the care of the eternal soul is infinitely more important than that of the decaying body if indeed they are so separate as we imagine, which i doubt. this being the case, it would seem that housing and food for our spirits would demand our attention and humanitarian efforts with more legitimate force than our physical necessities. contrary to maslow's hierarchy, God is our only essential; more important than shelter or sustinance. but my physical mind questions still: isn't a roof over your head a necessary pre-requisite for the search for truth and meaning?
however... which position historically has facilitated growth in trust and connectedness with the source of all life: material security or physical want? safety or danger? the status of locatedness or wandering?
Stability (41%) moderately low which suggests you are worrying, insecure, emotional, and anxious. Orderliness (60%) moderately high which suggests you are, at times, overly organized, reliable, neat, and hard working at the expense of flexibility, efficiency, spontaneity, and fun. Extraversion (87%) very high which suggests you are overly talkative, outgoing, sociable and interacting at the expense too often of developing your own individual interests and internally based identity.
I LOVE personality tests!!!!!!!!!!! I'm glad that the one above tells me that I am unstable, inflexible and unable to develop my own internal identity. And they know all this from thirty questions. The one I linked to is more helpful... I am sanguine choleric, apparently.
geez, adam... i just wasted an hour and it's all your fault :-)
i feel hollow. like my emotions have been ripped out of me and all that is left is a shell. and the shell knows what to do most of the time, but there is little behind it. this morning on the bus, the two men across from me (who seemed to have just met each other) were talking politics. blah blah blah bush is ruining everything, blah blah blah ohio, blah blah blah, regurgitated propaganda. whenever i listen to the discussions of people i don't percieve as particularly insightful or thoughtful about their views i feel funny about my own political opinions. is that what I sound like, i wonder? but anyway, so i wished i could feel something about what they were talking about, and i think i usually would, but today... nothing. and then i went to my body class and we watched ethnic notions which i'd seen before. but for some reason i was unprepared for the photographs of lynchings and teared up with almost every one. my saddness wasn't of the shallow "oh, look at what happened to that poor man" sort. it was strangely much deeper than that. i just had this horrible feeling in the pit of my stomach about the reality of people's hatred for each other and it affected me more today than i'm used to. but i felt it all in my eyes and my stomach and not at all in my heart, which maybe made it hurt even more....
it was really hard to get myself out of bed this morning. now i'm thinking i should have stayed.
posted by renee 4:17 PM
Wednesday, February 16, 2005
this morning i saw an old flyer for the bobby mcferrin show. the quote on it was
"his vocal mastery is so complete that seeing him perform is unabashed fun."
what do you think about that? i mean... maybe his vocal mastery is complete AND seeing him perform is unabashed fun... but is the reason that you are having such unabashed fun really because of the completeness of his mastery? mastery -> fun? and unabashed... as opposed to the shameful fun that you have when you're watching all those performers with incomplete mastry....
i don't know why i see things like that and get so irritated by them. but when people put words together to try to sound cool or make something else sound cool and it really doesn't make any sense i always have the urge to point it out. especially when the philidelphia trib printed the quote once and it ended up all over the place. sigh. big big snob.
posted by renee 4:12 PM
Monday, February 14, 2005
valentine's day, huh? well, then....
posted by renee 8:32 AM
Sunday, February 13, 2005
Well, we live in a trailer at the edge of town You never see us 'cause we don't come around. We got twenty five rifles just to keep the population down. But we need you now, and that's why I'm hangin' 'round. So you be good to me and I'll be good to you, And in this land of conditions I'm not above suspicion I won't attack you, but I won't back you. Well, it's so good to be here, asleep on your lawn. Remember your guard dog? Well, I'm afraid that he's gone. It was such a drag to hear him whining all night long. Yes, that was me with the doves, setting them free near the factory Where you built your computer logs. I hope you get the connection, 'cause I can't take the rejection I won't deceive you, I just don't believe you. Well, I'm a barrel of laughs, with my carbine on I keep 'em hoppin', till my ammunition's gone. But I'm still not happy, I feel like there's something wrong. I got the revolution blues, I see bloody fountains, And ten million dune buggies comin' down the mountains. Well, I hear that Laurel Canyon is full of famous stars, But I hate them worse than lepers and I'll kill them in their cars.
