Superpowers

BIFF!
WHAMO!!
ZOCK!!
POW!!

Okay, so I grew up wearing Thing t-shirts, Superman underwear and watching "Batman." It may be ingrained in my thinking, but as I was climbing in bed last night, I asked my wife what super power she would want most. She is very wise, and responded, "Teleportation. Then I could go anywhere and not pay to travel." I did not have the heart to tell her that teleportation usually requires the power holder to have visited the place previously. Listen to me...talking authoritatively about fantasy; the next thing you know I'll be giving you all updates about the upcoming comicon.

All this to say, I played basketball last night (poorly), which I've been doing a lot lately, and enjoying it. But that has ended for now, because I sprained my ankle. Now those of you who were with me on my last sprain, I am proud to say I learned something from the experience. I did not go out and clean my garage. I did not continue playing on the ankle (oh yeah...same ankle as June). Instead I stopped immediately, went home, popped some meds, dunked my foot in a bucket of ice water, and kept it elevated the whole night. Sorry John, that meant no drawing. I am pleased to say the treatment worked. Little swelling/bruising, little limitation to range of motion. Either the sprain wasn't as bad, or I did something right afterwards.

Back to superpowers I have always loved Superman, but I am no longer fanatical about him. I have always dreamed of flying. But last night, I switched my preference. I would rather be like Wolverine and have rapid healing/restorative power. That can mean only one thing: I'm getting old.

But Heather tried to tell me it was a good choice. And just as she would grab me in her arms and teleport me with her (which is, of course, possible...comically speaking), I could touch her and others and heal them. This time I did have to correct his naivete, because that simply is impossible; healing doesn't work that way. Silly woman.

To A Mouse

Thank God for Robert Burns:

But Mousie, thou are no thy-lane,
In proving foresight may be vain:
The best laid schemes o' Mice an' Men,
Gang aft agley,
An' lea'e us nought but grief an' pain,
For promis'd joy!

I had intended to draw tonight, but I find that my schemes of becoming an artist at times go awry and leave me nothing but grief and pain when I expected joy. For instance, I finished my skull drawing last week. You can see some semblance of what it looks like above. I'll explain the crappiness in just a bit. Well, you would think I'd be pretty pleased, having produced a satisfactory drawing. But then I went out to Jon's studio to draw from life and it was revealed to me that I am a far cry from an outstanding artist. It was intensely frustrating and bothersome, and I walked away feeling like I couldn't draw, nor did I want to draw.

So instead of drawing, I played basketball at the gym until the kids' bedtime tonight. Then, I figured I wouldn't draw, but would post a picture of the skull. Then my digital camera was out of batteries. Then the house was out of batteries. No...not out. We had some D's and some A's; just out of AA's. Now I had intended to post quickly, then eat some dinner, play a little guitar, read a bit...enjoy some of the things I normally crowd out in my pursuit of artistic perfection. But no. My plans went all screwy because I had it in my obsessive little head that I had to post a picture and it had to be tonight. So I take the world's most ridiculous digital camera into the studio: my laptop with a web cam tacked to it. And with this unsightly monstrosity, I snapped the pictures you see above. They look so butt because the web cam is tugging atthe cord and being held sideways at full extension of the arm, etc. etc. So I'd better quit ranting so I have just enough time to choke down one bite, strum one chord, read one sentence...and then go to bed.

To Eric

I can't figure out why I didn't root for the Bears last night. I actually remember the '85 team, and their glorious Superbowl Shuffle (though after seeing Sweetness and Funky QB, I lost steam and cut out with 2 more minutes to go in the video). I can see in my mind the Fridge rumbling over those red Pats jerseys. And then, of course, there was going to see the Bears train in Plattville, WI. But those fond memories couldn't pull my support to their side. Maybe it was all those years of rooting for the Vikings...which necessitates hating the Bears and Packers. Still, I think it was mostly the fact that I wanted Manning to get his ring.

Regardless, that is not why I post. I was glad to read today that I was not watching the game alone, though I may have been the only one drinking a certain beverage (and while I do enjoy a good brew now and again, it's not what it looks like, folks). Still, I wanted to send my well-wishes and say cheers. I missed you this year.

