A Sincere Exhortation to my Brothers and Sisters

Written not in cyncism, I pray

Admist a shocking and transparent effort to intimidate and supress votes in Ohio and Florida--keys to the election--by enlisting thousands of Republicans to challenge voter legality in poor and minority districts, Bush and the Republicans continue a sarcastic, cynical, fatalistic, school-yard bully campaign of fear. Bush has since the very beginning of the election cycle employed a core body of totem phrases that are designed to scare Americans and patronize their capacity to think critically. In another sarcastic, cynical, fatalistic stump speech yesterday, Bush rolled through another one of these totems: "Weakness attracts those who are waiting to do America harm," he said.

Who are "those?" The evil-doers. The freedom-haters. The forces of evil, and in many connotative expressions, the enemies of God. It's a simple tactic that Bush uses on hoodwinked Americans that make a simplistic but powerful connection between Bush's statement that freedom is a gift of God and that the enemy is a group of freedom-haters, thus enemies of God. In a compulsive Bush-supporters house earlier this month, I was engaged in a sarcastic, cynical, fatalistic conversation in which I was asked, "Do you want terrorists running all around your backyard everywhere? I don't!" I looked into the Bush-supporters backyard and saw no terrorists. What's funny is that people like the woman whose house I was a guest in already live in a culture of fear. Her subdivision is accessible only by a three-quarter mile long street that has 7' tall fences on either side of it. On the interior of the subdivision, people don't walk outside, they keep their children fenced-in, and they keep their cars off the street. By the way, on a side note, why is it okay to condone the killing of thousands of Americans and Iraqis in the Middle East for the greater good but it's not okay to overlook a candidate's position on abortion in favor of the greater good? And what about the millions around the world starving, dying in epidemics, and being oppressed by the unjust?

Two nights before the election, I admit openly to having a feeling of despair. I am so exhuasted from seeing apathy and indifference around me, and the notion that a nation of zombies will re-elect a president that wasn't elected popularly in the first place is depressing. It's because this administration has been one of unprecedented dillusion. It is a consummation of the 1990's build-out of the Republican party into a collective of naive, short-sighted, oblivious and manipulative individuals who see political issues as questions of personal gain. Somehow, the Republican party got mean. It decided that nationalism was the highest mantra, that dissent is treason, that the earth is a market, that the poor are expendable, and that the people--the PEOPLE--are not eligible for a government that provides and protects.

I have tried to keep track over the past three years of all of the startling blunders of the Bush administration. But it got to be so overwhelming, because every day I read the newspaper (it's amazing how many Republicans I meet that don't read the newspaper), there was more and more to be shocked about, to feel violated about, and to feel helpless and hopeless to negate. Almost nothing our president has done has been successful. And yet, Bush and the individuals who truly hold his power--Rove, Rummy, Cheney, etc.--are unwaivering in their insistance that these are the best of times without a doubt. They are immersed in a culture that allows reality to be semantic. They say the war is a "brilliant" maneuver and fully justified, but over the course of three years, the administration has presented reason after reason after reason after reason for justifying the effort. He has been a true flip-flopper, saying that Iraq and al Qaeda were bed buddies, and that Saddam had WMD (humiliating Colin Powell--the only insightful member of his cabinet--in front of the UN when he asserted that indisputible evidence was gathered that Iraq had weapons), and that Iraq harbord terrorists, that it was humanitarian, that it was to spread democracy. And yet they are contradictory--they say that they need to be reelected because we are not safe, because terrorism must be defeated, because the job isn't over, because any suggestion that we are not confident in our leader will bring more and more and more attacks. Yes, Americans--the only way to protect you and yours is to be afraid.

