputtered to life and we were off again. After a short roll the plane tore into the sky at a precarious angle and suddenly I was dodging buildings, dipping under bridges and tilting the plane 90 degrees to pass between skyscrapers. I climbed and climbed but the congestion of buildings never abated. People were gathered on platforms and in courtyards high in the sky, discussing academic things and I could hear their conversations as I flew around like a bird trapped in a building, searching for a way out of the glut of concrete and foliage.

“How can I describe this album? In a word, divine. Never before and never again will such genius and mastery of the senses coalesce into a body of pure bliss as has in this work of blinding brilliance.”

“This is clearly one of the finest works in the entire oeuvre of human expression.”

“Midway through the monumental Track 6, I involuntarily sprang up from my seat, threw my entire CD collection out of the window, and ordered a further 172 copies of this masterpiece to fill the space they left behind. I have never regretted it for a moment.”

“Like the Colossi of antiquity, his magnificence is both awe inspiring and humbling. His oeuvre is living proof that the Dumbing Down phenomenon theory is just speculation. Indeed, his music is the culmination of hundreds of years of evolution in Western Classical Music.”

“To listen to these 18 songs of pure, magical bliss is an experience so mindblowing and ecstatic that it is worth knocking your grandma over to turn up the volume.”

“He scoured the slums of Belgium to find the best harmonium player, the canals of Venice to get the greatest squeezebox artist, and the backstreets of Lourdes to discover the most prolific player of the ukelele. These three musicians would join forces like a musical Voltron and rock out so hard that even the international space station would feel it.”

* * * * * *

This stuff kills me. I’ve had to bite my lip here at work to stifle the laughter.

The impending thunderstorm outside dims the midday light and bathes the air in an unnatural hue. The contrast fades from the light, the forms are softer but somehow more menacing in the ambient yellowness. Torrents of rain fall now. They lash and scourge the ground, the trees, the cars, anything exposed. For all its violence I wish it would continue–the white sheets of splatters of the bulging drops have an element of white noise to them as they come and go, ebb and flow like any water would. And while the contrast of the light may have dimmed, the contrast between the hostility on the other side of the thick glass and the peace of this small room could hardly be greater.

I need to go flying again. It’s been a week now since I took my recheck. As much as I need to fly regularly to keep my aptitude in the cockpit, there’s a very large (probably characteristically male) part of me that wants to see if it feels any different now that I have my license. It’s tangentially related to that impulse that compels us to try out a new power tool or a new gadget just to indulge our new “capabilities,” or that compels me (I won’t speak for men in general here) to disassemble a perfectly functional item just to see firsthand how the parts fit together and the details of its operation. I hope very much to go flying later this week, by this weekend at the latest.

I spent yesterday evening at hers and her family’s house for an Easter dinner. She has two younger siblings and they both have significant others, so it was a large gathering, and a resoundingly pleasant one. Her mother is a fantastic cook and unfailingly hospitable, qualities, great though they already are, I’m sure will only be magnified in the present generation. Diane and I cleaned the kitchen afterward, always a welcome task for me. She made me an “Easter box,” complete with candy (particularly noteworthy was a bag of giant peanut M&Ms), a wonderful card and a collection of mix cds, two “best of” Coldplay compilations among them. I’m warming to that band. In making her my reciprocal gift, a mix cd of U2 love songs, I have to admit I was a bit surprised to find how few straightforward love songs U2 penned. Even the more open-faced ones have a “twist” to them, be it irony, a larger reflection on society or an underlying precariousness, often all three. Not that that fazed me in compiling the cd–that quality of the band’s songs is part of the reason I have such an affection for them in the first place. Thumbing through my collection of their music bought to light a recurring thought I’ve had about many U2 songs–they’re written from a second person point of view. It’s not pressingly noteworthy; after all, many artists have written songs that dismiss the form “I did such-and-such” and “he did such-and-such” in favor of “you did such-and-such.” But ever since I started listening to U2’s music that element in their songs would strike me. And I often wondered, and this I shared with Diane yesterday afternoon, why there was not more prose written in that style, novels and short stories and so on. It’s evident it would take a fair amount of psychological knowledge of the character involved to be able to write consistently in that style, but really no more than writing something in first or third person. Is it pretentious to “project” thoughts and feelings onto the reader in that fashion (“You went _____, and then you felt _____.”)? I’m sure someone has done it; I’m just not aware. But all the same, if the muse should come, I would like to try it. My only self-imposed condition would be that it not be a gimmick, that it should serve the core themes of whatever I’m writing and be as seamless as possible. The potential is compelling to think about.

The moon sat on the trees last night as I drove home from her house. The atmospheric refraction magnified and reddened its glow. It really is another world, not just a flat icon painted in oils on some celestial canvas. I wish you could have seen it with me.

1. It hasn’t sunk in just yet. The fact that I’m a pilot, that is. I think the first time I take someone up it will really hit home. It’s an incomparable feeling–it can be fun again now that the (necessary for a time) pressure is off. Thinking about the experience, it’s almost routine–running through the preflight, the pre-takeoff checklists and the radio calls, among other things. And I want it to become even more routine and familiar.

2. Had a bit of a celebration for Luke’s 2nd birthday on Monday. The president of the company where I work got wind of the fact that I had passed my checkride and generously offered to reimburse me for a nice dinner with Diane. But having spent Saturday with her and letting her parents babysit Luke all day, I thought it better if the three of us all did something together. Monday evening we went to a local chain restaurant and feted his birthday. Diane and I collaborated to buy him a combination sandbox/water play area, which he loves. He is a fantastic little boy and the bond between us is growing a little more each time.

3. Jethro called yesterday regarding a mountain biking trip planned by our church group to Virginia on Sunday afternoon. He suggested we might fly up there and “split the time” (translation: Now that I’m a private pilot I can log “pilot in command” time). That’s a nice feeling of camaraderie.

4. Karl just passed out Easter candy to everyone–Nestle chocolate eggs. Yesterday afternoon he “released for consumption” (he has a stash) one of his Lindt chocolate bars. Yum.

