Corn and Cut-Offs

A week before classes started, I was doing some landscaping in Coquitlam. I can't remember how the topic came up, but I told one of the workers on the site that it was going to be my last day. He seemed to think that there was plenty of work out there and that I would be better off staying. '"Oh no" I said, "I'm going back to school." To which he replied, "good for you" and paused, "what grade?"
But in all seriousness, I do occasionally reminisce about grade school. From this side of the great divide, it appears to have been made up of eating lunch, holding hands, and playing hooky. In truth I was probably under a lot of stress, but at the very least I could hang onto the fact that my work would have no real lasting effect on the course of my life. As long as I got into university, I could do whatever I wanted with my highschool time. That is no longer the case.
We have been gradually dividing the week up into special days, flash-in-the-pan traditions that will only last so long as we have time, money, and memory for them. Monday is Burger Monday, wherein we travel to the Fort Langley Pub and partake of their Monday burger deal and a couple of pints. Tuesday is either Ben Cooper Day or Cut-Off-Jeans Tuesday, depending on the weather. Wednesday is Creeper Wednesday, rule number one of which is, "no actual creeping." Thursdays are Peppermint Thursdays, where peppermint tea is consumed and I endeavour to listen to some White Stripes. The weekend has not been allocated. We are creating a structure here which, to the casual observer, might seem meaningless or even unnoticable, but which gives meaning to an otherwise arbitrary separation of the week.
Three minutes ago a corn roast started. If I actually owned a pair of cut-offs, I would be wearing them. Regardless, I'm still going to go get my corn on.

Will

Student Playlist #2

I've submitted a student playlist to Mars Hill in hopes of getting it published. Here's the finished product regardless. Enjoy,

Will

These songs are all terrible for studying to, but who's studying anyways?

1. Son House - Levee Camp Moan

- Son House had a job on the levee and a good looking woman, but after nearly ten minutes of this song, you'll be guaranteed to have the blues. This is the heart of the Delta blues.

2. Breathe Owl Breathe - Dragon

- A tale of a princess and a dragon who are pen pals. If you try to study to this, you'll be doing an injustice to your work.

3. Tom Waits - Green Grass

- I always hesitate to recommend Tom Waits to friends. If you think you can handle him though, this is one of his most subdued songs in recent years.

4. Buck 65 - Corrugated Tin Facade

- A haunting song off of his best album. Sorry K-os and K'naan, but Buck 65 is my favorite Canadian rapper and he's a CBC radio host to boot.

5. Johnny Cash - The Mercy Seat

- Covering Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, Cash characteristically makes Cave's lyrics say exactly what he wants them to. You may want to listen more than once.

6. Blind Willie McTell - I Got To Cross The River Jordan

- That's right, more blues! Make sure you listen to the 4:37 version from his Library of Congress recordings because the recordings close out with a 1:51 refrain of the same name.

7. Josh Garrels - Zion & Babylon

- I still can't believe that I was lucky enough to see Josh Garrels live at TWU a few years back. I also can't believe he still doesn't have a Wikipedia article. Somebody get on that!

8. The Eels - Climbing To The Moon

- If you're ever feeling a little insane (for me it's the months of March and April), throw on some Eels and you will start to feel positively normal.

9. The Unicorns - I Was Born (A Unicorn)

- I don't know about you, but I love it when bands have theme songs. These guys are also from Montreal, so it's pretty much guaranteed that they will rock you.

10. John Lee Hooker - The Waterfront

- This is one of my favorites from John Lee Hooker. It's such a pure distillation of the blues and it's a perfect closing song.