The Death of Me

I am home sick from school today. This is nice, in a way, because it allows me to sleep and get better, but it also allows me to work on my "Memento Mori" project (which must be completed by tomorrow).
Now, fortunately the skull does not look as it does in this picture. I've worked on it a bunch since taking this picture, but the thing that's killing me is that there's something wrong with the lower jaw. I say "something" because I spent a bunch of time trying to fix it last night, and I couldn't come up with the right way to do it. So that will be part of my labor today: to figure out the problem and find the correct solution. From there it's just straight rendering until this puppy is finished. Here's to finishing inside 3 months!!

Because if I don't post now, I never will...

5 days and counting until the drawing must be done. So this week will afford me no time to blog, and I'll just pass along some notes I jotted down during church tonight.

Imagine you had a great idea for a revolutionary new gadget. You think it, you plan it, you discuss it. Then, one lazy night while watching TV at midnight, you see your gadget selling out on QVC. Later, you go online and see it selling like hotcakes on various sites. Hearing news reports of the phenomenal success of this item and the millions made by the creator, a feeling rises up within you.

Is it rage, or pride?

"Creativity is judicious immitation."
Go to a modern art museum. Have a docent explain the artwork, the concept behind it and how the artist executed it. I guarantee you, you will say, "I could've done/thought of that." Yeah...but you didn't. Now, as an artist, time and time again, I come up with some extraordinary idea for a project...and then read a book or go to an exhibit only to find it's already been done (incidentally, it's all been done). There are 2 option at that point: rage, frustration, envy, jealousy; OR pride, encouragement, confirmation. Are you mad when someone beats you to the punch, or happy that at least you wer punching at the right target? Recently I've been delighted to hear that others have already thought what I've been thinking. I feel like a freakin' genius. I made a comment on prayer, and a friend told me CS Lewis said the exact same thing in his book, "Miracles." I posted here about the falacy of infinite choice being equal to freedom, and then was directed, within the last week, to a book called, "The Paradox of Choice," written on the same topic. And most recently, my thoughts--formed in isolation with sociological observation, of a sort--on church (particularly owning a building, facets of ministry, service, community) were confirmed by a pastor and his reference to similar conclusions being reached by pastoral leadership all over. I don't want to get cocky, but how cool to observe, think, pray and discover on my own, and then find out I'm not on my own. It is evidence of a rebirth of thought, desire, insight, influence, growth..and dare I say a return to ministry...which has been occuring in my life recently. My prayer is that Jesus would continue to reach into my life and grant me wisdom (James 1:5) and through wisdom, "the knowledge of witty inventions" (Proverbs 8:12, KJV).

Ma la hoo

MA LA HI

And now...Deep Thoughts

This post is for anyone out there wondering what I have been thinking lately.
Lots.
But as it is still a jumbled mess in my head, I will not try to lay everything out just yet.
Just know that school has resumed, I am busy, frequently tired, my teeth are tingling, I'm lying on the floor of my office, my eyeballs hurt...and all of this somehow adds up to an as-yet-incomplete skull sitting out in my studio.

Thanks for keeping track of me.

Thoughts

These are absent: death, darkness, silence, emptiness.
At least in America. When was the last time you held a dead person in your arms? Maybe it's not everybody; just me. Darkness is guarded against by that sentry, the street light. Silence is warded off by a million contraptions. Emptiness is beaten back by bulldozers and day planners. A beautiful wood behind my son's school is now a muddy development. Schedules crowd out friendship and rest.
That's worrisome: too much crowding. Over population, deforestation, planet destruction, global warming. It's bothering me a lot more lately.
Frost said "miles to go before I sleep." At least he had his horse (driving alone is so lonely...not even a horse to talk to). And snow. The best in Texas is a flash-flood enducing thunderstorm. Thunder and lightning are beautiful, though.
I want to die due to weather. A storm. Struck by lightning. Preferably no drowning. A whirlwind would be my personal favorite. Swept to heaven, never to come down. Like Elijah.
Where are we going? We're going to kill our earth, dilute our minds with relativity, and drink cool-aid in a grand, cosmic sing-along. Maranatha.
Nature is disappearing. Frost's New England is gone. The wild west is tamed. The only frontier is the soul. And not just the places, the experience of the places. When was the last time you were soaked by the rain? The last time you felt grass under your feet? That thought comes up in my mind again and again.
And there it is.

