Already?

It's New Year's Eve all ready and I feel like I've hardly taken a breath.

Grad school applications are proving to be more complicated than I could've imagined. It's the same basic information again and again but repackaged in many different ways. And you better get it right or you face jeporadizing or forfeiting your entrance into a particular program. I've gotten 1/2 in. Yikes!

And packing for Guatemala isn't looking any better. It's clear to me that we're supposed to pack light, but not only am I not sure what that means, I'm not sure how I'm supposed to do it, given I have to pack work time and pack for non-work time. Oh, and I think I have like three articles of clothing packed and a good amount of things to still buy.

The good news is that one of the programs I'm applying to requested a creative writing portfolio of either fiction or poetry. As I did poetry, I had to submit 10 pages (of my best) poems. It was actually kind of difficult, but I did it and I was pretty happy with the caliber of all 15 or so poems. Expect to see some appear here in future posts.

A Post for Christmas Eve

I suppose as the title implies I ought to write about things that somewhat have to do with the holiday. Maybe.

My iPod which froze yesterday is now unfrozen. This has happened before, and like before, yesterday I just let it die, and then set it back in its charger dock and it was fine. Must be a bug or something...

I went to (my) church today. It's been awhile since I've been 1) to any church and 2) to my home church (of which I am a member). I find it difficult to "rate" church nowadays as if it's some kind of experienced, a product to be consumed. Actually, I guess I shouldn't say I find it difficult to rate, since I tend to be hyper-critical about everything, but I am very uncomfortable about rating something that is so tied to the spiritual. There was nothing that made me want to leave, which is good, as this has happened several times in the past. I was surprised at the lack of traditional Christmas songs, but the music was all right. Nothing terribly complex in the lyric department, and nothing outstanding in the melody department, although some moving stuff (we do Gospel tunes and hymns at my church, which is AME, btw). The musicians are good though, so I guess that makes up for that. I liked the Scripture readings. Among other passages, we read Hebrews 10:5-10 and Micah 5:2-5a, the second of the two which I found especially moving (although, I would recommend reading both as they are especially apt for this season).

The sermon was done by a visiting pastor from a Baptist church in Tampa. The pastor was a friend of head pastor. He seemed apt at preaching and he preached on two verses: Luke 2:11-12. He talked about the sign of Jesus' birth as a sign of the Gospel. It was almost postmodern (hee hee)! I only had a couple of quibbles with his sermon. One was linguistic, because (and I think it was just a slip) he said something was Greek word for sign, and it isnt'. Two, he made a distinction between the sign itself and Jesus' birth, saying the sign was more important than the real thing (the birth). I kind of see them as one in the same (is that me being postmodern, I wonder?) and inseparable. I mean that Jesus' birth was the sign and was important in itself. I don't know, I just feel like the incarnation is a big deal. I should mention that he made a distinction between the baby Jesus and the man Jesus in that the baby Jesus didn't do anything while its the man Jesus that turned the world upside down. While I agree that it is the adult Jesus that we focus on, I do feel that the incarnation itself is important, even though I can't quite articulate why right now. Although maybe he was saying that the playing out of the incarnation (that is the acting out of Jesus' total divinity and total humanity) was more important than simply the incarnation itself and I think I would agree with that. But I still don't see how the sign and Jesus' birth ("the real thing") are different or separable. Because it seemed to me he was arguing Jesus' birth was the sign. Anyway...

Regardless, I guess it stirred some thought and that mattered. There were also a LOT of people at church today. We almost couldn't fit everybody in the sanctuary, and we have a pretty large sanctuary. Of course it was a combined service (we usually have two services, and today we just had one), but there were a lot people out of town. But the tithe and offering procession today went on forever and ever today! (I'm assuming if you go to or have been to black church, you know what this is, but if you don't have this experience, for the offering, everyone in the church marches up to the altar to give whatever they've come prepared to give, and then afterwards the ushers march up usually in some kind of special formation with some kind of special step or what have you.)

But after all that... I kind of feel like I want to start going to church again regularly. It's more of a feeling of something I feel like doing than...I don't know. I have this idea that church is a performance, but not in a negative way but in a very positive way, and I have this tug to be a part of that. I feel like it's us acting out the invisible in a very explicit manner, or at least I feel like it ought to be.

Of course, that means several other things for me as well, so that might make finding a place to go still difficult.

Well, a happy Christmas to all who wish to have one. (Did I mention the visiting pastor said that without Christmas there would be no holidays? I guess he forgot that Chanukah has been celebrated for a lot longer than Christmas...)

Could it be? Another post?

I have no idea who reads this, but you've been in for a real treat these past few days.

And I think things are going to get messier, because I don't have time to journal, due to Christmas shopping and other holiday related activties, the large amounts of grad school application stuff I must do before January 2nd, and the preparation I must do before I leave for Guatemala January 2nd.

So very quickly...