But you know what? I can type for hours and hours about why Bush's rationale is so glaringly dangerous but it wouldn't help, because if people don't see it now, they won't see it at all. I'm exhausted, friends, because it feels like I'm wrestling a hippo--dumb, defenseless, oblivious, and apathetic, but ultimately way, way more bigger than I am. And do you know who the hippo is? It's not just the administration. It's the whole culture of Bush, the whole passive trance that conservatism has placed on a substantial portion of the American people, and it's the people in my own community--those close to me--that throw up their hands or shrug and say "you know what? I don't want to talk about it." That's what makes it most exhausting--to see those whom you love and admire not give a shit. Not give a SHIT.

It's amazing that this election isn't decided already. But fear is powerful, and it is without question that Bush and his administration has a determined agenda to keep Americans afraid. That's exactly why decent Americans who have everything to lose under political conservatism say things like "I live in a 9-10/9-12 world. Everything changed after 9-11." That's why people like the Bush supporter from Illinois who told me that terrorists were running around her backyard can't snap out of it and look at what they're holding and say "hold on a minute--what are we doing with ourselves?" Fear is the greatest control mechanism in human history. It was alarming and deeply violating for me to see the latest Bush campaign add that shows a pack of wolves ready to strike in the forest. It was literally propoganda, designed to make suburban mothers and rural elderly shudder at the image of a wolf coming at their children and lifestyle and in fear, submit a vote for Dubya. It's the same tactic that abusive husbands use on their wives, and parents on their children--and dictators on their people. It's the lie that Bush is the antidote to evil, to tragedy, vulnerability and weakness.

Our president uses these tactics because he knows there is every reason to hold his administration accountable for a bogus war, tax cuts for the very wealthy, cut aid for housing subsidies for public housing, a banner education policy that cuts aid to struggling schools and rewards those that are already wealthy and rich in supplemental resources, an environmental policy that has been give-away after give-away to logging companies, mineral companies, oil companies and energy companies, and that has reversed the most successful gains in clean air and clean water regulations in the history of country, his ties to mega-corporations and the commencement of a recent FBI investigation into whether his administration illegally gave favor to Halliburton and it's subsidiaries, a health care policy that leaves the poor further stranded, a drug policy that gives greater profits to pharmaceutical giants, a social services policy that cuts programs for children and the poor, the biggest deficit in American history following its biggest surplus, a growing divide between the very rich and the very poor, the monthly expense in the BILLIONS of dollars of maintaining an occupation with no objective, no end in sight, and no international accountability, no justification, no benefit (except to Halliburton), no spread of democracy, no humanitarian bliss, and fought by disillusioned solidiers questions what the fuck they're doing in the desert, the obvious under the table talk of a draft, the rhetoric of arrogance and bullishness, a lack of humility, a refusal to rely on friends and allies, a refusal to intervene in the places in the world that deeply need true intervention like Sudan, where genocide--GENOCIDE--persist, a weapons program that nullified the Test Ban Treaty and is working to develop a 'missle shield' a la the trippy Cold War days of the Big Red Button and Doctor Strangelove, a business perspective that allowing the exportation of jobs to exploited third-world countries with incapacitated human rights accountability, the cultural bigotry of jingoism and pseudo-spiritualism that has wrongly equated true Christian faith and support for Bush, his glaring stupidity and dim-wittedness, and not to be forgotten--the Republican body at large, which just two weeks ago engineered an unprecented $137 billion tax break to corporations and special interests, and which in its demented fashion continues to insist that Bush is ordained, that steadfast arrogance is really just resolve, that resolve is strength, that strength is righteousness, that righteousness is the destiny of America, that America is the light to the world and the hope of the masses.

But everything that I've written above is uncompelling and only supplemental to the most relevant questions we must ask ourselves as a collective humanity.
The biggest questions of our present government are the same that apply universally:
Has this administration provided for the powerless, the oppressed, the poor, the needy, the wronged, the manipulated, those taken advantage of, the vulnerable, the succeptbile, the weak, the slaughtered, the hungry, and the sick? Has he fostered protection of creation? Has he been a global citizen? Accepted accountability? Fought for justice and forgiveness, love, compassion, empathy, sympathy, understanding, humility, social dignity, equality, and hope? Does our president and his leadership of our country represent Christ responsibly? Is our president advancing these things?