Nevermore...

My little raven post apparently touched a nerve, and for the excellent dialogue flowing from the post, I am thankful.

But I am troubled.

I talked with a dear friend recently and he encouraged me to find an outlet for all the thoughts I was spewing at him. Until a publisher comes knocking, this is the best format I have. As another preface, everyone who posted on "Raven" is obviously super brilliant, super deep, and I respect you all greatly; I expect, however, that what I am theorizing will be met with opposition, and that's fine. I could be completely wrong. I hope you still love me.

I will begin by answering Joe's question: "what underlying reality?" There are countless religions, myths, traditions, and stories from every corner of the earth and from the dawn of time until now. Our generation (particularly of Christ-followers) is seemingly the first to recognize that most of these stories are the same. For so long, the Christian's "claim to fame" was the exclusivity of their faith (and not in the way you're thinking, but we'll get to that later): we have creation, we have flood, we have virign birth, we have death and resurrection, etc. So how about Attis, Adonis, Mithra, Osiris..and any other of the million "pagan" deities with the same story? We are recognizing now that as a religion, we're not so special. As a result, some of the haughty superiority has crumbled. Good. But the thing that troubles me is the question: what else has crumbled along with it?

Sorry, I got a little off track: "what underlying reality?" There are two ways to look at these similarities--1) it's all deeply ingrained, cosmic values, planted in the human subconscious (look, I can't really do it justice in this little post. Check out Joseph Campbell if you're really interested), or 2) it's all deeply ingrained, cosmic values, planted in the human subconscious (and for this, I'd have to point you to Romans 1:20-23 and Colossians 4:1-7--while it specifically mentions "law", consider the "pagan" audience).
Wait. Maybe that didn't really clear things up.
The significance of everything being the same either means that none of them should be taken literally (as Campbell says) because they are just masks, shadows, of a greater unknowable truth that lies behind them all; or that ONE must be correct, because it is the fulfillment of all the stories, which relate truth in part, but this ONE points to the ultimate reality, the truth that lies behind them all. The second view necessitates that one claim to be exclusive, contains all the pieces found in other stories, and presents an over-arching truth that IS knowable. These things meet together in Jesus.
And before anyone jumps down my throat on my ignorance of such things, let me remind you that I'm just starting to think about these things. All comments will be refining and either make or break me, so I'm open to thoughts. But little objections like: "You view doesn't take into account the very diverse functionings of the death/rebirth motif in various cultures" won't do it for me. Sure, you could say that the premise of one story (Jesus) behind the mask of other stories (say Osiris or Attis) is overly simplistic. But I'm aware that the Osiris myth (again...please don't jump on me and say the "Jesus myth". I'm just using field-appropriate jargon here) has significant connections to the harvest cycle in an agrarian, river-based society. Even given that, what I'm saying is that the original purpose doesn't negate the "underlying reality" which may be somewhat different.

Now let's address another concern of mine. A lot of my premise is based on scripture (and by that I mean what I believe to be the ultimate, divinely-inspired, holy and authoritative book we call... "The Book" (biblos/Bible).) In our generation...the generation that is recognizing there is actually truth outside of our little Jesus club...there is a new premium on individual accountability (my term; basically I'm trying to describe the notion that a Muslim is born Muslim, and is therefore accountable to Muslim truth. Or that a certain intellect reads the Bible and believes such, and is therefore accountable to such, and another believes something different and is accountable to that. Call it postmodernism. Call it relativistic. Call it pluralistic. Call it subjectivism. Call it personal truth. Call it Bob, for all I care. You get the idea.). A comment I have heard recently (and admittedly, I don't know from what framework of understanding this question comes, so the question could be posed as a hypothetical, or devil's advocate...I know I play that role enough myself) basically said, "Jesus never really said that," and then almost out of uncertainty or as a disclaimer," and if he did, he didn't mean it like that." Are we to belive then that each of us has the power to tell Jesus what he meant to say? What I mean is, if we are not approaching scripture from the same vantage point (and admittedly, none of us are) can we then conclude that each of us makes our determination of what the passage says...and each of us be right? No one reads, "Gather ye rose buds while ye may, old time is still a-flying, and these same flowers that smile today tomorrow will be dying" (if I butchered it in my paraphrase, please pardon) and pipes up in their literature class and says, "I think this poet dude is talking about sex, and the rose buds represent female anatomy and flying time is an orgasm, etc." I'm fairly sure the professor would say, at least I hope he would, given his education and commitment to the text, "Let's rethink that in light of what the author meant" and explore that with some objectivity (considering facts, forms, history, character of the author, etc.). But we mean to assess the words of Jesus and declare that though he said it, what he said was not what he meant? This is the interesting ground on which we now tread. I feel like a stodgy old grandpa when I say that although such thinking is interesting, it is hard to logically support. Well, slap a cardigan on me and call me Gramps, but I guess that's what I'm saying.

Back to the matter: could it be that the story of the Buddha gaining enlightenment under the Bo tree was a prefigurement of Jesus being tempted in the wilderness? (Again, again...this is my hypothesis. Take it easy, and thanks for just thinking through this with me). The stories are virtually identical and, much to the chagrin of Christians everywhere, Buddha beat Jesus to the punch by 500 years. Is the hero motif, the death/resurrection motif, whether found in the Celtic mythology or Egyptian, a shadow of things to come? Are these ideas, presented in different ways in different cultures, meant to point the way to Jesus when he came as the ultimate fulfillment? (Side note: if Mohammed came after Jesus, that poses a significant problem to my theory, doesn't it? Still sorting that one out, thanks....) I know, I know: I'm arrogant and condescending, because I'm a Christian and how dare I tell another sincere devotee of a different religion that their story is a phony version of my real story. Sometimes it sucks to have convictions that nobody loves to hear.

But here is where I feel I deviate from the old guard of Christianity: those other religions have truth. I'm not saying Buddhists and Muslims and on and on and on are terrible people with faulty systems in which everything they've bought into is a lie. Confucious was right on a lot of things. The Buddha was a pretty enlightened guy. Look at a Zen master and you'll hear paradoxes rattle off that tongue you could have sworn you once heard Jesus say. If all things are mine (1 Cor. 3:21) than I can affirm that these things are true. And I could be getting things mixed up on this point, because I'm a bit uncertain what was being implied on several comments, but there is a fine line between saying this and saying, "Good for you, Johnny! Be a good Muslim. Catch you on the heavenly flip-side!" I truly belive the issue is neither what we believe nor how we believe, but how we believe what we believe. The two must walk together, and one necessarily follows behind the other. And it is certainly no use following a blind guide.

--Insert Break: I just re-read some the comments that got me thinking, and I have a slightly different take on them than my first glance. Nonetheless, I'll continue with what I was thinking, because it's still valuable, I feel.--

I hope that those who read this post will have a sense of me: who I am, how I tick, what I love and cling to, how I seek to live out the life of Christ within me. My goal is not to brow-beat, force, or argue someone into thinking Jesus is cool. Surely, this would be foolish, as Paul said, "I didn't come with fancy-pants words (okay, really "wise and persuasive") but with a demonstration of the Spirit's power" (1 Cor. 2:4). And building on this idea (and thanks to Rob Bell and his series, "Jesus Wants to Save Christians" on this one), I believe the real way to live as Christ in the world IS to love and accept, come alongside, learn and experience. I mean, that's what "Raven" was all about. But hearing some things, and thinking through them, I wonder if we sometimes do a disservice learning Buddhist prayers and embracing goddess worship. The implication seems to be that such things are complete...they are fullness of truth. When we do such, are we tacitly communicating that (once again) "You're right Johnny! Keep on keeping on!" when in fact we would like Johnny to believe something else?

All these things tie together in my great concern, embedded in all my aforementioned concerns. It is the struggle of each generation to rise to maturity and do their own thing. A teenager throws away his loafers and khakis and dons black and wears body jewelry. A generation rises up and says, "Hey the way you did things was dumb! We may be young, but we're smarter than you, so we're gonna do it our way!" Really, we throw the baby out with the bath water.

Please hear me on this. I was the posterchild for sweeping reform in the church and the notion that all things old were wrong, stupid, ungodly, etc. Then I realized that I'm not really that smart. People did things for a reason. Their motives were pure. They really did wear suits on Sunday because that was their best; not because they looked down on people who didn't wear suits (okay, okay...some did). And really, what I thought was prudish and silly was kinda wise and grounded in conviction. Yes, changes need to be made, but we must also "cling to the good."

