Snowflakes that stay on my nose and eyelashes

I liked the dusting of snow we had this morning. I like when it’s like that. It quiets everything down; which is funny because the molecules in cold air carry sound much better. Ever hear the call of a far away train in the winter? Those molecules are pretty cool. Where I’m from in India, and probably really most of the country, most people haven’t gotten to hear a cool sound like that. Life has given me a pretty wide view because I moved around so much. I don’t have vivid memories of my first snow because I was in Canada and I was very little, but I do have memories of snow in Canada when I was in 2^nd grade (where I won the award for most polite over my whole school). I spent time building forts by myself and sitting in them alone; after the work was done, then sometimes people would come join me, but sometimes they would come and kick me out. It was kind of like at the start of the movie ‘Where the Wild Things Are’ and maybe the start of the book, I don’t remember.


It’s very jarring to walk out of a serene winter scene into the hustle and bustle of the street I live in; it’s a neat experience I guess. I spend a lot of time in the “woods” now days – and the drive away from that isn’t nearly as jarring, but I guess it’s the amount of time invested in the serene that makes the hustle more manageable. Makes sense.

It’s the park near my house, if you’re ever in Dayton OH you could check it out, it’s right in the middle of the city I live in and it’s a really cool way to retreat very fast to nature. In the winter, the cold air carries the hum from cars on the highway near by and the bare trees let you see the outline of houses; but I’m sure it’s different in the summer – I don’t know because I just started going there.

I like my time there; I am 27 now but somehow in the expanse (even in the plotted expanse) of nature, you just feel little and good. I jump from rock to rock over a little creek to get to the ‘mainland’ where I trek through bare branches and honeysuckle to get to this neat little point on a hill where someone (I assume the city) built a look out point. I sit there for a while and the sounds of rustling leaves under little woodland creatures is louder than the hum of society. Then I trek back down, bounding through branches and slipping on wet leaves. I spend who knows how long skipping rocks and throwing in big rocks to hear the ‘Dunk’ sound they make. I lie back on this concrete slab and look at the cold sky framed by the woods. It’s nice there, and it makes the world of driving and concrete seem not so eternal. I hope we don’t lose our forests and parks; humanity would lose a really nice connection to it’s soul – I know I would lose mine; but I’ll probably die before that happens, who knows though, nukes are all over it seems; but I’m no political scientist.

My mother cooks me food sometimes, she’d do it more often if I let her, and it’s always really good. Like insanely good, and I try and eat a lot of good (defined as tasty first!) food. Hers is tasty and good for you; it’s like perfect mom food – but with curry. Then sometimes, like about a week ago, she’ll give me curry and then a homemade apple-crisp. Which was amazing ps.

Looking back on it I guess that’s also kind of the life she gave me, very Indian, very American. Apple-crisp is American right?

I like these 20 calorie popsicles I have – you should go get them, whoever you are, I’m telling you, they are cheap and good and pretty insignificant for the diet. I’m thankful I can afford treats. I also get a coffee everyday – which is insane to me on some level because I don’t understand when in life I began romanticizing coffee. In any event, I eventually just became hooked on it. I’m thankful that I can push through the headaches if I don’t drink it though, and sometimes I don’t get it for days on end on purpose because I really don’t like addiction. Which is why smoking is super lame. I don’t know though, I guess it’s just a constant process.

I like my bed so much man. Its pretty huge; not like ‘MTV Cribs’ overcompensation huge, but really comfy. It’s a big fat thick mattress and it’s boxed in by big posts on all four sides with a canopy on top; I’m 5’8” and if I sit on it my feet dangle, it’s cool. I guess it makes me feel little too maybe.

St. Therese of Lisieux (the Little Flower) proposed the prayer of being little. Little in front of God – which sounds easy but we all see ego and hurt ego all over the world posturing itself with grandiosity. It’s been said that she is the answer to combat the philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche which I find so prevalent in our modern thinking. He is an incredible writer but his over-arcing philosophy fails on some very important levels. He’s good to read to understand how some people think in the world; but without a firm foundation he’s very dangerous. Through a pretty thick Christian lens a lot of his words can help apply the Gospels though – but through that lens, everything can help unravel the mystery of the Gospels! That's the amazing power of subjectivity I guess.

Like, “One can never cease to marvel once one has acquired eyes for this marvel!” is something he proposes in ‘Beyond Good & Evil’ – but he’s talking about the marvel of giving up morality. That makes no sense because he’s basically just proposing a new morality – however his words can make clear why the lens of God can’t be moved once in place – or even love or anything else marvelous that grabs us. The woods, the joy in the ‘Dunk’ sound, lots of stuff. God just encompasses all that while still being distinct from it for me.

I like hoodies and these horribly unfashionable velour pajamas I have. I got them initially because my mom heard me talking about “draping myself in velvet” – I don’t think she knew that I was just mimicking George Costanza from a really funny episode of Seinfeld-though really which episode doesn’t have at least one super funny part? I like that show a lot too.

Humor and human ability for it is by far one of my favorite things; and nonsense humor at that. I call very random humor genius, but maybe that’s just a mix of ego and stupidity- I’m sure it doesn’t matter, and the tendency in me is funny either way. I can laugh at almost anything, that’s pretty cool; I know a lot of people who just don’t get that.

I think, in part, that’s where my philosophy of ‘Madness’ comes from; but also from lots and lots of different sources. I wonder often, and suspect somewhere, that ‘Madness’ is going to be the philosophy of my transition; because in the end, we’re all working to enjoy life and enjoy it correctly, so philosophy without that goal seems empty to me – egotistical even. Once one enjoys life I wonder if they stop philosophizing? The great saints and yogis seem to write not to understand or explain the world, but of their experience of it. I think they do it to share their little glimmer of the sun of enlightenment which one can call the beatific vision I guess. At least in some small part. I’m no theologian either; and frankly I wouldn’t really call me a philosopher though many people that get to know me do.

In fact just the other day, or a few weeks ago, someone I can’t remember listened to me talking at length going on about one hundred of my thousands of tangents and when I was spent of speech, followed up not with any comment to further the conversation but to say, “You’re a philosopher huh?” – that’s a weird comment huh? But maybe they just never thought about stuff like that – or maybe they did and just considered themselves philosophers too; I can’t remember who it was or I’d ask them.

It’s neat to have the internet – you can ask it anything! I feel sometimes like I’m a time traveler from the past and modern tools just blow my mind away with their luxury. Like I just did a search on Google and it came back with the exact response I was looking for on 0.65 seconds! And it was something pretty obscure too! My search was good though, I learned how to search well from practice and an old job I used to have in Internet Marketing with the company I’m with. Here's how long finding a good image of George took.

Well enough for now. That was a lot more than I’m sure any of you will ever read. But it’s a nice marvel of modern technology that I can post this and have some feeling that I’m sharing. The void of the internet can feel like some pretty real connections.

I’ll leave you, if you’ve gotten this far! With a couple of pretty nice quotes from St. Therese that I guess maybe make sense of all these little things I like.

“Jesus needs neither books nor Doctors of Divinity in order to instruct souls; He, the Doctor of Doctors, He teaches without noise of words.”

“You know well enough that Our Lord does not look so much at the greatness of our actions, nor even at their difficulty, but at the love with which we do them.”

Okay fine, two more – she’s awesome!

“I prefer the monotony of obscure sacrifice to all ecstasies. To pick up a pin for love can convert a soul”

“The only thing I really wish for…is to love until I die of love.”

God bless you Readers, and even you non-readers who don’t know anything about this little pool I spout into. Talk to you tomorrow.