streets

I wonder if I'll ever end up on the streets. Probably not, I guess I have that network of family and family friends that would take me in if something happened. But it doesn't seem that far away, like it doesn't seem far away that the time will come when I won't have enough money to keep going to college, or at least to SPU.

When I applied, I felt like I wasn't going to get in. Once i was accepted, i felt like I wouldn't end up attending. Once I started attending, it felt like I wouldn't finish my time here, that something would happen and I would end up having to leave. Maybe that's just what I wanted, and still want sometimes. Summer will (may)be good.

I don't know what I would do if it ended up that I had to leave school. I'd probably end up working some dumb job. I hate the idea of working at something I don't care about just to keep myself alive.

Oh well. If God wants me here, I'll stick around.

cleaning

I get much better at cleaning when I have a paper that I don't want to work on.

Cleaning my desk, I've come across a lot of hair. Obviously I have a lot of hair, which falls off, but it didn't make sense that there would be so much on my desk, because it's not as if I lean really far over my desk when I type, not to mention I usually am wearing something on my head that would stop hair from falling forward (maybe?). But then, I had a revelation:

When I go to sleep, I pull out my hair tie and throw it on my desk. Hair is caught on the hair ties, and thus gets on the desk.

Yup.

sitting

At church gatherings, I like to sit (or stand) in the back. I'm not sure why. I like open space (if there is open space), and I like to be able to see what's going on, and I hate the feeling that others are behind me watching me. I don't generally feel comfortable worshipping God if I'm sitting in a pew or a row of chairs. At least not as comfortable as when I'm in the back in open space.

In class, I like to sit in the back, or somewhere on an edge where I can watch the whole class room. I don't like sitting in the front, where everyone can watch me. (As a side note, I hate raising my hand in class. Not talking in class, just raising my hand. I feel so silly doing it, and I feel like the teachers often ignore me. Hah).

I can't think of any time when I want to sit in the middle of things.

When I'm reading, I need to have my legs stretched out. Preferably, I'm either sitting on the ground or have my feet up on something.

I almost never sit flat-footed. Apparently, this is bad for posture.

The chairs in the SPU classrooms that bend are terrible for my back. In fact, a lot of chair backs just aren't tall enough. Not to mention that by this time I'm not used to sitting up straight, so if a chair back is bad I just slouch.

I like to have armrests, somewhere to put my arms.

yeah

I've found that most of my struggles with God, or life, come from the fact that I don't believe that God is good. That is, often when I'm feeling shitty I realize that the source of my shitty feelings is that I don't actually trust in God, that there is nothing but goodness in him and that he desires good in my life and the lives of others. Obviously, it's easy to say that God is good, I just fight with actually living that out. Not today, really, it's cyclical (which probably means it's constant, I just tend to notice it in cycles).

I was thinking about this today because of predestination. I hate the idea of predestination. It's difficult for me to reconcile ideas of predestination with ideas that God is good. Saying that God has foreknowledge but doesn't necessarily predestine isn't a way out, either. With God's omniscience, foreknowledge and predestination become the same thing, in a sense. That also seems to be based on a model of the world where God is absent and doesn't intervene. But I do believe that God intervenes and interacts in the world and the events of the world. God interacts, and moves us towards certain ends. I believe that, and (mostly) I'm not bothered by that, it's what I want. But that's based on the assumption that when God moves, he is moving for God. Suffering in hell for eternity is not good, and if God moves people towards that, it's difficult to see him as good rather than evil, even if eternal suffering is something that all of us have earned.

I feel detached from the concept of sin right now, it doesn't seem very real to me. I look at what we consider sin, and in the grand scheme of things, it doesn't seem very big or very important, not important enough for someone to suffer for eternity. then again, there's other moments when I feel like weeping because of sin and the hurt that we cause each other.

and isn't it funny how we think of sin? for some reason, social injustice seems wrong, but few seem to call it sin. refusing to help the poor seems wrong, but few seem to call it sin. what do we call sin? lying. sex before marriage. drunkenness. for some reason, these issues seem less important to me than they used to (except lying? I guess things would be different if I had close relationships to alcoholics). I guess if I could eliminate poverty in a society or if I could eliminate sex before marriage (a term I hate, but it's better than "fornication"), I would eliminate poverty. Well, I say that, but my actions don't necessarily follow.

blah blah blah

Death

I don't want to die with a mustache, or wearing running shoes, or wearing a sweater. I think I would like to be wearing a white shirt, and probably shorts, maybe black shorts. It's not that I've really thought a lot about what I want to wear, it's not like I've planned my death out or that I'm suicidal, but death-thoughts happen. I remember many times driving my motorcycle, and thinking of whatever was in my backpack or bag, or what I was wearing, and that I would literally not want to be caught dead with them. Not because there's anything wrong with them, but they just seem ridiculous. Like my mustache seems ridiculous, and running shoes.

Here's how I imagine my death:

I die because of human malice or because of absurd chance. Often at night when I'm standing by the road, and cars pass, I imagine someone inside the car will gun me down. Strangely, though, that's not really how I see my death. My death is during the day, when lots of people are around. Maybe a stranger knifes me. In any case, I end up laying on the ground, bleeding, and people crowd around me and say things. But I don't say anything, I don't moan. Maybe I lick my lips. And I cry out of both eyes, but I don't say anything. And the sky is clear, or maybe overcast, but never rainy. Usually, it's sunny. Funny, I often wear something on my head, and for the past four years my hair has been more long than not, but when I see myself dying, my hair is short (relatively), and I never have something on my head, and I'm clean shaven. But really, it's not my death that I imagine, it's the dying. My imagination never takes me to the ends of things, to the actual point of death, maybe it can't.

feet

My feet are fatter now, and softer than they were in Thailand. Not that they've really been tough for years, once I started driving the motorbike and had to wear shoes, my feet got wimpier. But they do look fatter now, the knuckles where my toes connect to my feet don't stick out as much now, not like they used to. They look swollen, like my right foot started to look when the circulation went bad after my accident and it was swollen. Except, if it's normal, you can't really say they're swollen. They're just fat now. Even if I prefer my skinny feet to my fat feet, I can still enjoy that my feet are wide, and not cramped shoe-feet, and that the toes aren't scrunched together. I understand a lot of peoples feet are like that, and that's okay (though I can't pretend I like it). They've made their choices, and I've made mine, and you can see the difference in our feet. But for my feet, scrunched is not okay.

Sometimes it bothers me that I can be comfortable in shoes, and in socks, and that I don't take them off at the first chance, that I might go through the whole day wearing shoes, and not take them off until I'm going to bed. Funny how things change.

kissing

I almost never ask people here how they're doing, or how their day's been. I'm not sure why. I guess I feel a lot of backlash against "how are you?" when it's used so often as a filler when people don't know what else to say, or when it's just something that people say in passing. I hate that. but I'm also not used to asking people those questions in public places when lots of other people are around.

and, what I'd rather talk about is kissing. sometimes I get the urge to kiss people, but it's not really kissing. I can't explain it, it's not a sexual type of kissing, because when I think of it, it's mostly with guys, and it's not sexual or something that turns me on. it's not even about kissing, it's more about open mouths where you're breathing into each other. I think that's it, something like breath and spirit passing between two people, some union of souls. not that I ever tell people about this, they'd probably get creeped out.

sleeping

I miss sleeping. Not that I don't sleep, it's just that I can't sleep right.

Window shades need to be open, not closed, at night. In fact, there's basically no time when it's better to have window shades open rather than closed. Granted, my house had fields on two sides and there was no one around, but it's much better sleeping with the window open, and waking up with a clear view of the sun or the rain, or whatever the weather is. I hate waking up to window shades, maybe sometimes if it's raining, it's good, but not if the weather's sunny.

Music needs to be on. Not always, because sometimes silence is good, but I do miss falling asleep to music. This includes the really loud Thai karaoke party music, and maybe the monks chanting from the temple.

I haven't decided what I prefer about blankets, whether it's nicer to have to use them or not. Sometimes, we just have to live in ambiguity. Life's tough that way. It's easier to fall asleep when it's cold than when it's really hot, though. Granted, if I'm really cold I'll wake up in the middle of the night, and I don't remember that happening from too much heat.

Fans. I don't have a fan here, and in fact I wonder if I don't have enough noise when I go to sleep. Like animal noises. Fans make nice noises, though, and they circulate the air. It's boring and stagnant this way. I don't enjoy feeling like I'm going to sleep in an incubated cell.

Oh yeah, waking up to an alarm clock rather than my mom popping her head in the door to tell me it's time to get up is not an improvement. Mother > clock, even clock radios that make obnoxious noises and (maybe) annoy my roommates. I never used an alarm clock until I came to America.