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| cheated of future, ny times 6/5/07
makes you wonder, though, if leaving is the best thing that you can do. even when you disregard the loyalty that you have to helping vitalize the community that poured so much into you first (as atlas shrugged would encourage). if you just want to move somewhere for the mere selfish reason of bettering yourself (even just out of state for college?), well then what are the implications of that. if you stake so much of your identity in hmmm for lack of better words your "cultural identity" (especially in the case of muslims?). then what happens to your...soul? (wrong word?) i guess you are guaranteed more of a life in the most primitive sense of breathing/not living in fear. but then, there's also the matter of, i don't know of self identity.
history lovers tend to pride themselves on the fact that one cannot escape history: it repeats itself, it defines the present. and at a lecture at the nasher this year, an artist was questioned about the role his race had in his art, to which he replied, "i am just an artist, trying to create works independent of my race and the politics surrounding it." but such influences...they creep in uninvited, do they not?
so the little containers burst, | | |
| Christians use God as a crutch: it's a common criticism showing that Christians are weak. But how far off base is it?
Psalm 78:32-55
God gets our attention by humbling us. So after 9/11, after Hurricane Katrina, after VT shootings, people turn to the church, asking questions. And since history repeats itself, as early as the time of Asaph (one of the authors of the Psalms), people were turning away and so God let his wrath by taking away all the things we thought made us 'worthy' and exposing the true, naked self.
The moment of truth then, in which we turn back to our Maker, is not just a crutch, then, but almost a natural response. Crutches after all help us grow to return back to the healthy, vital self. Since when do people sneer at people who really use crutches? After all, recovery without a crutch leads to an injury that doesn't heal properly/completely. How did using God as a crutch turn into a bad connotation type of thing? Thus, once again, God shows the craaazy type of disregard for the world's conventions. For if God is my crutch, then what? I'll grow stronger.
news: i'm going to be in evanston tomorrow!!!! YAYYY!!!!!
movie today: closer. really liked it. maybe one of my favorite movies except not one that i would like to watch again. i enjoyed it because i thought it was honest. i appreciate honesty.
hm. this time i don't like what i wrote because i think too impersonal and very unrepresentative of what i'm feeling right now. now, abstract expressionism was criticized by subsequent generations of artists, but particularly by one mr. robert rauschenberg, who did this interesting set of paintings, factum I and factum II (image google it). and that is what i am feeling like right now.
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| more thoughts prompted by atlas shrugged
so rand - life is about gain.
so going off mark 8's idea of - what good is it if man gains the whole world but loses his soul?
what is the soul?
- belongs to something greater
- aspirations/ striving for something more
- should these two be in line?
for example, aspirations --> spiritual gifts, drive that God puts in man or just selfish ambition?
seems like it might be the first one? ok, but then i think about daniel (the one that went into the lion's den)
- he did everything well, even when he was in a secular environment
- a relationship with God does not forfeit one's commitment to excellence/the idea that Christianity is "intellectual sucide"
- so ambition and excellence, correlated but does one cause the other?
- OR is it caused by a 3rd party source, perhaps divine?
- i kind of like economics, but it kind of gives me a headache
okay okay. hm... still 750 pages to go.
ahhh okay so i was so going to work on my writing skills this summer and write these things out in like complete sentences and all that jazz, but it's just so difficult. you know, putting in punctuations and using transition words. who wants to deal with that really? aghh. okay, i really need to write like a real person if i want to do a major in art history.