If you've made it to the end, thanks for sticking it out. If it was nonsensical, well...I never said it wouldn't be. I know I've poked the proverbial stick in the hornets nest, and therefore I expect to be swarmed a bit. I'll just try and toughen my skin and not take the stings as personal barbs. That being said, if you have some venom to loose, or even if you're more mild and would simply like me to reconsider some things, I am welcoming and waiting for your thoughtful response.

Year In review

Favorite Music:
(While my inspiration cited specific albums, that is rarely how I tend to listen to music. I instead list the best artists I discovered...with a few albums thrown in for good measure).
Sufjan Stevens
Rufus Wainwright
Bright Eyes (thanks Shaun)
Elliot Smith
Nick Drake
Colin Hay (anybody formerly of "Men at Work" has to be good)
Death Cab for Cutie/The Poastal Service (they're really the same thing anyway)
Jonathan Rice
...and tons more. As for a recent album addition:
"Songs from the Labyrinth" (Sting)

Favorite Books:
In Praise of Slowness (Honore)
The Art of Travel (de Botton)

Favorite Places:
White Sands National Monument (seriously, one of the coolest places on earth)

Ah...there's so much more...but not a bad year after all.

One Word

In the tradition of the Grinch, instead of giving this Christmas season, I am stealing. I'm stealing this list of questions (which must be answered with one word...hyphenated words are allowed) from my friend Misty. Next, I'll be stealing the "Year in Review" concept from my friend Brian (coming soon to a blog near you!!).

I'd love to hear your answers in response.

Yourself: funky
Your partner: transformed
Your hair: fuzz
Your Mother: dulcet
Your Father: erudite
Your Favourite Item: ipod
Your dream last night: never
Your Favourite Drink: water
Your Dream Home: tent
The Room You Are In: brown
Your fear: insignificance
Where you Want to be in Ten Years: far
Who you hung out with last night: boys
What You're Not: finished
Your Best Friend: tough
One of Your Wish List Items: albums
Your Gender: male
The Last Thing You Did: fumed
What You Are Wearing: skin
Your favourite weather: gray
Your Favourite Book: challenging
Last thing you ate?: cake
Your Life: sweeeeeeet
Your mood: mellow
The last person you talked to on the phone: Mitch
Who are you thinking about right now: me (isn't it obvious?)

What was formerly thought to be a Raven, but forevermore shall be known as a crow

In the bowels of the Grand Canyon, I looked above me to see a soaring, black outline. After climbing out, a croaking call grabbed my attention and I looked up into a pine tree to see a massive bird. My first raven. I love the raven. Just something about it. Only, I had thought for years that I had seen plenty. They're black birds, right? Well they are so unlike anything I'd seen before, I realized any previous sighting was just mistaken identity. I was calling a really big crow a "raven."

Ravens are so much bigger. Their call is less like a "caw" and more like a "croak" or even a hoarse bark. There is some kind of irony in my error. Some sort of deeper truth. How often do we ascribe a certain value to things, only to confront the real thing later, and be so awed that we feel like idiots for ever thinking our previous experience could even come close to comparing?

So I think I'll write a poem about that someday. "Yet knowing how way leads on to way..."

But today I'm confused. Comparing birds (incorrectly) is one thing, but comparing people and ideas is quite another. I'm certain that there are 2 ways to make yourself feel really terrible:
1) Look at yourself a lot
2) Look around at other people a lot
And yet that's what we spend most of our lives doing. There are people in pain. People with problems. I'm in pain. I have problems. She hates him. He hates me. We're good at this. They're good at that. I want to be good at their thing. It's wearisome.

As I look at other people and hear them think, I wish there was some way to...I don't know; do something more that just talk. Almost as if we could feel together. Share not just words or even ideas, but understandings. "(to) Know and be fully known."