Passed my private pilot recheck today! I am officially a pilot now. Praise Him for the beautiful, relatively smooth day and for giving me the skill to do this. Everything was right on the money. Skyhawk 99J treated me very well, even with the sticky throttle and whistling air vents. In the area with a free Saturday afternoon? I can give you a ride.

Spent a wonderful day with Diane yesterday. Everything went so, so well.

We took a mini road trip to Raleigh and Chapel Hill to go to the NC Art Museum, eat lunch at Neomonde Deli, drive around Duke (she’s a fan–extended family went there), visit the family and attend a concert. Full day.

We went to the NC symphony last night for a pops show. It was billed as a “symphonic tribute to the Beatles,” and I thought it would be nothing more than the orchestra performing classical arrangements of Beatles tunes, which would have been pleasant enough. But after the purely orchestral warmup, a Beatles cover band appeared on stage and led the rest of the show. It looks cheesy, and initially I thought was going to be, but they more than proved themselves.

They were the spitting image of the group, in appearance and even more so in voice–they all sounded exactly like their counterparts in the classic band. The best part is that they played quite a few songs from the period after the Beatles stopped touring (post-Revolver). Hearing songs like “While My Guitar Gently Weeps,” “Come Together” and especially “A Day in the Life” performed live by what was essentially a recreation of the group, complete with full orchestra backing, was incredible. If there was any doubt of the Beatles’ musical genius or the ability of their songs to communicate complex artistic concepts in such an accessible and appealing fashion, it was completely erased by the concert. When they launched in a note-perfect rendition of “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” that segued into “With a Little Help from My Friends” (just as it does on the album), the thought crossed my mind that the Beatles could have easily have been twice as popular as they were (which is saying a lot) if they had performed their later material on tour. But would they have had the space and time to create it in the first place? It’s a fair question.

The usually staid symphony crowd exuberantly requested two encores. At the end of the evening the scene was positively surreal as greying, dressed-up Boomers in their 50s danced like teenagers in the auditorium. Everyone, but everyone, was into it. Great show.

I’m so happy and just…full. She is such a godly, beautiful and intelligent woman and a fantastic mother. Thank You.

Time to come clean. I failed my checkride yesterday. Five hours of constant mental exertion took their toll and I entered a ground reference maneuver upwind instead of downwind, 180° from the direction it should have been started. After recognizing and vocalizing my failure, hearing the examiner tell me to take him back to the airport was like a punch in the gut. I managed to pull it together and land the airplane, and he knew he didn’t have to say anything to supplement my utter disappointment and frustration at myself. I just wanted out, to drive away, to feel as much of the feeling as I could in that moment in the hope that I would use it all up as quickly as possible. I didn’t play any music, I didn’t listen to anything on the way home–I didn’t want anything to be associated with the moment of failure. It wasn’t easy.

The worst of it is there was a part of me that felt like I let down Diane. I send her an e-mail every night before I go to bed, and she replies when she wakes up in the morning (earlier than me). Yesterday, though, since I got up to practice landings before the checkride, I left before she had had a chance to reply and didn’t get to check my e-mail until I returned in the early afternoon. I didn’t want to read it; I had a premonition that it would contain an affirmation like, “I know you’ll do fantastic and pass with flying colors,” which would have been gut-wrenching to read after having crashed and burned, figuratively speaking. But after closing my eyes and clicking on the message, I opened them to discover what she really wrote, in so many words, “Regardless of the outcome, you are a tremendously brave person and totally worthy of respect and all my love.” I can’t express what that did to me. It was perfect. Even now, I read those words and my heart is filled to the brim.

I didn’t hurt anyone. No one suffered for the consequences of my failure except for my pride and probably my bank account (another practice flight or two). I will take another checkride where all I’ll have to demonstrate will be a good soft field landing and a couple of ground reference maneuvers. I’m not getting off the horse, as it were, by a long shot. So all in all, the repercussions aren’t terribly dire. Still, it can’t help but precipitate a self-evaluation of whether I’m really cut out for this. Praying about it quite a bit.

you can’t keep me from talking
can’t keep me from praising you
when you’re around

and catch a glimpse of you and you
and you and you and you with me

Private pilot checkride tomorrow morning at 8. Including the oral and practical parts, it should last all morning. I feel confident with everything except for my soft field landings, but my instructor and I are meeting an hour early tomorrow morning to get some of those in.

Clear and windy today. I flew solo down to Lexington and back, trying to get in as much practice as I could before the wind picked up. The maximum crosswind capability of the airplane on landing is 15 knots (~17 mph) perpendicular to the axis of the runway, and it was close to it when I returned to Sugar Valley around 9 this morning. But I remembered my crosswind techniques and got the plane on the ground smoothly and safely. I’ll take that landing to the bank.

Edit (11:23): I take it back. I’m really just enamored of this one song at the moment. For best results, crank up.

Lindsey said:

if you ever have any thoughts/insights on the situation of adjusting ambitions that are dear to you for the sake a current relationship, i’d be interested in reading them.

I won’t sugarcoat it. It feels like a huge sacrifice. I’ve had to adjust my current track toward missionary aviation significantly and even that ambition hangs in the balance, although the possibility of me being a pilot (commercial) is still alive and well.

And it scares me. The stakes are so high in a relationship anyway, and having a child in the mix just raises them even further. Lately there’s been an almost overwhelming tension in me between being open with her about my fears and insecurities vis-a-vis the relationship and not wanting to burden her any more with those. There are so many demands on her as it stands now–mother, student, daughter (she lives at her parents) and now girlfriend. She needs someone committed and emotionally/situationally stable, and I’m doing my best to be that for her, although it will be said that lately I’ve been discovering that letting her in on some of my struggles isn’t as counterproductive as my instincts led me to believe.

But in terms of reconciling life goals and ambitions with a relationship, I wish I had a golden insight. I’ve always been attracted to the “dare to be great” situations, but in this one, as I feel the need to compromise more and more, I would be lying if the thought didn’t creep in that I may have bitten off more than I could chew. It really is the deep end. The funny thing is that I had been praying for more situations in which I would have to be more outwardly-focused, to get out of myself and be relational, and this certainly fits the bill.