Can you really answer 'yes' to these things?

>>> www.sojo.net -- Sojourners: Christians for Peace and Justice <<<


Chanson d'installation: Bob Dylan, The Times They Are A-Changing

Chicago Happy Blues

Leaving the City

The righteous laugh at me. Sweltering and aching up and down last night in a Dutch House habitation capsule, I would have given anything to be back in my queen-size triple layer super firm-but-soft bed overlooking Lake Michigan, with her winds rushing through the windows. If I were still in Chicago, I would have awakened this morning to a damp, cloudy day-typically a brilliant rarity in summer but comparatively frequent this 2004-with a 20th-floor view on axis with the Museum of Science and Industry and the vernal lushness of Jackson Park's mature stock of arborlings beyond. I moved away from Chicago yesterday, with two monolithic duffle bags of all that was left to be taken. On my way to the commuter train I took countless times into the city for work and play, I walked a last time along the edge of the park with its tall canopy of street tree-tops, passed my favorite restaurant in the city (and little did I know ten years ago when I first visited it that I would one day live a block away), and waited briefly one last time for the University Park express train on the 55th-56th-57th Street Platform in lovely, vintage Hyde Park, where the streets smell of Lakescent, dreamy streetscapes compell you to nap, and where it seems that folks should walk down the street in fedoras and summertops and twirl from the lamposts and talk of mild scuttlebutt--trading the news on Old Man Peabody, Eleanor: Hyde Park's favorite bank teller, the five-and-dime, the South Shore Line on the Chicago and South Bend, Alderman Bailey, and the day's dooseys. Didja see the Herald this morning Bert? By golley! It will take time to adjust to not swimming in the lake every afternoon after a long workday just north of the Loop. The revetement at Promontory Point where I dipped into a clean
and soft Lake Michigan as the sunlight got thick in haze and the din of Lakeshore Drive fused with the breezes, and where old men sit on the benches under trees in straw hats smoking pipes and sharing stories backgrounded by somebody's jazz on an old radio, became so quickly emblematic of Chicago my home. I have long argued that a sense of place its place in the continuity of our experience makes an environment home. Living in Chicago always felt like home, not only because I was integrated and rooted so quickly in the fabric of the neighborhood, city, and region at large (think Lake Michigan), but also because it was explicitly and inherently another corner of my dear Midwest, another depot for those swell Midwesterners and their sense of scale, assuming and enacting their lives with a sense of regionality that starts "out there" and "around here" in surrounding, and then moves in to the city, the neighborhood, the block, the building, the household, the self, the nature of self, only to bounce back and reverberate along the same path outward again. Out East, they think the region exists to serve, to define oneself with self-interested selfness. The Northeast? It's what makes me important, they say. It's what makes me better, they say. But here in Chicago, and here in Michigan and among the native non-Metro-Detroiters in Ann Arbor, we have a sense of territory. Territory v. zone; cultureshed and identityshed and attitudeshed v. the region exists for me. Because I take root in this territory, a landscape of collectivity, even though it is often weakly conceived of or ignored, Chicago was another place for me, a branch of my rootedness, and a story for me to adopt, partake in, and then leave not with angst and oblivion but with a realization of consequence and continuity, and with another story in my metastory (*wink* that one's for you, Alex). Alright, I'll stop gushing. The point is, Chicago: adopted me, I adopted it. It's sad leaving,but fulfilling, because living there was in no way detached from my experience at large.


Chanson d'installation: Arvo Part, Spiegel im Spiegel (Mirror in the mirror)

Metropolitan Diary

Anecdote of life in New York

I must disclaim this: I am staunchly against life lessons on e-mails or blog posts.
But this one, even though there's a life-lesson built in, typifies a certain
New York attitude--that everybody 'makes it' one way or the other. It comes from
the Metropolitan Diary feature in Monday's New York Times. It's a great Monday
treat that takes me back to the good things about life in New York, and as an ex-
resident I find that I appreciate it a great deal. It follows:


Dear Diary:

In the late 1950's, when I was just out of law
school, I had the responsibility of taking an early-
morning train to the city to drop off some papers at
a Wall Street firm. This was in the days when there
were no faxes, no e-mail and no FedEx.
When I had completed my duties and had picked
up some papers in response, having time to spare and
it being a Wednesday, I thought I would take in a
matinee.
Thus I found myself at the box office behind an
older man, clearly there for the same purpose. As I
recall, there was a discussion back and forth as to
seat location and then price, etc., which involved a
certain amount of if not negotiation, then certainly
adjustmet, until the buyer seemed satisfied, took his
ticket and left.
It now being my turn, the purveyor said something
to the effect of what seats were left and what the
prices were. In response I asked if I could get a
seat pretty much in the same place, and at the same
price, as the person before me.
His reply was memorable. "Sonny boy," he said,
"don't spend your life trying to play the other guy's
hand; he was dealt different cards than you were. You
play your own. Now here's what I got."
I have never forgotten those words, and the
admonishment that came with them. They have helped me
along life's way.

George D. Brodigan


Chanson d'instillation: Willard Grant Conspiracy, Evening Mass

May

One year ends, another begins

May. These are the days of limbo. My summer employment is up in the air, and when prospective subletters call me I have to finesse them into waiting for my word--I will likely hear next week, if you can wait--so they don't run off and leave me with 460/month in rent to pay for the duration of the summer. It's an incredible web. Job begets income, income begets accommodations, accommodation begets space, space begets the environment to do what I do when I'm not doing what I do: write stories and shorts, make webpages for me and [mystical] clients, draw, the photographing of things, scheme travels and adventures. All the things that school ordinarially consumes. May is the days of limbo.

I began May with frantic communication to align summer employment. When I swiftly and effectively had contacts and channels secured I fled Ann Arbor with a weekend in Chicago, where I stayed in Wheaton and was interiorally
divereted from the reality of summer, and exteriorally basking in its freedom. I spent good time with dear friends, and the weekend was a validation of sorts. Validated were the years of friendship building with both Andrew and Megan as our very separate lives were present to each other for a few brief days and what resulted was indeed something collective, as though there was a history capsule that we could all plug in and find a way to coexist. All real friendships can be picked up and moved. Even Megan--yes, you Megan, my dear bundle of festering angst--even you have a history capsule. Backpacking came next, with Rich and Godwin, and we hiked the Manistee River Trail/North Country Trail in a few days of much banter and bizzare affairs. Godwin consistenly pointed out fallow tree trunks along the terrain smoothened by rain and wind but no less present than they ever have been; probably more striking if Godwin was compelled to point them out. I harassed him with Bush jokes and the sarcastic, detrimental humor that I share with friends. Insult is love, love a flower of thorns. Rich lamented his girth and nature's own harassement upon various worlds of his trunk. Crying 'I'm a fat bastard!' from the mountaintops was a spiritual howl, and Rich was full of bemoanings. This past weekend, I spent another brief time away from the Deuce in western New York with five other friends who comprised part of the SLT at URC. No agenda, no program, no leadership paradigm, no expectations. The fact that such quality times came out of these conditions shows how real a team we were this year. All but one went for a morning swim in the 50-degree rain, and were fortunate to experience the deep-green and smooth warmth of the waters of Findley Lake. Brilliant. We were the Big Chill of URC, each with separate lives, but each with a reason to share them for the moment.

I want to get out of here again. I want to hand-select people to count each other among firends and then go and have adventures with them, and not neglect our souls and histories. I want to weave together stories despite relationships and twisted ideas of "stage in life" and age gaps, and I want to see people move with diligence and criticism at Intervarsity instead of setting their minds and hearts on the table waiting for a student leader to come around and validate their commitment to the message for them. I want the summer to be full of rain and clouds and dry warmth and apathy, shame, guilt, and the ambiguous motives absent. Why do we see our lives as being coursed by the current of time? Why can't we be like a bend in the river--a tree rooted into the bank that watching the current of time go by? Frames of reference make the difference here. I don't want to be at the mercy of time, because there's not a way that I can be. I want time to be the great renderer of that which I'm already rooted into (and for that matter that which surrounds me along the bank). Why can't people forget their ideas every once in a while and accept a new prompt cleanly--without exterior expectations and principles, measures, meters, rhyme, adages, received tokens of what is and is not. Why can't the Pistons just win the Eastern Finals already. Don't Americans realize that there are fields and houses and Mason jars sitting on wood shelves with cicadas and katydids and crickets buzzing about in the early evening of a woodsy summer? What happened to our collective sense of melancholy? Shit ya'll--the world's a pretty fucked up place. Shouldn't we have some sort of shared sense of trauma, unfairness, doom, strife, beauty, pain, pleasure, motivation or will? Man, I'm just talkin, I can't even set it straight in my head. I can just write it down. I'm just talkin. To all of you getting married out there--frankly: don't mess it up. Don't be stupid and negligent and forget who you are. Don't be self-righteous and passive. You owe a hand in a collective melancholy just as much as anybody else. May is limbo.


Chanson d'installation: David Gray, Please Forgive Me

As my hair grows, so does our relationship

I shall defenestrate thee, oh scissors

As my hair becomes longer, I increasingly find it making its way into my mouth. Nasty, really.
But coming out of the shower tonight, for the first time in my life, I responded by chewing.
Freshly cleaned hair that's thick like mine is a fine gnawing toy late in the day. Of all the
virtues and benefits to long[er] hair, its chewability is among the most compelling. Imagine
if this becomes habit--I will be known as he who chews his hair, the suckler of skull sprouts,
the 'nick gnasher (as in beatnick, since they all had long hair, right? right.). Well, foremost,
freshly cleaned hair tastes like Australian wildflowers because that's what my shampoo
tastes like. A related event also occurred today, when the lady at the bagel shop admitted
that she awoke to find her straightener broken a week ago and has yet to recover from the
trauma. She asked me if I used a straightener myself, seeing my long[er] hair. I told her
that no, I in fact absolutely do not, but admitted sheepishly that I am now carrying a hair
brush around in my messenger bag (the man purse of architects, particularly when hair
brushes are to be found in them). From the bagel shop exchange, I scored three free over-
cooked bagels--just the way I like them. Thanks, hair.


Chanson d'installation: uhm, uh, Sunny Day Real Estate, Days Were Golden (*wink* to TiHB)

Assorted Yarn

From the streets of my existence

Yesterday, a fine near-70 degree day in March, I stood outside listening to 12 voicemails on my phone as the
fortuitous warm winds blew at me. It was a wind-bath.

A few days ago, walking home from the bus after school, I headed up Washington, positing whether to go
home and make dinner or go to get tea. I stopped a random woman on the street, and asked her whether
I should go home and make dinner or go to get tea. She smiled, and with great conviction said that I should
go get tea. It was a nice treat, she said. So, I did. I mean, that's why I asked her--so I wouldn't have to
make a decision.

In order to make pancakes this morning, we needed eggs. So Alex and I walked a block to the Farmer's
Market in Kerrytown and bought farm eggs.

They came like swallows

Last weekend, for some reason, I won second place in the Willeke Design Prize. Only two people win awards in
this competition every year, and to some degree it's a big deal. At least it will look good on my graduate school
applications, particularly for those schools which are close with Michigan. Though I was convinced I was not
going to win, I decided to go to the reception on Saturday morning anyway and hear who would. Meul came
with me (God bless you Meul). They announced my name and as the blood rushed out of my head I could nothing
but stand there frozen unsure what to do. The expression on my face was comparable to that which I would
have if overhearing utterly tragic news (along the lines of a friend being raped, atomic weapon deployed, a
parent or sibling dying, etc). On a tangent, I think my room is invested because there is a strange rustling in the
closet as I type this. In short, I was terrified, shearly and completely terrified. I could feel the eyes staring at me
and the smiles of people of whose names I am clueless. Without thinking, I started clapping. My retrospective
excuse was that it was in hope that I would be ambiguous. It probably didn't work; I recall my body being held
in a position akin to being stopped suddenly in mid-stride during a slow stroll. I was awkward, gangly, gumpy,
insecure. Horrified, I walked up to Meul and whispered, can we get out of hear now? We left before hearing the
first place winner, and we ditched the reception.

