choices

today i went shopping with my mom. i bought a new coat and a tank top thingy to go under my christmas sweater for mass on christmas eve. we had a good time. mom also bought really cute shoes.

i then went to work.

and sometime in there i realized that this is the type of story that some of these kids will never get to tell.

also, a woman who works with street children in brazil told a story about a young man who came to volunteer with her. he was from sweden, and when he returned to his advantaged life after spending a summer in the slums of brazil, he killed himself.

tonight, two of my kids are on the streets of davenport, getting drunk and high. it is rainy and cold. but it was also their choice. that is why i am typing to you right now, dear reader, instead of joining my swedish bosom buddy. their lives suck, but in the end, what they do is their choice. i just hope that the ones that i tell this to will one day believe me and do something about it.

winter

The trees here are all coated in ice. When you first look at them, it just looks like the customary snow balanced delicately on the bark, but when you look closer, you can see that each little twig has been preserved in ice. My favorite is a tree on the way to the quad from my dorms; it has lots of little red berries all over it, and the whole thing has been dipped in ice. It twinkles in the sunlight. This is why I love winter. It is so beautiful, and even sometimes surprising to me after almost 21 years.

When Michael and I went home this weekend, the trees lining the interstate were likewise covered in glittering ice. I see this now as a blessing on what was otherwise a hellish trip (two hours turned into five). We saw almost 300 cars in the ditches and stuck on unplowed offramps -- no exaggeration. No wonder so many people hate snow.

However, I wonder if the people who hate snow and ice ever take time to watch the trees sparkle when the light hits just right. I wonder if they ever pause in walking, or are left breathless when they turn a bend on the road on a long trip and see a ravine positively glowing in the sunset.

We have such little respect for this beauty -- it is a thing to be conquered by 4-wheel drive, space heaters, and microfleece linings. The majority of those people stuck in the ditches (who were not driving semis) were piloting nice cars, that were probably excellently equipped for snowy weather.

I often get frustrated with such people, who think they can conquer the discomforts of their lives. They rush around, dirtying snow and getting stuck in ditches. They interrupt scenes of beauty with their hasty driving and exhaust fumes.

Then again, someday not too long from now, the creator or mother earth, whomever you prefer, will send a warmer sun and digging animals and create a muddy mess all his/her/its own.

a story

There was this girl. She was out on her own when she graduated high school, but was motivated enough to want to go to college. She moved from Texas to Kansas to realize her dreams, but two years later found herself broke and alone. The priest from her college Catholic Center called her up -- he had been relocated to the middle of Illinois, and wanted her to come too. It would be much cheaper. She said she would come if he found her a job.

He called back later with an apartment for her and a job to pay the rent. She came alone, and found friends and love and community.

True story.

There are still good priests and neat human beings in the world.

innovators

These days, whenever I think about how frustrating the states of the world and humanity are, I start to sift my way mentally through history, and try to discover a time when things were better. I cannot find such a time. After the invention of agriculture, there were always class disparities, always the filthy rich and the dirt poor. The kicker is that it has only been recently that there has developed some kind of inbetween! Walmart, and Enron, and KBR are nauseous, yes, but so were Napolean, Caesar, and Katherine the Great.
No, the thing that disturbes me the most is that we seem to have run out of great innovations. We cannot come up with any new ideas -- even our "new" art is just a collage of old conceptions. Humans have compiled so much information and knowledge that it is literally impossible for everyone to be an expert in everything. Sometimes I find that absolutely apalling! And we seem to be stuck! We cling to the ideas that may be broken, but still hobble along well enough that we can pretend we are getting by, and our radicals are too fantastical to even make sense anymore! Anarchists, racists, fascists, communists, democracy?
All this is to say that there has to be something better out there. It is my dream that someday we will actually start to demand it for all and not argue over what makes us all different.

advent

as i have grown older, one of the things that i have come to truly appreciate about the catholic church is the manner in which her calendar takes care to prepare us for important holidays. easter is preceded by 40 days and 40 nights of fasting, prayer, and self-sacrifice in order that we may be better prepared to experience the mystery of the resurrection. now, 4 weeks before christmas, we enter the season of advent. now, i am not trying to say that i am perfect, or magnificently devout, for i most certainly am nowhere near the most devoted or consummate catholic; i am simply acknowledging what a wonderful idea it is that certain events need a period of good preparation if we, as people of limited faith, energy, and foresight, are to truly benefit from them.
i like to take these seasons of preparation as opportunities to look at my life and see what needs refreshment and recomittment, and this advent, i am making the decision that i will look upon writing as more of a discipline for a little while. i have been wasting too much of my newfound piano-free time, and i fear i have lost more days than i would have liked to listless inactivity. never fear, dear reader, i will most likely be spending more time writing things you may never see rather than pondering the mysteries and beauties of life for your enjoyment.
now i shall go to my warm and cushy bed, and pray that my resolve may last through the morning.

i like beginning things. i get a special yearning to begin new things as old ones end; hence this blog. my semester is drawing to a close, and i am looking back upon how earnestly i developed my astronomical aptitude for wasting time. so now i am filled with an inspired hankering to create something new, something important, so i pitifully turn to a new blog. my malignant desire to leave some lasting impression on humanity has not yet been cured, pretend as i may that having a simple life may be enough. i want to write a book that makes people think and talk; i want to head an organization that reaches out to and actually affects the lives of those in need; i want to travel to a place where english is not the native language and tell the residents of this land that not all americans are lost, that in fact there may be hope for the west still. i want to preach faith in humanity and believe my own words.

i want, i want, i want . . . i am a member of the thirsty generation of children who stopped trying when they discovered that no amount of work would enable them all to be rockstars. we were told to dream big dreams, and that hard work would get us all the way to the oval office by parents and teachers who had themselves worked hard and found that they would never get further than their living rooms and therefore made the decision to be content. all 300 million residents of the united states cannot be president -- it is a mathematical impossibility. talent and hard work alone will not make a rockstar -- you need connections. as each of us empirically discovers this for the first time, we are faced with the choice of being happy with all our bountiful blessings, or being restless for the rest of our lives. true, many of the restless ones will put in the work, make the connections, and get lucky; but so many of us give up. i certainly did, but i have returned to restlessness, and am again trying to do something about it.