I wouldn’t be with her if I didn’t sense within her a latent adventurousness and courage. She is aware and has (from what I can see so far) the personality profile to be able to thrive in an unfamiliar cultural setting, something key for me. Not that it would necessarily take place (as much as I would wish it to), but in terms of understanding the composition of my personality and outlook on the world, having that “detached” perspective on our society really is essential.

She needs security, but she is mature enough to be able to distinguish circumstantial (financial, logistical) security from its more deep-seated counterparts (emotional, spiritual, physical). In other words, she doesn’t equate the “white picket fences,” suburban American dream with real stability–she knows that real, desirable stability comes from those abstract qualities in a relationship: trust, vulnerability, love, respect and a deep, deep bond. Which, in practical terms, makes it more likely that she would be on board with a large locational/career shift as long as she knows she is supported, valued, cherished and loved.

But in the end, it comes down to compromise. I hesitate to say that we have a set capacity for experiencing joy in our lives, but I think about it this way: Whatever joy and satisfaction I would have derived from staying my original course and fulfilling my ambitions in a straightforward, linear fashion, I consider to be more than made up for in the joy and companionship of her presence in my life. I always knew that God had me in this place for a reason, and I hope it’s still to become a missionary pilot, but it would be pretentious of me to stay locked into that goal. Yes, I’m a visionary, but I take it one step at a time, same as everyone.

In any case, it’s time for me to get out of myself and focus on others. It’s time. Adulthood and maturity are attained with the death of narcissism. There are bigger things in this world than a tightly clung-to track in life.

Frank treated the engineering and sales crew to lunch at Elizabeth’s (very nice Italian restaurant in Oak Ridge) today. It’s 4 p.m. and I’m still full from it. The chef, who Andreas and George both know by name, brought us a complimentary appetizer, a thin-crust, white feta cheese pizza. I had a steak stromboli, a beer (the guys ordered two pitchers) and some fried dough for dessert. It was heavenly but goodness knows my eyes were (and are) closing here at work this afternoon.

I’ve really lost my taste for beer. Between having a couple with David and Stephen at Foothills on Monday night and at lunch today, even with copious amounts of good food, I inevitably feel ill-at-ease afterward. Physically. I don’t know what it is, but I’m certainly just as content without it. Just a curiosity.

I hope it doesn’t rain in the morning. David and I are going to have half a “yard day,” hack away at the extraneous shrubberies (insert Holy Grail joke here), mow the lawn and tackle the onion grass everywhere. The yard’s presently a mess.

Had my second (and last) night flight session last night. So serene and peaceful. The air is smooth and traffic is light. No flight this morning. My instructor/adviser and I tackled my tentative plan for the next four years or so. Fortunately, as a non-degree-seeking student, I’m a bit more flexible than those student locked into the plan. It’s always a bit of a catch-22 for me, though, since even though I have the flexibility to take flight training courses at the non-curricular rate (slightly cheaper), I need to take at least six credit hours per semester if I am to qualify for the financial aid, so it’s better if I bundle them with my course load. I won’t be taking A&P (mechanic) training next year, mainly as it is very time-intensive and I want to make time for Diane and Luke. That’s key. Fortunately the training is offered in a much more work-friendly format at a local community college. I’d appreciate prayers for this…it’s a pretty big shakeup.

all the freedom in this world could not resist
the sweet temptation of your sweet elusiveness

Wonderful, restful weekend. I spent a large part of it with her. Dinner on Friday went well. She let me see her room. It’s funny how she plays it down when the quality of the decoration and just the whole atmosphere is twenty times more cozy and inviting than my little hovel of a room here.

Went home on Saturday for a little while to do my taxes. I miss my family. I hadn’t seen them since my birthday two months ago and I didn’t realize how much I missed until I returned.

Solo flight tomorrow, weather permitting. Just a few more flights, then the checkride.

Something of substance soon, promise. I feel a little neglectful.

if you needed me
then i could be someone

I swear the posts concerning her will taper off at some point. I know you’re all begging to be spared. I’m going over to her house tomorrow to fix dinner (chicken fajitas) with her and Luke and the rest of the family.

We traded pictures today. I made her a small folder on my webspace where I consolidated (the few) pictures of me where I felt I was reasonably photogenic. I signed on AIM later and she sent me some of her. The overwhelming thought in my mind as one after another came through onto my screen was, “YES.” Yes that I wanted this, that I wanted her. Yes that it is a face, such a face, that I could look at for a long, long time. And yes that I cannot believe how fortunate I am to be accepted by such beauty. It makes the experience more tenuous (since I feel like I have less than ever to recommend myself to her) and more wonderful at the same time. I shan’t share all of them with you, but it was interesting to almost experience a different moment, a new facet of her personality through the quality of each image.

I love this one in particular. I can very much see it printed out on photo paper and taped to the instrument panel of the plane while I fly. I want to do that.

I’m coming out of a cold I’ve had for the past couple of days. It exposed an overlooked aspect of the essential “bachelorness” of the house–lack of tissue boxes. I stopped by the grocery store last night before our (excellent) Coffee Theology meeting and picked some up. Having to blow one’s nose with napkins and paper towels is the worst.

I’m eager to get back in the plane after last Friday. The sky was clear today, but my nose and head were not and it was quite windy. The next flight will be an easy dual flight with my instructor, reviewing recommendations made by Mr. Kelly on Monday. There will be much less pressure, just a shoring up of essential skills and an emphasis on developing a feel for the plane, something that doesn’t come as naturally to me as its more technical and procedural aspects. Less pressure = more fun.

Diane and I spent some time together after the meeting last night, chatting and then just walking around B&N and talking. I have to say it was the most natural, effortless thing in the world, and not just because it’s new and we’re still establishing a base of preferences and traits in each other. No, the conversation had the longer-wearing cadence to it, almost that of a couple who have been around each other for years yet whose minds are still engaged in sharing thoughts and observations with one another. We have loads of activities planned: going over to her house on Friday and cooking dinner, poetry readings, a trip to SciWorks with her and Luke, a Saturday picnic and hiking with both of them at a local state park, the symphony in Raleigh at the beginning of next month, a dinner with Jan and Larry (older couple) and the two-day training conference for The Truth Project in May. Among other things. And I never had to rack my brain to come with anything–all the events fell into place ahead of us. This speaks of a God-given favor on the relationship. I see purpose, and it bodes very well, I think.

