Thursday, January 28, 2010

If you Think that Smelling Bad is Awful Try Being Brilliant

It’s an empty computer room packed to the walls with computers with large blank screens. I’ve adjusted the setting on mine to allow for maximum screen efficiency. It’s almost too big and I’m sitting too close. I am the only biological person in my family who doesn’t have glasses. My parents told us that they adopted Martha but they didn’t tell me they adopted me. My aunts tell me I have too many of my dad’s personality traits to not be his. I guess I agree. I’m so much like him it’s a little scary. There are differences between my dad and me though. Like my dad showers regularly and I don’t.

I didn’t shower for the entire month of December. It was actually pretty freeing. You go a whole month without a shower and the only thing you miss is warmth. I used to take showers all the time; when I was bored, when I was cold, when I wanted to shower, and the whole month of December I thought to myself, “why ever shower at all.” I’ve since started showering due to the demise of my emotions and the birth of my friend’s nostrils.

The funny thing is that I didn’t stink that bad. You might think that I wouldn’t have been able to smell how bad I stunk, but I could and it wasn’t as bad as you might think. Some classes of people smell more than others.
Fat people for some reason smell particularly bad and it’s always the same type of smell, that moist, I can’t reach all the places on my body, smell that makes your stomach wish it hadn’t eaten for the past month.
Hippies, who probably have gone my route of not showering but just never started again. I’m not sure what being connected to the Earth in a free-spirited love ever had to do with not showering. Perhaps it’s the fact that most of the Earth is covered in dirt and the thought of smelling like the Earth (even though hippies don’t smell as good as dirt) appeals to the whole connection thing.

Then, of course, there are old people, whom I can’t quite put my finger on. If you’ve been around an old person, you know what I’m talking about. Don’t worry, you’ll smell like them when you get older. It’s kind of like me saying to my brother, which I’d never thought I’d say to anyone, maybe you shouldn’t come to Boone for the weekend, I’d heard it’s supposed to snow a lot and I wouldn’t want you getting stuck. Never mind the fact that I hate myself for thinking about safety over fun and hanging out with my brother but keep in mind that when you get older you do things that older people do. It’s just a force of nature, or God.

I don’t fit into any of these categories. No one has ever thought I was fat. People have on very many occasions said to me for no apparent reason, other than to point out how shocked they are when they noticed, “Wow Page, you’re really skinny.” This fits into the category of people saying to me “have you always worn earrings,” or “when I first met you I thought you were drunk.”

Also, I haven’t ever been or wanted to be a hippie. Not because I don’t like juggling or slack rope walking or wearing clothes that don’t even match a little bit but rather because I don’t buy the whole connection with Earth thing. I don’t believe in Mother Nature anymore than I believe in Man-made global warming. I think most people’s view about Christians is that they don’t care about the Earth and therefore they use the argument “doesn’t the Bible say that you should be good stewards of the Earth?” But I’ll tell you that I’m a Christian and I love the Earth. I love using its resources for my personal consumption: food to eat, oil to drive, light to live, but I also love the things that I can do on Earth that make life worth living: hiking up profile trail at Grandfather mountain, jumping off 60 foot waterfalls (7 waterfalls within a 30 minute drive), and sitting in the grass reading a book with someone you love while the sun beams down on her face. The Bible also says that the Earth is here for human beings and for us to use it. Genesis 1:29: “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves upon the earth.” Being a good steward can be seen in a lot of different ways.

And no I’m not old, quite the opposite actually, even though I feel old being 24 and still in my undergrad, which brings us to the moral of this story. Do things and experience life. It might not mean taking a month to not shower (I wanted to go 6 months) but I challenge you to go a week without showering. I hate to sound like all the old people out there but what they say I’ve found to be true. Get rid of your phobias, play a board game you’ve never played, be socially awkward just for the fun of it, try out for a play, experiment with nature, and go camping. Be different from the way you are because you’re uninteresting and you’re boring me to death. love. war. 

Things to read:

The Unlikely Disciple by Kevin Roose

Things to think about:

-adultery sneaks up on you unless you put things in place to not allow it to happen
-which one of your friends is keeping a secret from you that you should know

Friday, January 22, 2010

Dealing with the law's my specialty

I’ve been to court five times in the past three months. I’ve been arrested twice for the same offense. Been to jail once for two hours with a guy named James, who gets in arguments with his wife, and they beat each other, but they still love each other, and Chris who just can’t seem to pay child support, but feels that having sex and reproducing is a right, poor Chris. I’ve been in four pairs of handcuffs, one pair of shackles, and one pair of comfy Watauga County Detention Center issued sandals. I've ridden in three different cop cars. Tears have come out of my eyes once, not crying tears, but simple tears the night I went to bed after being arrested. It weights on you emotionally. I’ve had three talks with different lawyers and appeared before the magistrate twice, along with The Honorable Ted McEntire, with an empty argument that led to no avail.