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| i've been reading a whole bunch lately...
long story short, there is a really freakishly large effect that reading has on my academic health. sad to say, but the disparity in the amount that i read on my own in college really took its toll on the way i wrote, talk, and think, which consequently had an effect on my attitude towards gaining knowledge (a lack of eagerness that started in the early days of focus when i would skim/skip through the stupid e-reserves that we would only discuss tangentially anyway). still, where can i find the time to fit that all in? make time for the things you love or something like that?
anyway, i thought i might share some stuff i've been reading.
today - luke 11:41-42 (NLT)
"But the Lord said to her, 'My dear Martha, you are worried and upset over all these details! There is only one thing worth being concerned about. Mary has discovered it, and it will not be taken from her.'"
for anyone reading the Bible, especially those who have already read it once/familiar with important passages, i really recommend reading a different version of it. in recent years, rather than stick with the traditional niv, there has been a push towards the esv, which keeps true to the original language of the Bible but has also taken into account readability, but i am really enjoying nlt. it's a little strange at first, i think, mainly because you read through things such as the Lord's prayer, which you think you have memorized, but there it is not exactly as it is embedded in your memory. i think this effect gives it new life, it prevents me, at least, from skimming through familiar passages, such as this one in luke.
i actually always hated studying passages like this one, where the application is so bitingly in your face. obviously, grace is sufficient, the lilies of the field are decked out in such beautiful garb, i am a vapor of the wind, and who by worrying can add even an hour onto his life? but today, i don't know, i want to think more about it - so here is the observation without the interpretation.
1. As Martha was working, fuming, and becoming progressively more upset, Jesus noticed, but he didn't say anything to her. Not until she confronted him, did He speak.
2. When He speaks, He does not answer her question, but instead addresses the issue that she didn't even know that she was questioning.
3. When Jesus speaks, He does not use harsh words or employ extra commentary, He simply points out what she is doing and compares it to what is correct.
4. There is a promise to Mary that what she has discovered will not be taken away from her.
also today: myself, 2 years younger
how things have changed but stayed the same. i wonder if that means before that day i was content with myself. i wonder if this means that i've taken control now.
yesterday - atlas shrugged (rand), signet classic, 41
when i read fountainhead, i thought it was the most brilliant thing ever, and now i'm following it up with atlas shrugged aka "the most influential book in america after the bible". and, in the interim, i don't know...something has changed. the character's are too unbelievable with the protagonists as too archingly a manifestation of objectivism rather than a breathable human and the antagonists as a weak, limpid character with no redeeming qualities (which both fortunately and unfortunately doesn't occur in real life otherwise we could dislike without remorse/confusion, which i have never found to be possible). now, don't get me wrong, i still have a girl-crush on dominique francon, but i just feel like people like that do not, and more blaringly, cannot, exist. nor would i really want them to.
furthermore, i find that life just does not exist in the extreme that rand would like. life, after all, is a little messy (as alluded before in the confusion of disliking/liking someone). so, one of her main critiques of society...we dont take responsibility and placidly and flaccidly wait around, hiding the in unanimous and relying on reviews to tell us what to think. okay. i agree. but then comes along her ideal of forgetting everything else besides your singular passion and not caring what other people think, which is kind of what we're taught in middle school when you are struggling with fashion sense and which works in such superficial matters. but when life in all its gutting glory is taken into account, well, i believe, at least, that there is such thing as a moral obligation that people have to one another. i believe that people depend on one another in a way that is not weakness.
i believe that when a guy gives his wife a bracelet of a metal alloy that he spent forever working on the formula for when she would have preferred diamonds it doesn't mean that he is just a poor, misunderstood objectivist genius and she is an ungrateful fiend who cannot distinguish between good art and what she has been conditioned to value. anyway, maybe i am being too hasty in writing this since i still have a little less than 1000 pages to go until i'm done.
finished already: freakonomics, a tree grows in brooklyn
to read: mere christianity, the three musketeers, the know-it-all, life of pi, and a list of about 80 others
in other news, i really, really detest (and i know this is unhealthy) talking to my parents on the phone. okay in person. aggravating on the phone. actually, as of writing that, i have decided that i just really don't like the phone. as a medium of communication, it sucks.
AND this stupid hooting owl outside my sister's apartment. she says that when we move
there will be construction noises to replace it. she says it like its a bad thing. GOOD, i say, it will drown out the infernal birds. ahhh.
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| When asked who they are, 3-5 year olds respond in terms of physical characteristics: appearance, possessions, and actions (Keller, Ford, & Machum 1978)
How old are you?
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