Seven Months, Four Days Ago

I wrote this...

It's hard to live in the present. I wish I could go back a year or even a day, or move ahead a year, or even a day, to escape today. Why is this? The future is a question mark of kerosene and electric sparks. And.. Yesterday, all my troubles seemed so far away. As much as I love reminiscing, it turns into regretting more often than not. After all, hindsight is 20/20, and knowing this, its not hard regret.
I've thought a lot about the 23rd. I want to relive that night... it wasn't the best night of my life, and it wasn't too out of the ordinary but it was so flooded with feeling and irony I don't think I could ever forget it. Thanks to everyone who was there: you all played your part in an experience that will stick in my memory. Why do I want to relive that night? I guess it was just poetic in an odd sort of way... I think only one person would truly understand, but only because I've explained it to him. But I can't relive the 23rd, and that's okay. I can't recreate it in the future either...
I've thought a lot about my future, more than I should. I've thought how great it would be if I could just get past the end of this week (because our ENVD project would be done, and I'd be on the home stretch of my first semester of college!) I want to make my dreams a reality... living in a geodome, or an earthship, living simply (a lot like Thoreau, but a lot different form Thoreau!). A lot of things I wish I could have... ddrum ash kit (lol, dave...), more muscles, y2... on that note, I guess I should disassemble that tower roof finally. I guess I can't totally create my future either... after all, we serve a God who transcends time. Yes, we can make the choice of how to live our lives, but we can't command events to play out. I wish I had the power to fix circumstances in my life, and fix circumstances for other people, but I don't. And that's a good thing, because God knows what he's doing.
We were warriors, once. These words still resonate within my soul. These words have resonated within my soul since I read them. My friend wrote them.

When I was young, the smallest trick of light,
Could catch my eye,
Then life was new and every new day,
I thought that I could fly.
I believed in what I hoped for,
And I hoped for things unseen,
I had wings and dreams could soar,
I just don't feel like flying anymore.
When the stars threw down their spears,
Watered Heaven with their tears,
Before words were spoken,
Before eternity.

Dear Father, I need you,
Your strength my heart to mend.
I want to fly higher,
Every new day again.

When I was small, the furthest I could reach,
Was not so high,
Then I thought the world was so much smaller,
Feeling that I could fly.
Through distant deeps and skies,
Behind infinity,
Below the face of Heaven,
He stoops to create me.

Dear Father, I need you,
Your strength my heart to mend.
I want to fly higher,
Every new day again.

Man versus himself.
Man versus machine.
Man versus the world.
Mankind versus me.
The struggles go on,
The wisdom I lack,
The burdens keep pilling
Up on my back.
So hard to breathe,
To take the next step.
The mountain is high,
I wait in the depths.
Yearning for grace,
And hoping for peace.
Dear God...
Increase.
Healing hands of God have mercy on our unclean souls once again.
Jesus Christ, light of the world burning bright within our hearts forever.
Freedom means love without condition,
without a beginning or an end.
Here's my heart, let it be forever Your's,
Only You can make every new day seem so new.
"Every New Day" Reese Roper (Five Iron Frenzy)

How we've lost the faith of little children. It's no wonder so many lose their faith after high school: we are exposed to the "realities" of the world the farther we go out on our own. These "realities" include the importance of money and material goods, the non-existence of the spiritual realm, and the irrelevance of morality. Yes, we can do anything if we set our minds to it! We can believe what we want.... we shape our realities! Thus we create the god "I".
Ayn Rand erred in Anthem: she merely exchanged the god "We" for the god "I". Huxley presented two alternatives for the outcome of humanity in Brave New World: medicated sterile ignorance or savage religiousness. Neither is the right path, yet he's dead on predicting where society will be soon.
Perhaps our generation is beginning to see there's something missing. Perhaps YOU see there's something missing. In our grand pursuit of good, love, beauty, etc, we've missed it, because we've merely searched for things. And according to most people's estimation, we can never truly discover these qualities, because they're all relative anyway. Music is great, it soothes the soul, but why not seek the Creator of music Himself? We need food to survive, but how much more do we need the Bread of Life? Indeed gone after the god "I", and forsaken the Great "I AM".

And here I am complaining about living in the present. Maybe it's the hardest place to be because it's where I'm supposed to be. But even the present is temporary....
I think that's why I've been so fascinated recently with sustainable living and temporary shelters. Every building is temporary, from Zoser's Step Pyramid to the Cromlechs to the Parthenon. They're merely stone...
Even my home is temporary. I'm not quite sure where my home is anymore. I have a bedroom back in Colorado, and I have one here, and I do my time in Seaton (lol), but where is my home?