Thursday on Thursday

listening to "Rusty Cage" - Johnny Cash

Break is good. Holidays are good. Rest is good. I near burned myself out this semester and it's been nice to rest from that, to go to sleep reading Chesterton at night, and to wake up in the morning when I want to wake up. There are still things that I need to do, there are still responsibilities, and there is still stress, but it has slowed considerably.

listening to "As Ugly as I Seem" - White Stripes

I've been reading Chesterton's "The Man Who Was Thursday", reading "Paradoxes of Catholicism" by Robert Benson, and debating with a friend about Catholicism. Sometimes it tears me apart. I like Chesterton, I enjoy reading his stuff. The Man Who Was Thursday reminds me of a R.L. Stevenson short story called "The Suicide Club". It is dark and brooding with a noble and likable main character thrust into events beyond his ken. I can still see the ideas though. Chesterton is one of those authors which Catholics and people who wish they were Catholics will recommend. They usually will rave about a set of "Father Brown" stories, about a priest who doubles as a novice detective. It's not that I don't like Chesterton, but I can see the ideas germinating in Thursday that will eventually result in Chesterton's conversion to Catholicism. I don't like that. The more I read of Paradoxes, and the more I read in scripture, the more I see how grievous are the offenses that Catholic theology (if you can call it that) commits. Dad gave me some words recently that we need to be wary of anything that takes away from the power of the cross. Then, as I further explored the intricacies of Catholicism, it simply blew me away that one could be so blind to the very Word of God. Anyways, Catholicism gets me all worked up and the fam wants to watch a movie.

Will

Tree Rings and Tea Things

Had my first class this morning; Geog 121 - Earth and Atmospheric Science. It fills up my lab requirement for TWU, but like every mandatory class here, I think I'm really going to enjoy this one. It was just the intro class today so as soon as the professor mentioned that his office was in the back of the Tree-Ring Lab it set the wheels turning and I spent the rest of the time engrossed in sketching the layout of ideally what a tree-ring lab would consist of (super sweet).
The apartment is shaping up very nicely and on my first shopping trip I purchased three different boxes of Celestial Seasonings tea; Chamomile, Sleepytime, and Original India Spice. I purchased them for the double purpose of having both tea and coffee to offer to house guests and so that I can get a feel for the drinking of tea, an area where I have barely any experience (I just finished my second cup of coffee this morning). It is pretty enjoyable stuff, but with the amount of people coming through our apartment and just generally hanging out, I'm burning through it pretty fast.
The beard is coming back in quicker than I expected so Henderson will not be flying solo for long, but in the meantime it can be rough going sometimes. The support received from guys is definitely heartening though.
I have one more class at 11:40 today that I am extremely apprehensive about; Math 101. I'm all prepped though; I already have the textbook, I bought a three-subject notebook this morning, I bought a scientific calculator at Staples last week (and then promptly found my long lost graphing calculator once I moved in), and I have drunk copious amounts of coffee this morning (read: buzzzzzzz). Bring it on Math 101!!! Just try me...
Will

Fresh

I suppose you could say that the incubation period for this blog has reached a close. Back in March, when I published my last blog post, I had begun to get a nagging feeling about importing my blog to facebook; I'm not sure what it was, whether a lack of reader accountability or just that the publicness of the medium subtly changed the openness of what I wrote, but I decided to stop importing my blog and coinciding with this I halted all blog activity. Halting blog activity was only ever barely consciously to purge any facebook readership and make people forget that this blog existed, but hopefully it served that purpose. Regardless of my reasons, I suddenly feel refreshed, I feel as though there are things that I have been holding inside that need a forum (though this is more of a monologue) and so I have come full circle to the reasons why I started blogging in the first place. I must confess that there was a time when I questioned whether I would ever start blogging again, but alas here I am again and so, it seems, are you.
On to the poetry! I have not written as much as I would have liked to over this summer, but upon returning to the lower-mainland I have begun to feel my inspiration returning at a rapid pace. Here is a little something I penned while I was waiting for my bus in Langley. It even talks about real people and real places! Enjoy,
Will

Two-Step

Two-Step twitching at his neck
as though to shake a cold
or lose his breath
everybody stops to stare
to see his naked faults exposed
laid bare on pavement stuck with gum
and littered down with cigarettes

everybody - all the busy bodies
mime like Simon Says to him
some mock and some feel pity
but no body burns to even talk to him

Two-Step feels no need for charity
questioned he pretends to elegance
and all your sympathy will melt
like symphonies dissolving when
no matter what you've done or do
Two-Step turns and walks away from you

Storming...