Happy belated Spring, all!

A bit of a sore throat today. I can’t yet tell whether it’s an isolated thing or the beginning of another illness. I hope very much it’s the former. It doesn’t slow me down too much, and the chicken noodle soup at Panera for lunch hit the spot. I should still find some echinacea.

Diane and I are doing very well. Friday evening we ate dinner at a local cafe, then segued over to B&N where we spent the rest of the evening discussing Shel Silverstein, John Ashbery, Robert Creeley and Jack Kerouac (among others). There was a natural exchange, a conversational give and take that just felt…perfect. I spent most of Saturday with her and Luke and her family and had a grand time. I diagnosed her car door difficulty (window regulator broken) and she cooked a delicious chicken parmesan dinner, after which we watched The Village and The Sixth Sense, neither of which I’d seen. The learning curve is still steep, but I’m committed and optimistic.

Had my final stage check (test/exam) in Flight II last Friday. I did most things very well, a few things poorly, but after the debrief this morning feel very good about my aptitude and progress. If the weather holds, a few more practice flights and I’ll have my private pilot license by the end of next week.

The scent of her hair and her clothes still lingers in my own. I draw my nose to my thin undershirt and remember the evening. I’m overwhelmed. Completely. I’m overwhelmed at my ability to produce such a response in another human being. I’m amazed to be sitting on the couch and to have this living, breathing entity with hopes and dreams and fears and insecurities and talents sleeping silently in my arms, a full gesture of her acceptance of me. I stare at her beautiful profile, the slow curve of her dark hair as it sweeps over her cheek and her eyelashes drawn together. I marvel at it all. I marvel at her, at this attraction I don’t understand, this “way of a man with a woman” that puzzled even Solomon. I don’t think it’s something I’ll ever fully be used to, nor do I want to be.

I feel so ill-equipped for the task of fatherhood. I hadn’t even remotely considered it until now, and now… I want so badly to be able to connect with Luke but I’ve no idea how to do that. I understand a measure of what Diane feels since she’s frustrated by his lack of inclination to communicate. And he’s her heart. Her heart. There’s so much of her that’s wrapped up in him, and rightly so, as it should be, and I want to connect with them both through that. Father, help me to remember what it was like to be a little boy… I need your supernatural empowering in this, Lord. Goodness knows I feel my lack of relational ability. This is my first real glimpse inside a mother’s heart, and what I see astonishes me… Her life curves around his like gravity bends time and space around a distant star. The depth of the connection there, the concern–it goes infinitely deeper than those frothy, tenuous bonds we sometimes call friendship, or even romance…

Am I meant for this, Lord? Yes I have talents and abilities and experiences enough but sometimes I feel like a brain surgeon called on to perform the task of a concert violinist–both may be incredibly talented in their way but that talent does not range across the board. Am I meant for this? I want to be. So much.

And I need to tell my stories too, so badly… I felt this keenly on the way home tonight. That’s what it was. But patience, I hear, patience. Her and Luke’s needs come first. Lord give me the wisdom, grace and diligence to be who I need to be in this season.

New lovers are nervous and tender, but smash everything. For the heart is an organ of fire.

Around whom do you like yourself the most? I’ve long held that we choose our best friends and most favored acquaintances based as much on who they are as who we are around them. Think about how you act around your best friend or your favorite friend group and I’d wager you just like who you are when in their company–they have that effect on you.

I think it goes deeper that simply “being yourself,” since the vast majority of us don’t have that figured out and those of us with a more well-formed sense of it still make decisions to scale back or magnify certain aspects based on who we’re around. So instead of exhorting each other to “be yourself” in uncertain social situations, perhaps we should spur each other to “be who you like to be.” Hmm.

* * * * * *

My coworker John is buying a new house. He’s friendly and has a habit of wanting to tell me all about the past day’s decisions and deliberations. Last night after Bret (my boss) left he was furiously crunching numbers and cobbling together Excel spreadsheets, trying to figure amortization schedules and equity lines and all manner of house-related ruminations. I’m interested but I’m not–I am because I want to familiarize myself with the jargon and the develop a certain mental agility, currently somewhat lacking, when dealing with financial matters. But at the same time he’s enthusiastically rattling off unfamiliar terms and I hesitate to make him pause every ten seconds to explain something. My house-buying experience was comparatively straightforward. He and Bret talked about it for a bit too, and I enjoyed seeing a conversation between two people with a relatively similar amount of experience.

Well. This may be the beginning of the end of my long spell of singleness. She’s beautiful and intelligent and aware and mature and has her priorities straight in life and we had the best conversation last night I’ve had in as long as I can remember, and we only talked for about an hour. I walked around on the front porch in the cool, late evening as we chatted. It was just breezy enough and the moon shone through the naked branches of the front yard’s oak tree as I listened to her wonderful voice on the other end of the line. Perfect.

It still scares the tar out of me, though to a lesser degree than it did last week pre-date. This weekend will be a bit of a family audition as I’ve been invited to the house, so she’s certainly not easing the apprehension any. But so far it’s gone better than I could have ever hoped. Late last week I told myself this could either be a perfect fit or a big mistake, and so far it has all the earmarks of the former, much to my relief.

The weather’s beautiful today for just about any activity except flying. The rent clouds scurry across the sky at a breakneck pace as clusters of new petals are swept about by the gusts closer to the ground. No stage check this morning. I should be slightly relieved, and I am, but honestly it’s more because of the certainty of knowing than not having the stage check. The wind wasn’t blowing quite as hard when I drove to the airport and there was still some question as to whether we’d fly, but…after preflighting the plane I checked with the lead instructor and we decided the ceiling wasn’t high enough for the kinds of maneuvers we’d be doing. So no stage check, one that I was very much looking forward to having under my belt. But at least I knew.