All this due to one disorderly conduct ticket I received one night outside of Jimmy John’s. I was the only sober person, the only one bleeding, and the only one to get a ticket. The head officer on duty was a dolt. Twenty eight hundred dollars later, the ticket was dropped by the officer who wrote it because of new evidence, and a helpful friend. I wasn’t even disorderly. But I have a nice crooked nose to show for whatever type of behavior I was exhibiting.

After experiencing all of this, I’ve decided a few things and I’d like to share them with you. First, that I’m reexamining my life. I know it might sound stupid but sometimes in life you have to experience things in order to know they suck. And this is one of those times. Second, that I have a lot of good friends who have helped me along the way. Third, that while I’ve had to deal with a few crazy things in my life this is still no match to what some children have to deal with every single day. If you’re reading this, you don’t know what it’s like to be starving and neither do I. Or the women who are in sex slavery, having to perform sexual acts on all types of men and who don’t have a choice. Or the people that dictators have put in jail just because they said what they were thinking. I would encourage you to go one day without eating or drinking and every time you get hungry, think about all the people around the world who go days without. And then don’t buy that thing you were going to buy and give money to an organization that helps people…not animals. And then call me and we can talk about ways for you to get involved with what’s going on around the world. If only I could find my mugshot to show you. love. war. 

 Things to think about:
-A revolution. Or rather starting one.
-Obama. Take what you think, throw it out, and apply some objective reasoning to his actions.
-honing your skills, deliberately, to prepare for a rough future.

Links:
http://www.notforsalecampaign.org/  dealing with sexual slavery
http://www.compassion.com/ dealing with hunger.
(I’ve been a sponsor for over 7 years)

Sunday, January 3, 2010

Sometimes I'd Rather Build a Fire than a Relationship


All I want is for you to feel some strong bloody emotion toward me. My mind was racing as I thought. The billows of smoke were collecting in my head, filling up the space where my logic center should have existed. I don’t know what I want but I know I don’t want this. Logic in relationships serves about as much merit as emotions in ping-pong. I didn’t want to date the chick, hell, she’d have driven me to commit adultery. My brain was coughing, asking me to calm down. This is why we need labels…labels are very important. I’m always very, very chary of the person that doesn’t want to put a label on a relationship. There is always something that they are trying to hide.

I knew that thoughts come to my head faster when other people are being creative, I just never knew that was the reason. I guess you can call it inspiration. My mind was racing unlike it ever had trying to go to sleep. My mind is a bloody racing machine. I try to be inspirational but what’s the point of being inspirational if your inspiration doesn’t inspire.

I’m not even sure why I was trying to be creative right now. I just got done watching 500 Days of Summer. When movies emulate real life, it makes you not want to be alive. When relationships don’t follow properties that you’ve grown to understand, you wonder if those relationships are even worth having. Sort of like if you don’t understand the properties of fire it’s obvious that you would be afraid of it…or the little change in normality of it.

I just needed to calm down. It was dark inside and out. I lay on my sleeping bag attempting to try and not think about her.  All of my friends liked her…some a little more than others. And still one more than all the rest.

I walked outside and called a friend. It was cold and I stood on a chair to keep my bare feet off the concrete. Do you think it’s possible to listen to your own advice about things? I knew I lost her as a friend. I didn’t really want to keep her as a friend, although I was for sure that I could make it work. I’m able to make sacrifices in relationships and I make a lot but this time I wasn’t able to sacrifice enough…and if I did I wouldn’t be Page anymore.

I thought about her all night. It kept me up most of the time. I remember going to the middle school dance with her. We danced. I Sat. She danced with someone else.  I sat. I watched. I was jealous. I guess I’m still jealous now. She’s unlike any girl I’ve ever seen. Her damn hair is so thick that it’s almost unmanageable.  I remember another time I went to visit her in college. She wasn’t that happy I was there but we were boyfriend and girlfriend so she had to suck it up and deal.

People all around asked me constantly why don’t I marry her. The truth was that I wasn’t attracted to her. We were great friends and I thought that people weren’t happy with me just being friends with her. I was there for her when she needed me and she was there for me when I needed her, which was a lot. I don’t pretend to think I know what was going through my mind most of my life; I just know what I felt. It’s obvious that you shouldn’t approach politics with emotion, which leads to liberalism and eventually socialism, but I think approaching relationship with emotions is the only way.

Her dancing was something of a mystery. I wanted her real bad when I watched her dance. It was as if she was a natural. Like a damn Tamara Karzavina or something and just as beautiful. She wasn’t a ballerina though, but all dance is alike when you’re watching women doing it. Her ability to harmonize almost left me in a state of shock.  The truth is that I don’t know what I want. But I don’t think that anyone knows what they want outside of a list and few key qualities.

I’m experiencing vertigo thinking about this so I’m going to stop writing. Love. War. 

Things to think about:

-Red is a way better color than blue
-Divorce is never acceptable unless you were cheated on
-How many times you’ve logged onto Facebook today.  
-God’s laws aren’t to hinder you but rather to protect you
-Why does it seem that women are the ones to cook and not men?

Things to read: