This is one of those days where I just start typing and see what happens, so watch out. It's kind of like how I talk. I have several options for what I could say, but the first one that comes out is usually the one that is most clearly a poor choice in hindsight. At least in writing I can go back and erase the awkwardness that doesn't serve my purpose.
In small talk at work it's the worst. I am one of those poor misguided saps that has an internal dialogue going on in my head at all times. It's like an announcer at a hotdog eating contest, only my life is about 90% less interesting than a hotdog eating contest. So I'm giving the play-by-play on scratching my nose and what shade of blue on jeans says "Hey, I'm a fun guy, look how blue these jeans are" when someone comes up and says,
"Sloan, hows it going?"
Suddenly torn from my wonderland, I respond with:
"There's a good one today!"
This is accompanied always with a big cheesy smile and direct eye contact. Someone told me once that smiling and making eye contact helps make up for always saying stupid things. I think they are wrong. I think it just makes people look at me like I'm an immigrant or something -- theres a flush of confusion followed immediately by this little hint of sympathy.
"Oh, he's adjusting to a new culture."
On the worst of these occasions there was a guy named Jon that I kind of knew through friends of friends, you know, we had talked before. A couple of guys went with me to Walmart and walking down the isle and I spot this guy from 15 feet away. Dead collision course, we both see each other, but I am not at all prepared to greet him.
"Hey, what's up?" Jon asks.
"COOL!" I loudly respond.
I catch that look of complete loss as we pass and I don't look back. We make it another 10 steps in silence before one of the guys next to me finally says, "Did you just say, 'cool' to that guy?"
Yes. Yes I did.
Sunday, December 26, 2010
Monday, December 13, 2010
A 2D Life in a 3D World.
Remember the 90s? I do, kind of. I remember when Star Wars was re-realeased in theaters and my uncle insisted the whole family go. Then there was the time my family went to Washington DC and I saw Men in Black at a mall theater. At some point there was a failed attempt at cub scouts and church league basketball but those are memories too deeply repressed to bring to light now. Happily, scattered amongst the Goosebumps books and doodles of monsters on my homework, there was a very pleasant childhood to be had there.
Now, thinking back on it, I am confronted with the fact that there were 24-year-olds in 1995. Somewhere on this floating pea-shaped celestial mass there was a 24 year old man doing, you know, 1995 things. Maybe he was listening to Gangsta's Paradise, or Boombastic, or (secretly) Kiss From a Rose. Maybe he was having his first taste of a life with bills and real responsibilities, just like my present-day self. I wonder if he was as excited about the Nintendo 64 as I was. Who knows?
All I do know is that 1995 was not that long ago and now that 24-year-old is 39. I don't know who or where he is but sometimes, when it gets very quiet, I can hear his sighing. It is a heavy sigh, but not one weighted with remorse or regret or a longing for what had and what could have been; it is weighted simply with age and experience. A noble sigh passing through the home of a common man. He puts his arms behind his head, leans back into his favorite chair and as he does, from somewhere else in the house he hears the stirring of his family. The corner of his mouth turns up involuntarily. His birthday is next week -- he'll be 40. How quick and beautiful is the pace he's been made to keep in getting here.
Saturday, December 11, 2010
I Knew a Charmander Once...
Thinking deep thoughts is fun sometimes*, and sometimes it's fun to just enjoy a day of, you know, not thinking. On this day, I toured a local business, ate delicious chicken, played video games and watched half of the new Star Trek movie. You know what else? I enjoyed the heck out of it.
Tomorrow is all work and very little play so soon enough the universe will balance itself out again.
As a final brain tease I leave you with a question: What period in U.S. History was the most "American?"
I know my answer, but will save the rant for later.
*Concession: the depth of my thought is still kiddy pool at best.
Tomorrow is all work and very little play so soon enough the universe will balance itself out again.
As a final brain tease I leave you with a question: What period in U.S. History was the most "American?"
I know my answer, but will save the rant for later.
*Concession: the depth of my thought is still kiddy pool at best.
Tuesday, December 7, 2010
Territorial Lawn Ornaments
O come, O come Emmanuel...
