let's move!

My mom comes from Oklahoma, where the wind comes sweepin' down the plain, but she moved to Naples, FL when she was a sophomore in high school. My dad is from Hancock, MN, and moved to Gainesville, FL for some residency thing or med school. I don't know.

My father hates the cold. He grew up on a farm in super-rural Minnesota, and when I think of his childhood, beyond the family situation, I think of it being windy, snowy, and freezing in winter and hot in the summer. I also think about the fact that they didn't teach calculus in high school when he was a student.

Anyway, he later did some medical stuff here in New Haven and then in DC and then he and my mom moved back to Naples with Donna, Alan, and Steven (still baking) in tow. (They were awaiting the final glory of the fourth child to come.)

My dad is smart. The cold sucks. When I was a kid on Christmas day we would GO OUTSIDE TO PLAY. I received Rollerblades one year and I went around the neighborhood to play with them before we had dinner. Some of you people seem to like this snow crap. That's fine, but I don't like having these white-christmas standards imposed upon me. I like 70-degree Christmases on the beach! (Unless, of course, I'm staying in to snuggle with someone. Then it doesn't matter what the temperature is at that moment.)



I feel like when I've lived in these cold places, I just hope for the days to go faster so that I get closer to warmth. I let life speed by more quickly when I live in a cold place because I am often hurrying to a place where I can get warm. Does anyone else think this happens?

The trouble for me is that many of the schools I want to attend are in the north or midwest, the school I attend is in New England, a lot of the stuff I want to do is up and over there, and some of the people with whom I want to spend my time are in these cold places. I don't want to move back to Florida, but I think I do best in some place warmer. Oh, and honestly, winter's depressing. It's easy enough to be depressed. Why live in a place where what's around all the time makes you unhappy? I say, though, that if there were love involved, it might be worth it.

Anyway, it's snowing in New Haven and I want to go running. Winter deters us from play and we need play.

Also, Matt Pond pa has a new free ep available.
"three" does something


Today's word is mettle.

IL State Cyclocross Championships

This will be entertaining. Cyclocross races are a ton of fun to watch (and participate in, at least in the way that the need to puke is fun), so I recommend going to see this if you're in Chicago.
Sunday, December 7
Montrose Harbor (go to the big hill)
10-3:30
Sponsored by Turin, an excellent bike shop.

Reading Week

aka no classes, more sleep, more running, fewer bags under my eyes

It doesn't start officially until Monday. It started for me yesterday, after my Philosophy of Religion class ended at 6:30, or it possibly started after I turned in my exegesis paper at 9:31 a.m. I still have one class today, though. Sorry, sir. I will be there in physical form but only a bit present in spirit. I don't think you're quite with us in class each week anyway.

It's been a stressful week with insufficient sleep and so one of my goals is to recuperate. Sleep, catch up on reading (that's the point, right?), and start my Kierkegaard paper. I was talking to my roommate last month or so and she was shocked that we got approximately one week off each month either for reading week or holiday break. Last week she said, "You guys have a lot of papers" and I didn't feel so bad about these breaks. Even Emilie Townes, during our orientation, said that we would not get all of our reading assignments done during regular weeks (not even mentioning our papers), so I guess they make sense.

It's thanksgiving week, though, and some people are going to be with loved ones and/or family. Others are just hanging around here. The rest of the university operates normally.

I keep getting these emails showing me how cheap it is to fly from New Haven (I wouldn't even have to drive to Hartford) to O'Hare (and the other way around), even with last-minute flights. Sheesh. I'll think about that later. As much as I would like to go there, there are some things holding me back. For now, I have to clean up my house because my parents are visiting tomorrow for one day while they are on their New York trip.

What are you going to do for reading week? What would you do if you had a reading week with no classes?

Apparently:

Unhappy people watch more TV
Reuters
The University of Maryland analyzed 34 years of data collected from more than 45,000 participants and found that watching TV might make you feel good in the short term but is more likely to lead to overall unhappiness.

...

The study, published in the December issue of Social Indicators Research, analyzed data from thousands of people who recorded their daily activities in diaries over the course of several decades. Researchers found that activities such as sex, reading and socializing correlated with the highest levels of overall happiness.

Watching TV, on the other hand, was the only activity that had a direct correlation with unhappiness.

sex, reading, and socializing? Sounds doable. I would add in a few more, like physical activity and "spiritual stuff".

The computer often makes a lot of people I know miserable.