Didn’t sleep much last night. I took a nap yesterday afternoon, an activity facilitated by the very large lunch David and I shared (he made mashed potatoes; I made chicken fajitas). But I also went for a run last night, which in theory should cancel out the late-night alertness fostered by the nap, but… It still took me a good while to fall asleep, tossing and turning.

Goals for this week:

– Write & send prayer letters
– Balance checkbook
– Have David and Derek sign leases
– Start looking for front control arms for the Audi and talk with Jeff about using the compressed air and hydraulic press in the hangar
– Re-start Sophie’s World

Among other things.

It certainly didn’t go badly, and it wasn’t spectacularly good either. All in all it felt like the pleasing neutral tone of a painting, a foundation on which to draw out the highlights and suppress the dark tones through judicious application of pigment. I very much hope subsequent dates will give the relationship more shape.

I’m finally relieved after having been mind-bendingly nervous about this since I asked her out on Wednesday. As I was still processing things, the nervousness didn’t immediately dissipate at the conclusion of the date but lasted throughout the rest of the day and into this morning. The situation was exacerbated by a very dark, brooding and bitter Glen Phillips concert in Asheville this past evening, something after which I just wanted all that is good and clean and pure and right. My aim for tomorrow is to completely decompress, spend some time alone with God and unwind this wound spring that is my mind.

you’re just tryin’ to be a friend
i know the message is well meant
but none of it does compare to her eyes

They’re blue-rimmed hazel, by the way. And beautiful.

This left me speechless this morning. Cuts through all frothy pretensions and trappings of romance. And even if it’s not the ideal path I would choose, I am most at home with those who realize how small are the doors through which we look into each others’ lives and still… Push off the foothold, vault themselves into that place, even if it’s just a parallel reality of their own conjecture. The optimists.

I took the afternoon off today. It’s the first time that I can remember I’ve taken part of a day off to do nothing–in every other circumstance it’s been in service of some activity or other. Of course, today there were logistical reasons behind it, but it was a weird sensation nevertheless.

The wind was strong and the air was bumpy today, all the more so since I flew in the afternoon. It’s technically Spring break for the school, so I have the week off from my regular flight blocks, but my instructor called me a few days ago with an opening this afternoon for some extra practice, and I jumped on it. The flight was uneventful except for getting bumped around a lot in the cockpit. I flew solo down to Rowan County airport, practiced some landings and flew back. I did power-on stalls on the way there, a maneuver designed to simulate a stall during a full-power situation such as takeoff. The gusts made coordination of the airplane challenging during the maneuver. Unfortunately coordination is crucial quality during the stall, and a lack of it makes for some interesting situations, namely incipient spins. As I told my instructor during the debrief, I know in the back of my mind that the Cessna 172 is a perfectly well-behaved, benign airplane in all respects and is almost impossible to spin, but when I’m in a stall and the left wing drops and the nose starts sliding very quickly below the horizon at a considerable angle, it’s a little unnerving, even if I do know what to do to recover.

I talked with an assistant philosophy professor from Wake Forest last night. The church group and I attended a gathering of young adults in the area and he and I struck up a conversation afterward. We made the usual small talk and when I heard what he taught I tried to remember everything I had learned in my intro to philosophy class at NCSU, which mainly centered on Cartesian dualism. Talking about the mind/body problem in philosophy, I asked him whether he ascribed to a trichotomy (body/soul/spirit), dichotomy (body/spirit) or monistic view and he kind of skirted around the issue. Evidently his main area of expertise is ethics and he didn’t seem particularly keen on engaging the mind/body issue (maybe it was the informal setting?) It was interesting to me because I had always been under the impression that if you know philosophy you were well-versed and had a ready opinion about the whole range of philosophical issues. But I suppose it makes sense to specialize. It would be analogous to someone coming up to me and plying me with questions about off-roading or some area of automotive interest I just don’t know that much about. They’re both remarkably broad topics.

voilà ce que nous serons plus tard
de vieux chiens

I volunteered with JAARS over the summer of 2001. They’re based in Waxhaw, a little town south of Charlotte, just north of the South Carolina border. I lived in a rented apartment near the complex for about two months and worked in the R&D department doing essentially what I’m doing now–computer modeling, drafting and odds and ends.

I strain to remember who I was then. The summer was hot and sticky and the rickety little apartment’s air conditioner was on its last (loud) legs. Erin and I had been dating for about a year at that point and she was in New York for the summer. I remember racking up some hefty long-distance charges from the frequent, but welcome, phone calls. I was driving Twinkie, fixing up the Datsun and in the midst of the ill-fated Taurus’ engine (and eventually transmission) swap. I didn’t post frequently, but the entries I did venture give my mind enough of a starting point to begin to remember what I felt like then.

About halfway through my time there another volunteer came to help out in the little R&D office shared between myself and my supervisor, Terry. Her name was Cynthia and she was a mechanical engineering student from Canada. She meant to arrive sooner but got held up at the border ostensibly until she could prove that she was volunteering in our fair land and not working for pay. She was a year or two younger than me and soon to be married to a chap back home. She had an affable, easygoing demeanor and was a good storyteller.

As it turned out there was to be a spate of weddings that summer, and one day she and I helped Terry set up a local church for his daughter’s. The church was nearer downtown Charlotte and necessitated a car drive, during which Cynthia and I made small talk about our backgrounds, present situations and goals. She inquired about my industrial design program and eventual desire to go into missionary aviation. I remember asking her about her mechanical engineering course of study and what had prompted her to embark on it. I expected her to expound about a deep and abiding interest in all things mechanical, about some long-held fascination with Legos or Tinkertoys or some childhood compulsion to disassemble things. I was surprised, then, when the primary reason she mentioned for wanting to major in mechanical engineering was the fact that her father didn’t think she could do it. I pressed her on this issue–surely there must be some other motivation besides that, but she stuck to her assertion.

I certainly admired her for wanting to overcome her father’s prejudices, but even then something just seemed off. I couldn’t quite put my finger on during the car ride or even afterward, but in thinking about it through related conversations and musings about my own motivations since, the issue’s come a bit more into focus.

It goes beyond the preconceived notions about gender dispositions to something deeper, something that touches on why we forge ahead in our ambitions in the first place. The question to ask myself when on the verge of some great new endeavor or possibility, I came to realize later, is “Would I be doing this simply because someone else said it couldn’t be done, or would I do it because there’s an attraction to the activity itself?” And while those two motivations may initially seem equal in value, if we follow them through I think we’ll find that the second is a much longer-wearing, more worthwhile drive, one that will absorb the inevitable highs and lows of spirit much more effectively along the way.

In my own life, as I mentioned in my description of the red RX-7’s engine swap a few entries down, my dad’s skepticism about my ability to see it through was certainly a motivator. The overriding drive, though, was a budding passion for mechanical things and a desire not just to finish the project for the sake of finishing it, but to invest time in that particular car, out of an intrinsic love of the activity.

Realizing that frees us (as much as we want to be freed) from others’ expectations and sets us on the path of discovering what really motivates us, what we really love and want and need. Think about your own ambitions, goals and desires. I love a challenge as much as anyone, just for the sake of the challenge, but at some point there has to be a personal connection to the activity inherent in the challenge. Granted, we need those things we overcome to prove to others and to ourselves that we’re more than we think we are, but at least in my own life, that motivation is such a fickle, transient thing that I can’t build long-term goals around it. Maybe it’s stronger depending on one’s personal chemistry. The struggle between the two sides is what I felt that was “off” during that conversation with Cynthia, and something I’ve been thinking about recently too.

Flew with Jethro today. He approached me just after the service this morning and said, “Let’s go flying.” How can you turn down something like that?

I kicked myself for not taking my camera, but I was rushed for time anyway. After wolfing down a bowl of soup at Panera I drove out to Smith Reynolds. There was a vintage DC-3 in the old Piedmont Airlines livery pulling up to the ramp. The sharply polished aluminum fuselage reflected the crystal blue sky like a mirror. I suspect the 70th anniversary of the plane’s entry to service had something to do with its presence there; restored examples of the plane I imagine are in demand. In any case, it was a beautiful piece of aviation history.

Jethro and I flew down to Sugar Valley, landed there and then made our way down to the little grass strip that is Hawk’s Creek. He wanted some right-seat time since he’s working on his instructor rating, and I was more than happy to fly from the left seat, where I usually am. After having practiced soft-field takeoffs and landings ad nauseam, it was my first time performing them on an actual soft field. There was no one at the little field and we didn’t stay long. It was nice to sense of the practicalities behind the soft-field exercises we do, though, and it even made me feel like a bit of a bush pilot.

Had a nice Sunday nap. Now for a run and a bit of housekeeping. Charlie’s letting me borrow his Playstation2 (mine is broken) and his copy of GT4. I’ve resisted all afternoon but later on I may have to give in and play a bit, especially if he’s included his memory card. This game has the potential to suck me in for weeks at a time, but that’s not going to happen.

Quiet day. Good day.

Last night was much fun. A large contingent of the church group went to a nice restaurant in downtown Greensboro, after which a portion of us walked down the street a bit to a wine bar called Cafe Europa. From there most of that group came back to my house, whose state could best be euphemized as “lived in,” and ended up watching my copy of Say Anything. It was a bit of a marathon evening, but a fun one. The extended presence of good friends is rarely unwelcome.

The longing for Europe has been more acute lately, especially when I hear Susan and Julia plan a two-week trip to Italy in June. I dreamed about the lake country last night. I was showing a friend the way around Lakes Como and Maggiore and pointing out the highlights. I remembered the unkempt paradise that is Isola Madre, the uninhabited palace and its walls of overgrown ivy. These things haunt me. When I think about them you can hear my breathing.

* * * * * *

How often do we make unconscious allowances for second and third choices? How often do we resign ourselves to a situation in our lives and tell ourselves, “That’s what I wanted all along,” working ourselves into a frame of mind, rethinking our past desires to fit the actual scenario? It has something to do with the loss of idealism. But it’s also a necessary survival instinct. I think about some of my married friends (no one who reads this) and remember hearing one or the other relate stories of their courtship and early months and years of the marriage. Sometimes–and it could just be me–it seems they take great pains to explain how perfectly compatible they are in many respects, and how milestone events (proposal, marriage, honeymoon) had gone exactly how they had always dreamed they would. I’m certainly far from the most perceptive or emotionally intelligent person, but I’m almost invariably struck with the sense that there’s a great deal of thought behind some of the responses; they seem formulated as carefully as any legal document. And I know they believe it. I do it too; we all do. Our memories are written and rewritten over and again in our own minds. Every time we take another prolonged look at the fabric of our past different colors stand out, a different structure emerges from the weave.

It illustrates how pervasive the Orwellian concept of doublethink is in our lives. It’s not a bad thing… It can hardly be tagged qualitatively considering how interwoven it is with every thought process. But still… Just to be aware. The knowledge prompts me to retrace my thought patterns, to analyze the small pressing influences that have steered them this way and that when considering alternatives or how to think about an issue. I ask myself, “Is there self-deception present here? Have I believed a subtle lie earlier in my thought process that has colored my analysis since? Am I settling but subconsciously trying to convince myself that I’m not?” I challenge my assumptions repeatedly and find they’re not even assumptions at all but can be deconstructed further… I don’t surrender my idealism as easily if I’m aware of the thought processes that are inherent in the surrender. And I end up wide awake at 3 a.m. on some idle Tuesday night.

* * * * * *

I’ve watched most of the first season of Cowboy Bebop today. David owns all six seasons on DVD. It’s an excellent show with top-notch animation, fun characters and engaging storylines. Yes, I’m a nerd. But it really is quite good.

I’ve been bringing home magazines from the airport. It seems the instructors, collectively, have subscriptions to just about every flight-related magazine in existence, and for whatever reason (maybe they’re done reading them or just want to pass around an article) they bring them to the airport and place them on the large shelf in the trailer’s restroom. I’ve raided the stacks lately and have amassed a sizable collection of my own.