It is so cold. This isn't a cold that simply raises the hairs on the back of your neck, no; this is the kind of cold that North Carolinians involuntarily engage in small talk over. It is a deep-down cold that makes you run to your car and scream made-up words at the top of your lungs as soon as the door is closed. You know the cold I mean.
Tonight our church had a members meeting and we sang a few Christmas carols. To be honest the presentation was kind of awkward. Two guys with guitars took turns singing while the other one played most of the right notes. No drums or fancy lights, just a couple music leaders and a room that I feel certain was full enough to make a fire marshall breakdance. Even still, despite my own cynical tendency to look for what's out of place I was surprised to find myself singing along and even getting emotional. Crucially, I should point out that we did not sing "Christmas Shoes."
Earlier I mentioned that I like to write because it reminds me that I have a soul. If my life is any example, it's an easy thing to forget. Someone else reading this may not even agree that there's any real soul there to lose. Maybe their argument would be that the difference is merely semantics -- what I call a soul they call a conscience and we should be content to discuss it over a meal of culturally diverse food and part ways without consensus. I like debate but I don't like questions without motive of an answer, even if the answer isn't entirely rooted in something we can measure, taste, feel, or otherwise observe with our limited senses.
Still, for those of us who sing those carols to the God that they were written for, we must confess our limited senses harken to their maker. He senses perfectly and we sense "the best we know how," and by that we get a micro-image of their grander origins. Moreover, to be made in the image of the maker means that we make things. Being creative isn't an option, it's in our hearts and whether we're creating cupcakes or buildings or relationships or paragraphs, we're all instinctively modeling that behavior in some way, every day.
Pretty much, that is just cool, and I'm so thankful for it.
O come, O come Emmanuel ...
It is so cold. This isn't a cold that simply raises the hairs on the back of your neck, no; this is the kind of cold that North Carolinians involuntarily engage in small talk over. It is a deep-down cold that makes you run to your car and scream made-up words at the top of your lungs as soon as the door is closed. You know the cold I mean.
Tonight our church had a members meeting and we sang a few Christmas carols. To be honest the presentation was kind of awkward. Two guys with guitars took turns singing while the other one played most of the right notes. No drums or fancy lights, just a couple music leaders and a room that I feel certain was full enough to make a fire marshall breakdance. Even still, despite my own cynical tendency to look for what's out of place I was surprised to find myself singing along and even getting emotional. Crucially, I should point out that we did not sing "Christmas Shoes."
Earlier I mentioned that I like to write because it reminds me that I have a soul. If my life is any example, it's an easy thing to forget. Someone else reading this may not even agree that there's any real soul there to lose. Maybe their argument would be that the difference is merely semantics -- what I call a soul they call a conscience and we should be content to discuss it over a meal of culturally diverse food and part ways without consensus. I like debate but I don't like questions without motive of an answer, even if the answer isn't entirely rooted in something we can measure, taste, feel, or otherwise observe with our limited senses.
Still, for those of us who sing those carols to the God that they were written for, we must confess our limited senses harken to their maker. He senses perfectly and we sense "the best we know how," and by that we get a micro-image of their grander origins. Moreover, to be made in the image of the maker means that we make things. Being creative isn't an option, it's in our hearts and whether we're creating cupcakes or buildings or relationships or paragraphs, we're all instinctively modeling that behavior in some way, every day.
Pretty much, that is just cool, and I'm so thankful for it.
O come, O come Emmanuel ...
Friday, December 3, 2010
When They All Stare at You
Wilmington in December is like an old refrigerator. It's cold, but not too cold; you'll keep your juice there, but dairy storage makes your nervous. Visiting my college town is akin to finding a stack of Polaroids in an old wooden chest that I can step into and walk around for a while. The people in those photographs are gone but the spaces are still there, framing nothing but charming in their own right. The few faces that are still here have, like my own, adopted new and subtle differences. One such face belongs to my friend and former roommate, Bryan Boinott. He has graciously offered me the space on his couch for a couple of nights.