I saw Little Miss Sunshine on Monday and it's a quirky little comedy that I'd highly recommend. It's smartly written, funny, tragic, and hopeful. It's "sweet" in that it certainly has a moral to it, but the characters are complex enough and storyline inventive enough not to be insulting. I also liked the soundtrack quite a bit too, and not just

because there's a Sufjan song in it (which I found to be a bit jolting actually, which may have been simply because of the fact that I recognized it, and hence, noticed the editing, and then didn't like the editing, because I though it was sloppy, but it probably wasn't, etc., etc...). Oh yeah, it also has Steve Correll in it, and he does a superb job, although, really, the entire cast is great.

For my trip, I'm supposed to read a book, and so I picked up a book by Jared Diamond called Guns, Germs and Steel which is about why Europeans have dominated everyone else and not the other way around. He chalks it up to environmental differences and the resultant subsequent societal developments...and as of right now, I think I buy his argument. It's at least, so far, a very interesting read.

And look! New Jersey joins Connecticut and Vermont!

...And is it just me, or does this reek of the separate but equal laws that prevaled for way too long in the last century?

Home

I decided I would get into the Christmas spirit by posting this poem. Hee hee. This poem is for all the mothers out there with their children coming home for the holidays. For the rest of us, this poem is a reminder.

And for anyone who's paying attention, you can be sure I'm not going soft on you.

Home

His car parked in the driveway,
I can almost hear him–imagine him–
sleeping soundly,
breathing between the sheets–
and I know that my walls
are keeping out the world for him tonight.

© 2006 K. M. Camper

Peach Pits

I can't seem to do any "normal" blogging, so it's back to poetry. Which is good, I think. I probably rant too much anyway.

This poem probably is a venting of my experience with violence in relationships recently (not necessarily physical). Somehow it came out in the context of familial relations. I didn't have the particular experiences depicted in the poem, but a lot of my poetry isn't "confessional" in that sense anyway. A lot of my poetry is as much fiction as it is poetry.

Peach pits

Father in cloud of aftershave
counted time
and hid his razor blades in his mouth

Mother grabbed the other side of Oklahoma
and halved all the eggs yoke-running,
leaving the uncooked batter in the oven

They shipped us to our Grandma
who would buy us cantaloupe,
cut it up and give us the seeds,
with Grandpa watching from the back,
tonguing his pipe and smoking her leaves

You tell me you remember after dinner
clanging silverware on empty plates
and eating whatever was left still sitting at the table

And when we both go to our patches,
we can only pick to give each other
Peach pits
which we watch each other barely chew
and swallow.

© 2006 K. M. Camper

Ironies abound

Yesterday I went to see Almodovar--he's a Spanish director--movie. It was really good, and although it was at its base two intertwined love triangles, it was better than a majority of the crap pumped out of the West Coast at any given point of time nowadays. It made me think, to say the least.

But really this post starts, or my point in bringing this up is that I went with some people who speak Spanish fairly fluently and so we spoke Spanish all the way there (and there) and on the way back (with Radiohead in the background, hehe, but I promise I didn't pick it, even if I enjoyed it!). Now except for a couple of points on 795 when I hit those spells of mental fatigue that one hits--I was the one driving--I understood everything and participated, but admittedly, it takes a lot more work than speaking in English. And here's my point. I talked less, listened more, and was much more careful that what I said was really what I meant. Which I guess makes sense, but in the language that I'm most comfortable in (I don't have many choices, here) it's weird how I can be very careless, not really making sure that everything I say is what I really mean.

In fact as of late, I find that I say a lot of things that I'm really not sure I mean. Or sometimes I say things and right afterwards I'm really don't know where they come from. Or after saying smoething I will stop and really question what I say and end up not buying it at all. In fact nowadays there's just a lot I don't buy. But of course once you say something, you're like held to it, and everything you say is pieced together, used to glue some kind of dripping, popsicle stick figure of you that has to keep having more sticks added to it so it won't collapse, or one taken away from here and added there--more glue! more glue!

Or maybe I'm confusing metaphors here. Maybe that's what we do with our picture of God. And be sure that our understanding of God is not the same as who God is. And btw, a lot of what I'm thinking/not buying/skeptical of what I once may have been saying has had to do with God, though not everything. A lot of it has to do with other people, life, etc. Personal realizations, etc.

I was having a conversation this past week about God and why people's experience of God are so different, and I said there are two possibilities: either God manifests Himself (I personally mean nothing by using the reflexive masculine pronoun) differently to every person or we've all got it wrong. Of course, right? In my nice black-and-white dichotomous way. Being the positive person I am, at the time I said that I tend to believe the latter--we've all got it wrong, except of course then that is slightly problematic, especially if I truly believe God is trying to build relationships with His people. Sooo... I've modified my view, though it's still too simplistic probably, that we've all have different understandings of God, but they're incomplete. And it's when we think that our understanding is complete that I think we've got it wrong. And if God is so infinite, I think that He probably does manifest Himself different to different people. (Of course I think certain views of God are wrong like, I don't know, God being evil or something like that.)

So, yeah, maybe I need to just shut up and listen I say as I post a ridiculously long blog.

Sufjan!