I have recognized this year how timid I am. It's always been obvious that I'm shy (and those of you that are
dropping your jaws saying 'what!! what the hell he's shy!?' I say that I am dammit), but the problem that I have
seen in this recently through things like winning the Willeke Prize is that it can be extremely selfish. I left the
reception because I'm not good with honor--it makes me deeply uncomfortable and I became instantly inward
as though an industrial strength vaccuum sucked in my personality and trapped it in my body. But at the same time,
I did not show humility. It was not a lack of humility related to pride, but one related to vulnerability. It takes
humility to be vulnerable because it takes trust to be vulnerable. Though I had a responsiblity as one who is
honored, as a colleague, as a student, and as a member of the community to stick around and meet those who
feel that congratulations are due, and who awarded me the prize, to meet alumni who are interested in things
like this and accept the honor with grace, I turned my back to that responsibility and in my own anguish went
out the back door.

I now see where my timidness has effected other people. I am often terrified of presumption, and inherently
assume that social consequences will follow from overcoming shyness and communicating with people. Often,
I am unconfident in my ability to articulate and express my experience and thus don't even try. My fear in this
comes from things in my past, much of it from a bad relationship, and as a result there's no quick solution.
Nonetheless, despite its sources it has hurt people in the past, and I have missed great opporunities. And this
is curious...because someone in the past showed herself to be apathetic when I stepped out I began avoiding
stepping out and became apathetic myself. This is trite...I shouldn't be sharing this on my fuckin' blog...this
isn't a catharsis afterall. Do I make sense?

Chanson du jour: Indigo Girls, Hey Jesus

Rock Climbing

A few weeks ago (...right...) a bunch of us from URC went rock climbing. I now have my coveted
'top roping' card. I, dear sir, am a top roper. This means, oh humble reader, that I
have the ability to save your life, and that makes me a life-saver. And being a life-saver makes
me a death-defeater. And being a death-defeater makes me inherently supernatural, for how
else are we to defeat death? And being supernatural makes me an angel or spirit or other sort
of spiritual entity that happens to wield to some capacity the power of God. So, remember that
next time you see me and all others with Planet Rock 'Top Roping' cards and be attentive--for we,
afterall, are angels.