Bryan is one of those rare people who, having always wanted to be a rock star, may actually end up being one by sheer determination and an inability to acknowledge the odds. This excites me. I love meeting and knowing eccentric folk who's flagship quirks make them material for greatness. By my observation, "normal" people never aspire to anything but beautiful normalcy. That's a gift in many ways, but it's also fun to know people who have talent and drive that teeters on the edge of what's healthy for the rest of us. Those people will, if nothing else, always have good stories for telling over coffee -- or in Bryan's case, Gatorade.
This morning was music stores and sea-horses as we traveled around town in Tate's Jeep. It's fun to pass time by imagining the future. In this particular case, I think the futures we imagined had each of us in possession of new gear. Tate, a Fender Deluxe Twin Reverb, Bryan a new 88-key keyboard, and myself, well, pretty much anything I saw. I even wanted a clown fish from the pet store. For anyone who has ever wanted a new toy, is it not true that wanting it is usually far sweeter than actually having it? The only exception would have to be a Scrooge-McDuck vault of gold coins, complete with diving board. I'll only truly be happy when that is firmly in my possession.
Bryan is one of those rare people who, having always wanted to be a rock star, may actually end up being one by sheer determination and an inability to acknowledge the odds. This excites me. I love meeting and knowing eccentric folk who's flagship quirks make them material for greatness. By my observation, "normal" people never aspire to anything but beautiful normalcy. That's a gift in many ways, but it's also fun to know people who have talent and drive that teeters on the edge of what's healthy for the rest of us. Those people will, if nothing else, always have good stories for telling over coffee -- or in Bryan's case, Gatorade.
This morning was music stores and sea-horses as we traveled around town in Tate's Jeep. It's fun to pass time by imagining the future. In this particular case, I think the futures we imagined had each of us in possession of new gear. Tate, a Fender Deluxe Twin Reverb, Bryan a new 88-key keyboard, and myself, well, pretty much anything I saw. I even wanted a clown fish from the pet store. For anyone who has ever wanted a new toy, is it not true that wanting it is usually far sweeter than actually having it? The only exception would have to be a Scrooge-McDuck vault of gold coins, complete with diving board. I'll only truly be happy when that is firmly in my possession.
Tuesday, November 30, 2010
She Shoots True
Have you been to Fayetteville Street lately? I've got to tell you, they really have dolled the place up nicely. I stopped by on the way home from coffee this evening because I was under the impression that things stayed open downtown past 6 PM. Well, places are open but mostly places that have cover charges and all I needed was a tube of toothpaste. No luck.
Raleigh has a peculiar quality that I am more and more growing fond of and that's the fact that it empties out. The place is like a madhouse during the day but on evenings like these you can walk for what feels like two or three blocks without seeing another soul. There's nothing to keep you company but your own footsteps, trouncing back and forth between skyscrapers. Fayetteville street really is beautiful -- pinned at both ends by the Memorial Auditorium and the old Capitol building. Its slate gray brick and jumbo decorative planters are also a nice touch, though sometimes it can feel a bit like a mall with traffic lights. The occasional hobo reminds you that there won't be a Dippin' Dots nearby.
From now on when folks come into town I'll have a new idea for where to take them, especially if we have time to kill on a weeknight. Perhaps not so much when we need toiletries.
By the way -- Dippin' Dots has been ice cream of the future for at least 15 years. I'm getting suspicious.
Raleigh has a peculiar quality that I am more and more growing fond of and that's the fact that it empties out. The place is like a madhouse during the day but on evenings like these you can walk for what feels like two or three blocks without seeing another soul. There's nothing to keep you company but your own footsteps, trouncing back and forth between skyscrapers. Fayetteville street really is beautiful -- pinned at both ends by the Memorial Auditorium and the old Capitol building. Its slate gray brick and jumbo decorative planters are also a nice touch, though sometimes it can feel a bit like a mall with traffic lights. The occasional hobo reminds you that there won't be a Dippin' Dots nearby.
From now on when folks come into town I'll have a new idea for where to take them, especially if we have time to kill on a weeknight. Perhaps not so much when we need toiletries.
By the way -- Dippin' Dots has been ice cream of the future for at least 15 years. I'm getting suspicious.