And as I'm thinking through this, I have friends who don't believe in God. Friends who do, but don't really like Him. Friends who love him, but don't really know him (if that's possible; you end up loving your idea, not Him) or don't emulate him. Friends who love Jesus, but want to love other gods, because that's a "generous" orthodoxy. (Maybe not that; ...love Jesus, and want to be lovey-dovey with people who love other gods, so they can somehow love Jesus too...or instead. Or something...) Friends who have a different god. Friends who have lots of different gods. Friends who are so smart, they're their own gods. Friends who are so brilliant, they don't need a god. And a guy named Joseph Campbell. A guy who thought that everybody was talking about the same thing anyway, and it's not even god. Just a jumble of ideals, transcendental human longings. A guy who thought if we gave up god and religion and just embraced myth and the underlying reality, life would be peachy.

I desperately want to think about things. To understand things. People. Is there time for a world of understanding? Is there room for everything?

And when I end my posts with lots of questions, I know it's time to stop. ...Lest I fall victim to looking at other blogs who get tons of responses and suffer insecurity that I might not be fascinating or insightful or good enough. That, or other desperate people aren't reading.

Art Meets Technology

Here's a new sub-domain under Jon's website. I'll be posting art images here in the future. FOr now, enjoy the beauty of the index page:

http://jayasp.jonathanhardesty.com/

Atelier

My teacher/friend Jon has done a blurb on me for the student section of his website. He's a cool cat and super talented. Check out his appraisal of me (and a better picture of my finished cast drawing) at http://www.jonathanhardesty.com/jayasp.php#.

Then go to his home page and look at his stuff. Awesome....

Memento Mori

Hans Holbein was quite fond of drawing images of death, including "The Dance of Death." Albrecht Durer created a drawing of a skeleton carrying a sickle and riding upon a gaunt hag, with the words, "Memento Mei" written above. Any still life containing a skull is likely to be titled "Memento Mori." The Latin means, most simply, "Remember your death."

I like the fact that I have the ability to contemplate my own mortality in art, in the tradition of so many more who have gone before me. I have been contemplating and discussing mortality and death a lot lately. It's not that it's almost Halloween, or that such thinking is suicidal or even macabre or morose. It's healthy, I think. When one lives with a view of their impending demise, I feel he or she is more likely to live in a worthy fashion. If you'd like to see it in pop culture, check out films such as "Click" (with Adam Sandler), "Family Man" (with Nicholas Cage), or "It's a Wonderful Life" (with Jimmy Stewart). They are all basically the same story, and they all deal with this same idea, though they don't directly state it and treat it in various ways. If you could catch a glimpse of what your life would come down to, would you live any differently?

And so, I unveil my next atelier project:

I'm very excited. Once I finish, if Jon lets me, I might try to add the following words, from a Puerto Rican legend about a skull lodged in a convent, on the bottom.

Oh tu que pasando vas
Fija los ojos en mi
Cual tu le ves you me vi
Cual yo me veo te versa.

(Translation:
Oh you passerby—
Look at me please
Like you I once was
Like me you will be.)

Let the Hallelujah Chorus resound!!!

It is finished!!!! Now on to the next project....



















Here's a side-by-side comparison. I think it looks better in real life.

Hippies, Commies...and Others Who Almost Got it Right.

The hippies aimed at love. They wanted peace. They got together, sang and celebrated, and tried to get people to see another way of life; one of freedom and without violence and strife. Good ideals. But then they just dissolved into untidy, unkept, drugged-out weirdoes who hit the hash pipe and slept around a lot.

The communists aimed at community. They wanted equality and sharing. Now I've never read "The Communist Manifesto" and I only have a loose understanding of socialism, but it seems like on paper it would be a great idea. Nobody is totally rich. Nobody is totally poor. But then they just dissolved into dictatorship, slavery in forced work camps, censorship of divergent thinking and a climate of fear and oppression.

The news-making cults pulled out of the world to single-mindedly pursue a lofty ideal. They usually ended up in mass deaths.

The Mormons commit two years of their young lives to go out and spread their views around the world. They typically leave this venture for lives of greater financial viability...plus, in the mind of this humble blogger, their message is false.

The monastics and hermits/desert fathers left everything behind--the world, possessions, relational ties--to seek spiritual devotion and enlightenment in isolation. They ended up so cloistered and removed that they did a lot less good to the world than they could have retreating and then venturing back into the fray.

Love. Community. Sharing. Forsaking the world. Service. Spiritual devotion. Sound like good ideas, don't they. Sure...they messed up. Sure...one could do it better. My point is, are we trying?