I can relate to it now. It’s relevant. I look up at the sky and see an MD-80 or a 737 tooling along overhead and think, “The pilot’s doing just what I do,” except scaled up appropriately. But the core skills are the same. Reading the magazines produces a similar reaction in that I have a frame of reference for the jargon, the description of the planes’ responses and the performance numbers like cruising speeds and takeoff distances. I have to say, though, looking longingly up at the sky today, I wanted nothing more than to forget all the numbers and that I knew all of that and just do loops and barrel rolls, spinning the horizon around and around again before diving for the ground, pulling back and zooming upward…

Flying hasn’t been as fun lately, but that’s not a bad thing. A few weeks ago when I was in the midst of my series of solo cross-countries, I was having a grand time. The combination of new, unexplored destinations with less pressure from the instructor to perform maneuvers correctly (since there weren’t any) made for much enjoyment. Now there’s a new sense of focus pervading the training as I ramp up to my Private Pilot checkride in a couple of weeks. Efficiency in the cockpit counts–we try to squeeze as much practice as possible into the time we’re in the air. The result is that little 1.5 hour flights seem much longer than even 2.5 hour XCs, but when on the ground, especially if the flight went well, there’s a sense of accomplishment. It’s productive practice, sort of like working out in the gym–I don’t tangibly feel my muscles getting stronger, but I know they are by the results. Soon, love, soon.

* * * * * *

half-baked speculation i began a couple of weeks ago

It’s beyond beautiful today. It really is March, right?

Dual flight this morning, of the same nature as the one a few Fridays ago, i.e. reviewing everything, analyzing what’s good and what needs more work. By God’s grace today’s flight went much better than the previous. In my instructor’s words, I’m “very, very close.” About the only thing I’ll really emphasize during my solo flight on Friday will be my soft field landings–the one I did today was a clunker (and we practiced another). But everything else was on the money. Encouraging.

Bret officially confirmed today that they’re interested in keeping me around beyond the scope of the project I was hired to do. As he put it, “Everybody thinks you’re a good fit.” Maybe this means they’ll give me a key to the building? I finally got a company e-mail address a few weeks ago. In any case, it raises questions about what I will be doing this fall. The plan as it stands is to quit the job and do A&P (airframe & powerplant) school for a year. The course of study monopolizes the whole day–it’s essentially the same as having a full-time job except that I’m paying for it. However, I’m not locked in. If I don’t take A&P at MAI this fall there’s a local community college that offers the training, albeit not as compressed into a year (but of the same quality). I’d really like to keep the job here–it pays well, I enjoy the work and my coworkers. But whatever He wills. If I do A&P in the fall it may take me a month or two, but I’ll find a job afterward; I know that. Loose hands.

Bret, Troy and I went to Panera for lunch. We should’ve eaten outside. I had a “chocolate pastry” (read: pain-au-chocolat) for dessert… It brought back memories in droves. On almost every family vacation we took in Europe, those were breakfast for me if we could find a boulangerie.

Oh, and the Eclipse 500 just won the 2005 Collier Trophy. I wonder if I can put that on my resumé (“styled seats for Collier Trophy-winning aircraft”)? Hmm.

recycled chi

Who needs repairmen?

David and I fixed the heater motor just a few minutes ago, braving the recesses and convoluted confines of the basement. It had been sticking completely and making the most annoying buzz imaginable without actually heating the house, but instead secreting a faint gas odor from the vents. We pulled the motor assembly out of the heater unit altogether, took it apart, cleaned it, lubed it and reinstalled it. I turned the circuit breakers back on, walked upstairs and switched the thermostat back on. David and I were talking and didn’t even hear the motor start–it was that smooth and quiet. Talk about a sense of accomplishment. We high-fived and had some chocolate ice cream + Irish cream to celebrate. My roommates are awesome.

Maybe this means my heating bill for next month will be less than $300. I can only hope.

• Some of the stuntwork here is amazing (and hilarious). All the more so given the commercials were produced in the mid-’80s.
• Saw these guys at a local venue last Friday night. They were actually quite good–the music was well-mixed, reasonably melodic and varied and the singer could actually sing instead of just screaming into the mic like the band that followed. It appears they’ll be in Raleigh in a couple of days at the Pour House. Recommended.
• Also, Eyes to Space is coming to W-S in a week or so. I saw them at the Cradle a couple of years ago and enjoyed the show very much. I’d really like to see them here.
• Got the tuneup done on my car this afternoon with little drama. Charlie came over after lunch and we jabberjawed (Larry’s word) over the car with the hood propped (always a great environment for conversation). He’s been a great addition to the church group and I enjoy hanging out with him very much. Laid back, similar interests and he’s up for most anything. Not to mention a Monty Python fan.

1. My brother David is ENGAGED. This is somewhat huge and I’m beyond happy for him and Rachel, his fiancée. Evidently he proposed last night at the Court of the Carolinas in Raleigh (I can attest to the area’s romanticity). Read her account here. David’s side of it is pending–as he told me when I called to congratulate him, he and Rachel agreed to write their impressions of the evening without reading each other’s. So, as they say, watch this space.

2. random pictures from the day

Reprinted with permission from my dad in Taiwan:

subject line: interesting sunday

The office is completely empty. I’m brown-bagging it today, which in my case simply means a couple of energy bars and a cup of water. Not exotic, not even remotely tasty, but it fills me up and keeps me going. I love good food but I don’t have a psychological dietary requirement for variety, and in many situations, even taste. Case in point–my breakfast over the course of the past several years has simply consisted of a bowl of frosted mini-wheats with no milk. I pop them down on the way to work or the airport or what-have-you and it lasts me the morning. Functional = good.

Coffee Theology last night. I took a different tack this week: Instead of conjuring up semi-culturally-relevant discussion starters to paste on a handout, I simply posed the group this question, “What is the state of your soul?” They were free to answer it at whatever level they chose and I mediated (read: mainly listened) as best I could.