Saturday, November 27, 2010
The Bacon-Chocolate Effect
Time and Italian dressing are two very similar things. Both flow, both separate into different parts on their own, and both have a certain tanginess which makes them distinctive. I believe I enjoy the passage of Italian dressing more than time, but that's beside the point.
Have you ever visited a strange place, only to visit it again once it was a not-so-strange place and realize that you'd been there before? I like it when that happens. For example, growing up I rarely came to Raleigh. My family homestead is something like 45 minutes away, but it was one of those things you only did when a distant relative died and you had to get a new suit coat or if someone needed to do their Christmas shopping at the mall. I usually was just excited at the prospect of going to Steak Escape and Barnes and Nobel, (two things I still get excited about, believe it or not).
I loved books growing up and my favorite author throughout middle school was a fellow by the name of Brian Jacques. He wrote a series of novels, most of them about medieval-era talking members of the rodent family, that I just adored. Visiting his fan page back in 2001 or 2002 revealed that he would be having a book signing at Quail Ridge Books in Raleigh. I went and had a grand old time getting two of my books signed. Fast-forward to 2008 when I got to know Raleigh properly as I interned at CCF and I had one of those moments. Stopping by the Whole Foods one day it hit me -- that time warp sensation that I had been there before. In what seemed like a slow-motion moment of crazy awesomeness, I twisted my head to the right just a bit and stared at the Quail Ridge Sign above me.
I think the reason I like it is because for a moment the world doesn't make sense. Just for a split second, the map you've built in your mind of the topography of this planet makes a dramatic shift in less time than it takes to read this sentence. It would be akin to gravity shutting off for about 2 seconds, only not as dramatic and with fewer confused and elated white guys having tried to dunk a basketball at the perfect moment. Magic. Something we could all use a little bit of, no matter how easy it is to rationalize later.
Have you ever visited a strange place, only to visit it again once it was a not-so-strange place and realize that you'd been there before? I like it when that happens. For example, growing up I rarely came to Raleigh. My family homestead is something like 45 minutes away, but it was one of those things you only did when a distant relative died and you had to get a new suit coat or if someone needed to do their Christmas shopping at the mall. I usually was just excited at the prospect of going to Steak Escape and Barnes and Nobel, (two things I still get excited about, believe it or not).
I loved books growing up and my favorite author throughout middle school was a fellow by the name of Brian Jacques. He wrote a series of novels, most of them about medieval-era talking members of the rodent family, that I just adored. Visiting his fan page back in 2001 or 2002 revealed that he would be having a book signing at Quail Ridge Books in Raleigh. I went and had a grand old time getting two of my books signed. Fast-forward to 2008 when I got to know Raleigh properly as I interned at CCF and I had one of those moments. Stopping by the Whole Foods one day it hit me -- that time warp sensation that I had been there before. In what seemed like a slow-motion moment of crazy awesomeness, I twisted my head to the right just a bit and stared at the Quail Ridge Sign above me.
I think the reason I like it is because for a moment the world doesn't make sense. Just for a split second, the map you've built in your mind of the topography of this planet makes a dramatic shift in less time than it takes to read this sentence. It would be akin to gravity shutting off for about 2 seconds, only not as dramatic and with fewer confused and elated white guys having tried to dunk a basketball at the perfect moment. Magic. Something we could all use a little bit of, no matter how easy it is to rationalize later.
Thursday, November 25, 2010
Craft Felt and the Mystery Woman
Have you ever just woken up and felt your physical humanity in a profound and unsettling way? Happens to me all the time. Maybe I'm just weird, or maybe it's God's gift that I would percieve just how temperal an existance this is. Maybe I'm full of crap. All I know is that some days I wake up and as the first fuzzy, bleach-blonde images of my bedroom stream to my retinas, I get the feeling. It happens when I strech in a certain way as to feel a rib brush againt my arm, or the bone of my cheek, and the thought that comes to mind is ...
"This is not me."