Thanks to a friend, I am listening to most of Radiohead's albums. Here, recall this song:



Melvin has given me the word of the day: liminal

I have little-to-no desires to eat bacon. I might want one of these, though, (and maybe an iPhone to go with it [but not really]):

chris d's single speed

chris d's single speed
Originally uploaded by natearm

All right, I'm gonna speak about emotions. You are warned. (more edits and responses)

I remember listening a lot to Sufjan Stevens invites you to: Come on feel the Illinoise at work (in my former cubicle days) during one of the periods of great mourning. It was one of those albums that could pretty easily make me cry. In one sense, this is great, because it's good to have emotions (whatever for, I'm still working on). On the other hand, sometimes you just want to listen to an album or song and enjoy it and not journey down the path of existential crises or buried joy or grieving hearts. Sometimes these were just the songs that made my heart beat louder. At one point I had a short list of songs or portions of albums that could take me there. I deleted it at some point or lost it on the old computer but will try to name a few here:

Love will tear us apart / Susanna and The Magical Orchestra


Some Winter Song by Maps - If you find a link for this, please let me know.

Pedro the Lion's Bad Things to Such Good People


Four Tet - And They All Look Broken Hearted

I'll work on remembering the rest for your emo-edification. I know there are more. It's probably good to share these. I can listen to a lot of these now with a different perspective, and that is good. Er, awesome, even. I've been listening to that album, working on an exegesis paper of 1 Samuel 8.1-22 in the basement of YDS on a very grey and rainy day and enjoying it.



What about you? (You can be anonymous if you want, though I'd love to associate opinions with names.)

Edit: I remembered another!

Lily Two - Matt Pond PA

Edit2:

This one kind of ticks me off:

Pedro the Lion - Options In fact, I both love and sometimes hate Pedro the Lion... or I hate when people believe too much in messages in music and won't... well, later

I need little else in life beyond this:

http://cdn1.ustream.tv/swf/4/viewer.45.swf?cid=317016 (This was the streaming puppy site but it's gone. So, go look at some puppies playing and you'll get what I mean)


Seriously. like four or five other things

I don't think this was what he was talking about, but...

Feuerbach says that "Thou believest in love as a divine attribute because thou thyself lovest" (Essence of Christianity, Dover Philosophical Classics, p. 15).

departing from his statement:

Is this necessarily true to you?
Do we need to love to believe in love?

(Feuerbach was working in the different direction, I believe.)
----

I hope that you will indulge me, dear reader, as I ask these questions about love and relationships. I am exploring them as I never have, nor never have been able. My approach to them and to me in them is changing. So respond freely - "anonymous" is enabled for a reason.

"Channel Surfing"

This Sunday was a forced day off from running. Instead, I walked while I read King, taking a break from the Feuerbach due next Wednesday. The sun* was finally out today, and there were leaves all over the ground. My friend Rachel said, "I love how people here don't rake."

We met at Koffee on Audubon** and walked for about an hour-and-a-half around East Rock (a section of New Haven). Rachel's a military daughter who's in YDS's religion and literature program the the Institute of Sacred Music (that's right: literature, film and other arts through our Institute of Sacred Music). I appreciate her knowledge and her approach to academia, life, philosophy, honesty, and love. We talked a bit about school but mostly about relationships, and her story was strikingly similar to mine and similar to the responses of a loved one (or "one that I love").

She spoke of "changing the channel" in life and love and relationships. You find a channel with a program that's really great - totally what you want to watch - but you can't stay on it. Maybe you just need to check what's on the other channels, or you feel impelled for some other reason to surf. There's some anxiety in staying on one channel. Of course, if you did, you would probably get to watch a really great show, but that would mean letting go of the concern of missing out on the other programs and "just" enjoying what you're watching. Did I stop talking about channels a while ago? Pardon me. When you surf like that, you don't really get the full experience of them anyway.

the full experience
depth

Changing the channel all the time becomes natural for some of us. What I'm trying to challenge me/us to do is to check out what's on that channel. Stick around and don't be afraid of missing out on other things that may not be as great as what's on in front of me.
----

*I, like Superman, get my powers from the sun.

**My frequenting this place does indeed betray my general rule about not patronizing businesses with intentional misspellings. I ask the grammar gods to forgive me as it's the closest cafe.

Because I am having a particularly stressful time lately and do not want to bring the burdens of emotion-sharing upon the public (oh woe!), I bring you this profound piece of media, which provided the first laugh of the day:



I thank Melvin for sharing this with me so that I could pass it on to you, dear reader!

Originally uploaded by Napalm filled tires

New runs

I don't have the energy for fast runs lately. I don't know if it's because of fall or insufficient sleep or energy devoted to school. I actually had a crappy run a few weeks ago where I didn't feel better afterwards. This has happened fewer than ten times in my nine years of running.

I am embracing the slow run. I will not be ashamed. This morning, after reading a chapter in my evangelicalism book, I went for a 4.5 mile slow run and felt great. I could have run a few more miles but had to come back to work on a paper (which I should be writing right now). I'm just gonna go with the flow on all this and enjoy the runs for their mind-clearing, stress-relieving exercise. I'm not training for any races. I think it's ok.

That said, I may still embrace those quick 3-4 milers before my early classes just to wake me up.

Running on a drizzly day on streets covered in yellow leaves is pretty friggin' delightful. It's still warm enough to enjoy running in the rain.