Father Abraham
Do you remember when
You were called to a land
And didn’t know the way

‘Cause we are wandering
In a foreign land
We are children of the
Promise of the faith

And I long to find it
Can you feel it, too?
That the sun that’s shining
Is a shadow of the truth

This is a far country, a far country
Not my home

In the dark of the night
I can feel the shadows all around me
Cold shadows in the corners of my heart

But the heart of the fight
Is not in the flesh but in the spirit
And the spirit’s got me shaking in the dark

And I long to go there
I can feel the truth
I can hear the promise
Of the angels of the moon

This is a far country, a far country
Not my home

I can see in the strip malls and the phone calls
The flaming swords of Eden
In the fast cash and the news flash
And the horn blast of war
In the sin-fraught cities of the dying and the dead
Like steel-wrought graveyards where the wicked never rest
To the high and lonely mountain in the groaning wilderness
We ache for what is lost
As we wait for the holy God
Of Father Abraham

I was made to go there
Out of this far country
To my home, to my home
"The Far Country", Andrew Peterson

Are you empty? Maybe you're longing for home. A true home. I know I am.
And attaining that home requires childlike faith.
Permit the children to come to Me; do not hinder them; for the kingdom of God belongs to such as these. Truly, I say to you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God like a child shall not enter it at all." -Jesus (Mark 10:14-15)

Believing a God exists somewhere out there one thing. But believing in JESUS CHRIST... there's a world of difference. We must become like children again, and forget the "realities" of the world. Even the present is temporary.

Jesus Christ, Light of the World
You never did forget me
and when i bled in darkness, You held
me
still held me
when desparate nights i cursed You
You loved me, still loved me
Jesus Christ, You dry the tears
You break my heart of stone
Your words are life
cut marrow through
the darkness, to the bone
a heart of flesh You gave me
only You can save me

Savior
Daylight
I am coming home
(excerpt from "Daylight", Brave Saint Saturn)

So I'm forgetting the past. I'm forgetting the future, or at least my conception of it. And the life I now live in the flesh I live for the Son of God, who loved me and delivered Himself up for me

We were warriors once. And I am becoming one again.

Regression of Technology Pt. I: Music as an Analogy

And God blessed them. And God said to them, "Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth." Genesis 1:28 (ESV)

And how we've subdued it. Amazing to think how life is so much different than it was thousands, hundreds of years, or even a decade ago, all due to the way we (humans) have changed the earth, and exercised our dominion over life on this planet (that is, if you live in a society changed by technology). We've sought to make life better, easier, etc. for ourselves and others. But honestly... have we?
Okay, humans have made things easier for themselves, that's obvious. I'll just say I'm glad I have access to plumbing and electricity: it means I don't have to use an outhouse or read by candlelight. But in making life easier, have we lessened it's quality? And have we really made life easier, or are we just fooling ourselves?
I think we can understand the impact on daily life progress in technology has made by examining one of my favorite subjects: music.
Technological advances in computers have made music easier to create, more accessible, and more portable. In many ways, the invention of the laser disk in the 1960's pioneered the application of computer technology to the medium of music. The laser disc, which didn't actually catch on too well, of course gave birth to the almighty Compact Disc. I guess I can remember back to when cassette tapes were still more popular than CDs, and I definitely remember when our computer didn't even have a CD-ROM drive. And when I got my first CD boombox, I was super pumped, because it meant I could instantly skip songs and I didn't have to deal with the hiss of older cassettes. When I finally got an iPod last year, it revolutionized my musical experience again, allowing me to have my whole musical collection in my possession at almost any time, and obtain music for myself from a seemingly limitless source. Many have utilized the Mp3 player as a source of ever-present entertainment, and it's hard to imagine that only five years ago, iPods and the like were just hitting the market, and only the rich and hip really had them. But if we go back two or three decades, music storage was dominated by a technology that predates Mp3s, CDs, and cassette:s vinyl albums.
Despite essentially growing up on CDs and Mp3s, I have recently been listening to a lot more vinyl, mostly old and some new. Why would I listen to something on a device that I can't carry around, can't rewind or fastforward on, and can't skip around artists as much as I please? Because all those things make my music experience easier, but not better.
Many have compared the quality of vinyl to newer methods of music storage, and I've researched a little bit to try and understand the differences. CDs actually work in a very similar way to vinyls, but of course instead of "grooves" read by a needle, a laser reads information encoded as little "divots". Unfortunately, this means that where vinyls contain more or less exact copies of sound waves, CD's contain only chopped up parts of the sound. These parts are so small and close together, it's hard to tell, but some argue that the mind has to do more work to "fill in" the gaps when listening to a CD. I think a fair comparison would be film vs. digital cameras: digital cameras translate seen image into pixels while "old fashioned" cameras make an "exact copy". In addition to sound quality, many proponents of vinyl recordings note that most CDs have a smaller frequency range that is well within the range of human hearing. Vinyl, on the other hand, can play sounds above what a human can hear, such as a dog whistle.
Even if CDs are only slightly inferior to vinyl, Mp3s are clearly worse. I don't know that much about computers and thus exactly how Mp3s work, but from what I understand, they have up to ten times less actual information than a CD due to compression. I guess this means if you are listening to a Mp3, you're only hearing 1/10th of what you would listening to a CD.
In my mind, vinyl has other advantages over CDs, Mp3s and cassettes. One of the biggest advantages is that vinyl is the biggest! That's right... even though a single record is considerably less portable than a whole music collection on an iPod, records can display album artwork much better. Which I think is a big deal. (Cassettes have laughable album artwork... I think the development of cassettes probably even lead to many bands shortening their names). Oh, and sitting down and listening to music is nice, instead of using music to block out the rest of the world (i.e. chirping birds and rustling leaves as you're walking to class.)
In addition, with a record, you can't fastforward, skip songs all the time, and as I said before, changing artists all the time is out of the question. I can hear you say "Wait, isn't this a disadvantage?" Well, maybe. But nothing beats listening to a whole album all the way through once an awhile. You get a broader view of the artist and their work instead of the impression that a hit single gives you.
I hope you get the point I'm making: maybe listening to records isn't necessarily better than listening to your iPod (and I love my iPod more than just about anyone), but in a lot of ways, I think it is better. And all of the technological advances we've made to make music more portable and accessible has ended up diminishing music by lessening its quality and the quality of listening to music in general.
Back to my broader point: for all the progress technological advances provide, there sure is a lot of regress. All of the improvements the human race has made for itself have created other problems that need to be remedied with more improvements! And thus we have an endless cycle of taking one step forward and two steps back....
Despite the length of this post, it's only the set-up for a totally different topic applying the same principle . I want to examine and write about how advances in building technology have greatly diminished the architectural quality of most buildings we use today. Specifically, I want to analyze modern places of living, work, and recreation according to Vitruvius' standards (firmitas, utilitas, venustas; or strength, usability, and beauty) and also discuss how our current way of building isolates us from nature. I want to try and discover a better way of subduing the earth, and a better way of stewarding the dominion God has entrusted us with. So stay tuned.

As a quick sidenote: ironically my iPod has recently stopped working.

Question...

for anyone to answer. You have probably been many places in your life, but where is a place you feel like you always are?

Another Poem...

One I forgot about and found today... maybe unfinished.

I felt a warm, tangerine glow
On the pavement, glistening
I saw what seemed a fiery coal
Or severed feathers of a seraphim's wing.
Stooping down to behold my find,
It seemed to reach the darkened sky
Instead of rainy pools below
On the pavement glistening.
My hand stretched towards this fallen sun
(I realized I could not pick it up)
A shard of stained glass in the streets,
A shade of pane unknown to me,
Which fell to earth from far away
Cathedrals in the sky unseen.

Friends.Apiculture.Gnarls.

Okay. So first, thanks to my two awesome friends for an awesome day yesterday! It was just a huge blast and a huge blessing! And I got to play Monopoly again for the first time in ages. Ages!

Next: Bees. I'm very proud of them. "Why?", you might ask. 

Bees are extremely fascinating creatures (to me at least). Some of them are solitary, some communal. Many of them build nests, which in part invoke my fascination: the "honeycomb" structures are hexagonal prisms. Hexagons are the "biggest" regular polygon that can tesselate, thus the hexagonal structure maximizes usable space within the honeycomb structure. Some interesting things about honeycombs: the hexagonal prisms always are oriented semi-horizontal (so things don't fall out), and always have two sides on the "bottom" as to form a "v" instead of a "_".  Bees also fly, which is actually amazing, because how they fly is still somewhat of a mystery (some simulations reveal that bees shouldn't be able to fly). And of course, many bees pollinate the flowers on plants. In fact, up to 1/3 of the world's food supply depends on pollination from bees! Anyway, more about bees another day.

I digress... if you haven't heard of Gnarls Barkley, you are sorely missing out! This innovative group consists of singer/rapper Cee-Lo, who worked with some of the members of OutKast "back in the day", and the DJ known as Danger Mouse, who has collaborated on Gorillaz songs, "DANGERDOOM" from Aqua Teen Hunger Force, and even mixed the Beatles' White Album with Jay-Z's  Black Album to create the "Grey Album". They're best known for their single "Crazy". Okay, enough background... So watch this video... It was filmed in Jamaica, the song is called "Going On", and the album is "The Odd Couple".

That is it. 

POEMS

Nostalgia's just regret spelled out, up on the marquis

Inside are broadcast bits of glass onto a telescreen

Shattered-hope-pixels glisten, moments crystalline

Shutterspeed and camera feed splice up frozen time

All to soon this will be

Yet another memory

All to soon this will be memory.

Yes, glass falls from fluorescent ceiling skies

rain on my shoulders, the groaning pipe

resonates my veins.

As static glistens

sometimes cold lights up the dark

in sparks, but they are icy metal. 

(s               i               l               e               n               c               e)

101907STATICSTATICSTATIC101917STATICSTATICSTATIC1019107STATICSTATICSTATIC

dniwer d n i w e r d n  i w  e  r  d  n   i   w    e    r     d       n      i       w      e        r   [STOP] {PLAY}

Yet another memory

All too soon  d n i w e r d n  i  w  e  r  d  n   i   w   e   r   d   [STOP] {PLAY}

memory d n i w e r d n i  w  e  r  d    n   i   w   e    r   [STOP] {PLAY}

Shattered hope d n i w e r

Shattered hope d n i w e r

Shattered [STOP]

Hope again. 

Hope again.

Hope again.

I went out winter up ice branches

steel the sky dismember message

lithos soft as molten melting

say goodbye to cold reflecting 

mirrors

Turn your eyes to eastern skies!