Such a thought is about 20 times deeper than I'm willing to go at 6AM -- an hour best spent pondering hot tea and English muffins.* Still, it's there and I am made to deal with it. Two eyes, two ears, a slightly crooked nose and a mouth from which so much awkwardness emits: these are the elements of the senses. From those elements, every detail of my life and existence is loaded into a wheelbarrow and dumped into my brain. Life, it seems, is percieved in the physical and yet it exists in some space between synapses. It's that space that both haunts and enchants me. While we all feel it, no one knows quite what to say of it unless they're attempting to refute its existence. Reality is in a way subjective and in a way not; It is largely built on-site through our own perceptions, but I ask: "In the bustling construction site of reality, where is my soul?"
For the answer I turn to a four year old Chihuahua and a battered old copy of a Star Wars novel. As good a place to start as any, I suppose. Mostly I think about writing or creating. Something in the activity usually reassures me that we're more than a cerebrum housed by our skulls and in its own way it's like having a conversation with my two known selves:
"Hello, Soul! You still in there?"
"Yep! Remember that kitten you kicked on the sidewalk last night? Without me you wouldn't have felt bad afterward."
"I still don't feel bad, though"
"Oh, bad example I guess."
Moving seems like a good plan too. I'm not talking about moving to another city or anything, I'm talking about keeping your life in motion. A good habit is to ask yourself if you're secure and comfortable. If the answer is yes, it is generally time to move. This constant revision slaps you in the face like a cool slice of lunch meat. NO. Do not sit on Park Place. Pass Go. Collect $200.00, and give some to a friend on your way back around the board. Wake up and remember that this game will end and when it does we somehow need the answer that we played it well.
And who is playing it, anyway? Is it this man? This foot I slide into a pair of Timberlands, or the skin that keeps my insides in or the heart that pushes oxygen through it all -- or is it the real me? My soul. That soul that speaks in the early hours of the day when all I know are the sheets on the bed and the gravity which inexplicably holds me there. It holds us all here, and one fine day if we're lucky and if our hope is justly invested - it's going to let us go.
*Incedentally it is not uncommon for me to ponder hot tea or English muffins at all hours of the day and night.
"This is not me."
Such a thought is about 20 times deeper than I'm willing to go at 6AM -- an hour best spent pondering hot tea and English muffins.* Still, it's there and I am made to deal with it. Two eyes, two ears, a slightly crooked nose and a mouth from which so much awkwardness emits: these are the elements of the senses. From those elements, every detail of my life and existence is loaded into a wheelbarrow and dumped into my brain. Life, it seems, is percieved in the physical and yet it exists in some space between synapses. It's that space that both haunts and enchants me. While we all feel it, no one knows quite what to say of it unless they're attempting to refute its existence. Reality is in a way subjective and in a way not; It is largely built on-site through our own perceptions, but I ask: "In the bustling construction site of reality, where is my soul?"
For the answer I turn to a four year old Chihuahua and a battered old copy of a Star Wars novel. As good a place to start as any, I suppose. Mostly I think about writing or creating. Something in the activity usually reassures me that we're more than a cerebrum housed by our skulls and in its own way it's like having a conversation with my two known selves:
"Hello, Soul! You still in there?"
"Yep! Remember that kitten you kicked on the sidewalk last night? Without me you wouldn't have felt bad afterward."
"I still don't feel bad, though"
"Oh, bad example I guess."
Moving seems like a good plan too. I'm not talking about moving to another city or anything, I'm talking about keeping your life in motion. A good habit is to ask yourself if you're secure and comfortable. If the answer is yes, it is generally time to move. This constant revision slaps you in the face like a cool slice of lunch meat. NO. Do not sit on Park Place. Pass Go. Collect $200.00, and give some to a friend on your way back around the board. Wake up and remember that this game will end and when it does we somehow need the answer that we played it well.
And who is playing it, anyway? Is it this man? This foot I slide into a pair of Timberlands, or the skin that keeps my insides in or the heart that pushes oxygen through it all -- or is it the real me? My soul. That soul that speaks in the early hours of the day when all I know are the sheets on the bed and the gravity which inexplicably holds me there. It holds us all here, and one fine day if we're lucky and if our hope is justly invested - it's going to let us go.
*Incedentally it is not uncommon for me to ponder hot tea or English muffins at all hours of the day and night.
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