Chanson du installation: Big Ditch Road, Waiting for the Fall

Snow's falling again

When I left the house this morning, it was snowing, and it continued to snow all day. It was a day for snow.
In order to catch a film of interest at the Michigan Theater, I left the studio this afternoon early to have ample
time to meet up with other folks watching and maybe a quick cup of earthbrew. However, the bus from
North Campus never came; it was snowing too hard, and the buses were all delayed. After waiting at the
stop for a good twenty-five minutes or so, I decided to go and play the piano at the music building until the
fuss of traffic had subsided and my chances of getting a bus were possibly greater. At this point, of course, I
knew I wouldn't be able to catch the flick. But after looking around the music building for a bit and passing up
many empty practice rooms, I realized that what I really wanted to do was not play the piano but walk in the
snow. Seeing the transit situation as it was, I decided to take advantage of the delayed buses and the
ideal snow to walk back to State Street on Central. Typically, this is considered a long walk. A very long walk.
Typically, traffic moves along the four-lane boulevard with noise and speed like a freeway and the idea of
walking along it is a bleak idea. But because Fuller was at a stand-still, the noise was reduced (with the help
of the snow, too) and the expanses of the lanes on Fuller were filled in with many interesting capsules of
folks listening to the radio or music or pulling at their hair. Walking along Fuller I passed cars at a pace that
must have seemed frustrating to the drivers. I was never passed by a single car--not even close. Many
people decided to make the walk from North Campus this afternoon, they too unable to catch a bus. Indeed,
many buses were snarled in the traffic, full of people that should be walking. Folks who set out from the path
in front of the music building walked along in groups, laughing and musing on the unusual situation. When I
came to the river, I stopped on the bridge and looked over the water. Snow lined the branches of the trees
along the bank and pieces of ice floated down the river. The maudlin eyes through which I viewed it almost
made me sick (HA! that would have really made the snow extra-special), but I couldn't deny that it was
pretty. It made me want to be away from the city, although I must also say that the city is sort of idyllic at
times like this--a town among nature, not hidden or safe from whatever inconveniences we might assign it.
On my way to Central, I walked up the southern ridge of the valley, where the hospital sits. From there,
you can see most of Fuller as well as North Campus, including the hills along the northern ridge where Fuller
Court, etc. cut through. By this time, the sun was perhaps half-set, maybe a bit more. The snow obliterated
the view after a half-mile or thereabouts, so the continuous line of stalled traffic along the entire view of
Fuller eventually faded into headlights and tailights east of North Campus. It was beautiful, particularly with
the privilege to walk along the Arboretum. When I arrived to the Diag, the light had become that purplish
silvery blue that only occurs when it's snowing in the last fifteen minutes of daylight. It's a rare light, but one
that always makes me glad it's winter. Folks are leaving work and school and the city quietly bustles along,
even if the bustling is only in the mild hum of car engines and distant horns in the comatose traffic. The
decision to walk was a very good one. For some sappy reason, I experienced one of the most beautiful
things I have in a long time.

Chanson du installation: J.S. Bach, Sonata for Flute, Harp and Cello in G minor

The second day of school

Hwaet! It bothers me immensely that by the second day of the semester, I am burdened with some of the most frivolous work
assigned my entire collegiate run. It's simply work that I only artificially have time for--articificially because I set aside time to
do that work--duped and tricked, forced and extorted into the autonomous commitment to do whatever work assigned despite
its value. I have too much other stuff to be concerned with:

1. I commited to compose an ensemble piece to be played in church but haven't begun
2. I need to work to develop the 50+ rolls of still unprocessed film on my bookshelf
3. My bookshelf contains exactly 51 unread or mostly unread books, many of them too exquisite not to read
4. I have hundreds and hundreds of photographs to scan, burn to CDs, and catalogue
5. I have tens of compositions to finish composing
6. I still haven't read the entire Bible
7. Of all the road trips I have planned, I have taken exactly 3 of 10, only one of them non-local (Boston-NY-Princeton)
8. I have three academic essays to complete and submit for publication
9. A creative writing course to make me eligible for the Hopwoods?: impossible
10. STILL need to write and play violin parts for Dawn's CD, and she doesn't even need me anymore
11. It's been over a year since I began the URC book table, and I need to tend it a second time yet
12. I've lost my chance to apply for a Christian leadership grant for college students: it was my chance to turn roadtripping and
photography into an act of worship with the comfort of subsidization
13. Will I ever get into Detroit to take the 80 rolls of film it depends I take, or to begin the restoration of a townhouse?
14. Business cards and business website for Wield Associates
15. I thought I was going to continue studying Latin and Old English
16. I still haven't recorded my family's oral history
17. How am I going to go to Ireland on the cheap?
18. Spotieotiedopalicious angelage
19. Social science credit independent study?
20. record music with JB
21. write line verse for IV
22. rent a cabin in a UP state park in winter
23. record those of my compositions that I remember before I forget them
24. Write letters to my aunts and uncles on a regular basis
25. the list will continue...


Chanson du installation: about the bitterness of sweetness--Outkast, Da Art of Storytelling (yes, more Outkast)