I suppose it was a bit of a easy question to ask if my goal (which it partially is) is to attract people to the group and make them feel comfortable and like they fit in. There’s something about sharing of yourself that’s quasi-cathartic, and even if there’s no true understanding on the other end (which in last night’s case I think there was), just having someone, or a group, to listen fills a void in our lives and creates a certain sense of well-being.

I still don’t have a concise, clear statement about what I want the group to be. It makes me feel a bit hypocritical given what I’ve related so far concerning the elements that I feel the group should have. A main one would be that I want the conversation to be very down-to-earth, in plain language without all the ethereal Christianese and spiritual jargon that we tend to throw around (at least without first establishing some semantics). But in trying to describe the mission statement, I feel all I have spoken in has been abstract, general terms. So from the get-go there’s been something of a disconnect between what I want the group to be and how I act myself.

Every time I try to compose a coherent description of the group’s vision I find I can only really describe it in terms of experiences I’ve had. That was the dilemma I ran into Saturday over lunch with Larry. I could relate to him groups I’ve been involved in where I felt the kind of collective excitement over learning more about His Word–the kind of excitement I want to nurture in Coffee Theology. But to transpose, to distill that perspective into something communicable… It’s more difficult that it would seem. Maybe I should just describe those experiences–that might be sufficient to create understanding. We’ll see.

One thing I discovered is that in the absence of a statement of purpose people can easily hold in their minds and come back to in order to self-guide their own contributions to the discussion, more active leadership is required on the part of the person who does have the vision in mind. That, by the grace of God, was the major breakthrough for me last night in terms of managing the group dynamics. It’s an artificial structure since the discussion isn’t self-perpetuating, but at least in the beginning I think it’s necessary. We’re a work in progress, and I’m okay with that.

For those of you bored out of your minds when I lapse into bouts of car-related mudanity, this is the only time I’ll do this, and is mainly just so I can have the whole thing compiled somewhere. If there’s one thing I have endless stories about, it’s cars (well, and Europe), and I’ve always been on the fence about whether I should uncork that part of my experience in here.

But as I’ve been meaning to do this for quite a while, my car history

This is a subject line in search of a post. I’ve had that song bouncing around in my head all morning and the act of writing it down is an attempt to exorcise it from upstairs. But of course that never works.

Just the facts, then:

• The church group is planning a vacation to Charleston at the beginning of April, renting a house for a couple of days. I may do this.
• I’ve been addicted to Panera lately. It’s good but not good (to my wallet). I don’t know of many places where I can have a healthy, square meal and end up just feeling good about it all afternoon, though. Clearly I have more research to do.
• The common server and e-mail systems here at work are beyond slow and beyond flaky. I hate Windows.
• Had a stellar lunch with Larry at Qdoba on Saturday. We talked about everything from the current direction of the church group to mastering forward slips for landing the airplane to desirable qualities in a future spouse, and so on.
• David “treated” me to some brandy from his stash on Saturday night. I only had a few sips and didn’t much care for it.
• I let Jeff borrow my copy of Adiemus’ Song of Sanctuary last week. By his own admission he’s been listening to it nearly nonstop.

Here is a funny joke sent from my dad (!) on a business trip in Taiwan:

The Lone Ranger and Tonto went camping in the desert. After they got their tent all set up, both men fell sound asleep.

Some hours later, Tonto wakes the Lone Ranger and says, “Kemo Sabe, look towards sky, what you see?”

The Lone Ranger replies, “I see millions of stars.”

“What that tell you?” asked Tonto.

The Lone Ranger ponders for a minute then says, “Astronomically speaking, it tells me there are millions of galaxies and potentially billions of planets. Astrologically, it tells me that Saturn is in Leo. Timewise, it appears to be approximately a quarter past three in the morning. Theologically, the Lord is all-powerful and we are small and insignificant. Meteorologically, it seems we will have a beautiful day tomorrow. What’s it tell you, Tonto?”

“You dumber than buffalo shit. Someone stole the tent.”

Jeff and I talked about it on the way back from the airport. Whether we’re meant to be pilots or mechanics out in the field.

After days like today I start wondering. My instructor and I did some Private License test prep, essentially going through every single maneuver and determining what to focus on between now and the test. The short answer for me today was almost everything. Some days, not often, but some days I feel like my body doesn’t remember how to do anything. Like I’ve just been treading water for the past six months. It’s discouraging to say the least, and the inevitable questions pop into my head about my natural ability to be a good pilot.

I didn’t get the coordination in the family, at least not the bulk of it. Paul and David, especially Paul, have always been much naturally gifted when it comes to activities involving hand-eye coordination (video games and such) and full-body manipulation (sports, etc). Which isn’t to say I’ve no ability whatsoever; I do, but their ascent of the learning curve always looked comparatively effortless. Aaron too–the speed with which they would all be able to hold their own at new and unfamiliar sports was amazing. Just as an example, I had been taking sporadic tennis lessons for well-on seven years when Aaron and I started playing regularly, and he, with no formal instruction and little prior experience, played at my level nearly from day one. They definitely have the gift.

And I wonder about the things I feel I am good at, that I enjoy. Like mechanical work. I can’t wait for Airframe & Powerplant (A&P) school in the fall–the prospect of focusing on the operation and maintenance of mechanical things in an academic setting is truly a win-win situation for me. I love tinkering and feel I’m good at it; I love flying too, but after days like today seeds of doubt that I have the level of talent it takes start to creep in.

But at the end of it all I always come back to conversations with Mr. Hahn, my first instructor, and things he shared during ground school. He talked about how he wasn’t the most natural pilot in the world, and how he was actually cut from Moody Bible College‘s aviation program (arguably the best program out there). He then came to Sugar Valley and MAI, finished his training and spent many successful years in Haiti as a missionary pilot. By all accounts he’s an excellent pilot and a stellar instructor. I asked him once during a flight debrief about what didn’t come naturally to him, and how he overcame it, but he never really gave me a straight answer. Not out of a desire to be elusive–I just don’t think anyone had ever really asked him that question before. But whatever the case, his situation is a testimony to the fact that even pilots without an overwhelmingly natural ability to pilot an airplane can still be used overseas.