UMAM

There is a thought discarded among a certain slice of young people: America is the land of the free, home of the brave, a blessing from God to the unworthy, white slaves. Yet in a quite different slice of elderly people another thought exists: America is infallible. And still another idea of "I don't care at all, as long as I have my cake and coke float."

My thoughts are as follows:

America,
My whore that won't leave,
my love that won't stay.



The history of the United States of America as well as its present state have brought me to tears for completely different reasons. I feel as patriotic as the president (an authority which I respect as God. should it be any different?) and have been moved quite a great deal more while saying the pledge of allegiance then while praying for God to bring my cat back from the dead. I use the prayer example to show the size of our prayers. Who is going to dream God's dreams for America (Matt Trivett, author)? What does it mean to be a Christian in America? What does it mean to be a man in America?

I know I'm being scattered, so is my heart. What can a man do in America to feel like a man? A woman to feel like a woman? A painful subject. Man: order black coffee, cut the lawn, stink up the toilet, grow a beard. The list grows short, mind you, for the average American man and what he is ALLOWED to do. Woman: I don't know I'm not a woman, first of all. I believe that the men of this country neither work hard enough, nor sleep well enough because of it. There is no Sabbath being observed. There is hardly manual labor to do. Everything is effecient. Things are simply not needed anymore. Americans do things in bulk. We are a large people seeking to allow more job opportunities, thus you end up with people playing sports for a living. A living. Totally not a living. America is not wild enough for the men, nor the women and miracles are far and wide, though we delude the word and say "Look around, they're everywhere."

I imagine I'll get a degree in something that I want to get a degree in for the sake of learning the trade. Then I'll go and do some manual labor for the rest of my life either in Trinidad in a garden, the coast of Maine as a fisherman, Canada as a lumberjack and probably the remainder of my life in Alaska, New Mexico and Iceland, living with the natives, hunting my food and getting tired enough to rest.

Where's God in this? I don't know yet. He is this, to me. His desires in me. We are a people far to easily pleased and not nearly hedonistic enough. We are lazy, we are proud, we are rich, we are careless. If we really sought pleasure, we would seek God (Piper).

A beauty about the Native American culture is their hate for waste.

So is my hope in some other-than culture? No, everything I have seen and will see can and will be taken away. I trust in God.

थिस day

This day, looking back with 20/20 vision, I hit rock bottom.
To say "the bottom" is one thing and "rock bottom" is another.

Oftentimes I have simply wished away the desires of my heart saying: "Why can't things just be simple and I like really love playing some sport or working on computers or something solid like that?" The heart of an artist is like a 13 year old girl with only one outfit to choose from, all of the time. It is so easily swayed and so easily discouraged. Hard work is the food, inspiration is the outcome of eating, and artwork is the outcome of harnessing the energy. Art cannot be forced. You cannot know this unless you are an artist. Nor this: an unfinished piece of art, whether it be anything from techno to t-shirt design, may very well drive an artist to their death, depending on their ability to withstand rock bottoms. Most of the time people think of the great artists as lazy and emotional, which is true in most cases. In my case, it is the opposite. I have the work ethic of an addicted marathon competitor and will get what needs to get done. What needs to get done is the issue. It's the rudder on the ship and the tail on the plane, the mind of the body. A thousand pounds of steel may be swayed by the slightest touch from the right angle and right position.

Well anyways, I crashed today. Felt worthless. Beat my brains out over a small project, unfinished and seeing no future.

And now I'm back since I've started over and succeeded in coming to a "stopping place" (which are very very very important).

And I have no more thoughts.