i wish i could say the things that are inside me by writing songs. sometimes i feel like i'm close to making it. right now i feel far away. far away from myself. far away from those who know me best. far away from anything that makes any sense. i wish i could take a guitar up on a rooftop and sit up there until something came to me. but it's raining and i need to go home.
posted by renee 8:11 PM
Thursday, February 10, 2005
i was going to write a post about how i miss theater.
and then i got to work and jen and i looked through a respondant's file at all the comments he's written in the margins about how shallow our survey is and how it doesn't get at what's really important about life, as well as refusing to answer within the field of answers we offer for each multiple choice question (writing in 6 when it's a scale of 1-5 almost invariably). for example, he does not rent a home, own a home, live with relatives or live in an institutional setting. instead he "lives with the sky and the long grasses" but made sure to point out that he's "not a hippie."
and i wondered. do those of us who dedicate our lives to making the world a better place merely facilitate the robotic progression of things we have determined is positive? get an education, have a family, get paid money and spend it. and the research we do here, determining the role of youth work on the life course, does seem inhuman. WHY do this research? we would say in order to better understand what allows a person to end up satisfied and productive in their adult life. in turn this knowledge can help us shape the high school experience to incorporate and encourage behavior shown to be beneficial in the long term. but really, it seems like that perspective takes all the meaning out of our work. humans are NOT a collection of variables. sigh. research isn't the career path for me. again, turns out i'm an artist.
everything else seems so sterile.
after walking through rarig today and seeing all the theater kids milling about with their stage voices and their exaggerated hand motions and their over the top vitality i thought "all i want to do with my life is to figure out myself and the world and do my best to improve both."
but really, even that misses the point, i think.
we spend too much time dwelling on unreachable utopia and missing the ways we can, on a daily basis, make a world of difference.
and that is really what i think at this moment.
in other news:tonight, i go to the ball with no prince.
when i'm most honest with people, they usually raise their eyebrows and ask me if i've been getting enough sleep.
posted by renee 4:17 PM
Sunday, February 06, 2005
i was just reading for one of my classes about anorexia and the idea of becoming a master over your body - which of course has the platonic prerequisite of seeing your body as alien and confining. and of course, as usual, i identified somehow with the desire to have more control over my life. i err on the side of unhealthy perfectionism, and sometimes i feel overwhelmed by the immense amount of disorder in my life. even in light of all the ways i am not pushing hard enough to achieve the perfection i long for, sometimes i feel like if i pushed any harder, i might really lose my mind. i was thinking about coming upstairs to write a quick blog entry about just that and i picked my scarf up from the chair in the living room to bring it upstairs with me. i was also going to order myself a new bus pass while i was online. but what, do tell, was under my scarf?
PRAISE THE LORD, I FOUND MY KEYS!
sometimes i do need to be reminded that the God of disorder and of order is also the God of the little details in my life that make me crazy. i just stared at them for a minute, not sure if i really recognized what i was looking at. amazing.
the important thing when you pray for something and you get it is to give credit where credit is due. regardless of whether or not i ever found them, i am loved beyond anything i can understand. praise the lord, indeed.
ps. I BOUGHT A PIANO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! well... a 76 key digital, but still...
posted by renee 1:49 PM
Friday, February 04, 2005
eight out of ten labs completed for senior project
keys: still missing
i think i am developing a thin skin, in both senses. i have to bike to work now. sigh.
posted by renee 9:56 AM
Wednesday, February 02, 2005
this morning as i was walking, keyless, bus-passless and late, toward my bus stop, an old man with a sailor beard dressed in spandex jogged past me. we met eyes and he said "good morning." i really almost said "it hasn't been, thank you."
i need a break from myself. and WHERE ARE MY KEYS??
posted by renee 9:06 AM