A History (of the T Shirt)

So I was driving and divergent leaping yesterday. Saw a Jeep happy face. Made me think of Forest Gump. Thought of the T-shirt scene, where he inspired the guy to come up with the idea "Have a Nice Day." Then, since T-shirts are sort of a hobby, I began to ruminate fondly on my apparel of choice.

Remember when T-shirts were nice. Not fit-wise; message-wise. They used to be sweet. We used to wear messages of greeting and encouragement ("Have a Nice Day"); playful pleas for attention ("Kiss me, I'm Irish"); general sentiments of well-wishing.

T-shirts showed the things you admired, the things you were passionate about, things that made you feel good, things to which you were attached or loyal. Sports teams. Movies and TV shows. I still remember a sweet, yellow Star Wars shirt I used to have. For the most part, T-shirts used to genuine expressions of self. And the "selves" used to be a lot kinder, apparently.


Now we have this garbage. Doesn't it seem like T-shirts today are all about being bitter, ironic, mocking...and just sort of mean? I tried to find a picture of the "Have a Nice Day!" shirt, but all I found were images of a hand flipping me the bird. Mock, mock, mock. Chuck Norris t-shirts. Sure they're funny, but he's a nice guy, and people aren't REALLY enamored with him. "Napoleon Dynamite" and Abercrombie & Fitch have made an art form of the T shirt which looks vintage, but has some sleezy punchline, or makes fun of some demographic. I mean, come on, some of us DO love unicorns, and it hurts to have people wear shirts mocking that love.

So maybe I am just a sissy, but I want t-shirts that promote love and harmony. Still, I will admit I saw the coolest t-shirt the other day at church:

Front: I'm a Calvinist: This shirt chose me.
Back: I'm an Arminian: I chose this shirt.

Easy=Dead

My family and I went to Dinosaur Valley yesterday. It's a TX state park just over an hour south of Fort Worth. While we were hiking through the rain (it was truly an awesome day!), Aydan asked me to pick up a huge rock in the stream bed. In my trying to do so, I ripped back my pinky fingernail and caked mud and algae underneath it.

My thought had been to leave the nail as-is. I saw no way to get under it without causing more pain, and I figured it would all work out. This morning my whole finger was swollen and puss way oozing out from under my nail.

So I pulled out the clippers and the tweezers, and I cut my nail down to the stub. I cleaned out the "debris," and wrapped my finger in ointment and bandages.

Now, this brought mild pain to an already hurting finger. It did not feel good to jam the clippers into that raw flesh, but I began to see the alternatives. If the finger did heal on its own, it would have taken much longer with much greater and lasting pain. Or I could produce an infection and require a trip to the doctor. Despite the fact that I did not want to perform surgery on myself, it turned out to be the best of all options.

My uncle Jim and I used to talk about Marine life (bayonettes, not barnicles). I read an article one week about a Marine who chose to take a less obstructed road route during a training exercise, rather than crawl through the mud. He was "killed" almost instantly. His point: easy equals dead. Jim confirmed this through his story of "diddly-boppers" in Vietnam. The guys who came in and bopped around, never vigilant, were always quick to die.

Heather and I have talked about this recently and confirmed its truth. I've been telling my art students recently that nothing valuable comes easily. If you have felt recently that life is hard, be encouraged: if it were easy, it would be death.

The Greatest Person of Our Generation

To quote Tyler Derden, "We are the middle children of history. We have no great war, no great depression. Our war is a spiritual war, our depression...is our lives."

Without civil rights battles to fight, without world wars to wage, without deep and devastating crisis on a massive, national scale, our heroes look much different than those of a generation previous.

So the hero of a "slacker" generation? A rock star.


Now, I've only been struck with this idea in the past few hours since I was made aware of this development, but I think U2 rocker Bono might be the greatest figure of our time. He has leveraged power and popularity to impact the world. His ideas for moving people to action (even to the extent of preying on their desire to be cool and chic; in effect, selling them the chance to be philanthropic in light of their apathy for no-return charity) can only be called genius. I would gladly welcome arguments, and alternative stand-outs, but despite my somewhat facetious lead-in, I think this guy is incredible. Plus...he's Irish.

For more, check out http://www.joinred.com/home.asp.