I have one post in my history, Sound From the Garages, which keeps getting spammed. I just went and deleted the 19 junk comments that had accumulated, and that wasn't even the first time. Unfortunately you can't just select them all and hit delete, it's a real pain to delete multiple comments on blogger. So I'm a bit skeeved. You might even say I'm a bit irate.
Anger is interesting; there's a righteous anger that does exist, but mostly that's just God, mostly we miss the point with our anger. We like to get up in somebodies grill when they do us wrong, at least I know I do. But do you know why Jesus stormed the temple? It wasn't for himself, it was for his Father. That's made pretty clear when the disciples remember Psalm 69:9, "Zeal for your house will consume me", referencing Jesus' zeal for his Father's house, not for himself. I mean Jesus was the one man who could really get righteously angry when somebody did him wrong, but he was the one man who only got angry on other people's behalf. When he calls the Pharisees a brood of vipers, he's not saying that in defense of himself. He straight up says it two verses before; "Anyone who speaks a word against the Son of Man will be forgiven, but anyone who speaks against the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven, either in this age or in the age to come."
So that means that a lot of the time when I get angry, it's just trite and trivial stuff. What it doesn't mean is that we shouldn't get angry. No way. Not even close. There are a lot of reasons why I don't believe in pacifism, but the main one is that we're called (especially as men) to get really mad at some stuff. One of them being sin, another being injustice. Men are also called to be protectors (I love the fact that my name means "resolute protector") and when it comes to that we should not be afraid to get violent. If somebody tried to hurt one of my sisters, I would seriously mess them up, I would not even hesitate.
Anyways, now I'm getting irate again, just thinking about guys that wouldn't lift a finger to protect their family. I'm not usually one for ranting of this sort in a blog post, there's an inherent lack of accountability in this medium that can make ranting dangerous, but sometimes I get passionate about stuff and I get carried away. But really, can you blame a guy for being passionate about something? No. You really can't. Keep it pregnant.

Will

Crickophany

Listening to: Meaghan Smith - The Cricket's Orchestra
Weezer - Raditude

I've been reading Lewis Carroll lately. I started with Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and then I finished that off with Through the Looking Glass. Then I read through the more serious Sylvie and Bruno and have just started reading Sylvie and Bruno Concluded. The Alice books were similar to what I expected (although they were a lot darker than I thought), but Sylvie and Bruno is a different thing entirely. The preface to part I was probably the best preface I've ever read, with Carroll delving into issues of mass-produced literature and producing original ideas, the urgency with which we should spend our time, ideas for projects he didn't think he would have time in his life to accomplish and hopes that others can, problems with "hunting as sport", and of course a bit of an introduction to the work at hand. If you never read Sylvie and Bruno itself, I would recommend that you read the preface.

I've been listening to Meaghan Smith lately (Except for a couple of songs, I wasn't that impressed by Weezer's Raditude). I first heard one of her songs in the movie 500 Days of Summer, where she did a cover of the Pixies "Here Comes Your Man". I didn't think about it much at the time, but then I heard the song when I was in the collegium and realized that it was a darn good cover of a Pixies song, and being as the Pixies aren't the kind of band I would ever think of somebody covering, I thought I would check the artist out. Her music has a super-chill indie feel, mixing a fifties pop sound with synthetic beats and a bevy of unique instruments. It's pretty low-impact stuff, all things considered, but it is a pleasant diversion and good background study music.

Anyways, midterms are fully done, as of this morning, and I'm looking forward to final papers, final projects, and finals. I [obviously] haven't blogged much this semester, but this is partly due to the fact that I'm so close in proximity to the bulk of the people I know, enabling face-to-face conversation as the preferred method of communication. Having said that, I'm saving up some real meat-and-potatoes material for my next post. The next post will also be the first to not be imported directly to facebook. The social networking scene is just not the right environment for a blog to flourish. Til the next poetry-infused blog post, keep it pregnant people.

PipeSmokingProfessor