So I went to see Sufjan Stevens on Thursday, September 28, 2006.

As of late I've been having a hard time assessing things. Yeah, yeah, I know, that's unbelievable coming from me, but it's true. I think it was good, you know overall, though I quibble with some of his arrangements. The brass and string section were excellent. And he's a great arranger. Just I don't like everything he did. But the stuff near the end was great. Actually Sister was really, the 2nd song after the instrumental song that was really beautiful was good, nicely arranged. The whole team jammed out Jacksonville, and that was fun. Most of the Seven Swans
songs were good. I mean A Good Man is Hard to Find, probably one of my favorite Sufjan songs of all time, he always performs well, and is always great. The encore, To Be Alone with You and The Dress Looks Nice on You were beautiful. That part in The Dress, you know what part I'm talking about. After the second the verse. Because they had like 4 or 5 people on guitars and banjos. Oh yeah. That was utterly fantastic. I mean, that part of the song when that countermelody comes in, you just want to hear it over and over. And it just was very ethereal with all of them complementing each other on it. Yeah. Let's see...


Oh yeah. Majesty Snowbird. The new song everyone is talking about. It is good. I don't know if it is amazing. It's solid. He hasn't lost it. It wasn't chilling like the first time I heard Chicago at my first Sufjan concert before Illinois came out, before Sufjan was big. I could just tell that was going to be awesome. I got so excited about Illinois. Don't get me wrong, Majesty Snowbird is big, huge song. And it probably is great. Maybe it is amazing. I don't know. As I said, I have this problem with assessing things. Probably goes along with some other things I'm combatting that I do find problematic, and this is in fact tied to it. Ah, everything has consequence.

Actually, I'm listening to it now, someone recorded the song (it's actually what I heard on Thursday). Okay, it's pretty good. It's somewhat different then his previous stuff. I really like the melody. It is beautiful. Very dynamic. A little predictable. (Or signature maybe?) He's definitely going in a different direction. It's not very folky except in parts. Very symphonic in tone, an obvious progression and logical step from Illinois, I guess.

Enough about that.

Oh, other highlights. Palisades was really good. They pulled that off strinkingly well. (Minus one thing that I'll get to in a minute.) They played The Lord God Bird which was cool. Believe it or not, I thought John Wayne was more chilling at his last concert, which was definitely not as good as this one. But he still performed it well.

And, and, and, they played another of my favorite songs: Detroit! Lift up your weary! Reconsider! Rebuild! (Or something like that!) No, it wasn't as....something as the album, but it was magnificent with the brass and string section. So, yeah.

My biggest quibble was, minus flubbing a few of the songs at beginning which is forgivable, he was probably nervous, the noise. Many of the songs built up to this noisy, unbearable auditory mess that I simply could not stand, and (yes I'm making a value judgment) really is not good music. Especially when used in the same manner over and over again. I know he has this fascination with noise, which thankfully he curbs on his albums (though not enough on The Avalanche) and uses to *great* effect on Michigan, but it was waaaay too much at the concert. And to what effect? Why? I still have no idea. I don't know what meaning it evoked nor what feeling except for me, pure irritation and bewilderment. Sufjan: cut the noise (and do you really need the distorted guitar?) and stick with the symphonic arrangements.

And that's all I've got.

A Day for Writing

Today seems like a day to write. I have to write a paper, I want to write in my journal, and of course I'm writing in this. And I need to write something for the workshop on Thursday, though I guess I could use "Ballon Life" or pull out something old.

I also had at least one request to update this recently. However, there will be no poetry or ficition, in this post.

The past week has been filled with encounters with various persons have offered me countless things to ponder. (Unfortunately, these have kept me from doing things like grad school research and GRE prep.) I am further convinced of the hand and sovereignty of God, and more skeptical than ever of my own understanding.

I am finding that making judgments about or sizing people up--can really just be futile. There's so much we don't understand about other people. There is so much we don't see. Often times we don't take the time to ask. Often times we don't care. And in our critical assesments we are liable to reductionism. And I do believe in loving others we should at least strive to love them wholistically.

Btw, I did go to church today, and it was good. It was good in many, many ways. An issue, which I got involved in, is on it's way to being resolved. One thing that stuck out to me in one of the pastor's prayers was how we love so little back those who love us most. (I like him a lot, and he says and prays and lot of good things.) The question is how do we work towards loving others, because it is so easy to think narrowly and be so single-minded. Sometimes for a cause or a goal, people become secondary, they become a means to an end, or necessary only in passing. But no--Christ came to give people life, and we are to be bearers of this, to be life to others.

Well, I think that is more than enough for one day. I do not believe time is all we have, but I do not have much of it relative to the number of things I must do in the short-term. I am still looking for balance, for healthy.

My Balloon Life

Balloon existence

I shape
the space around me
like a balloon being blown up
I push out the sides of my existence
I press up against these walls
testing the elasticity
of all around me
to hold–
YES! Resisting
the inevitability
of deflation.

Inverted balloon existence

Shaped into the space around me
latex glove
Who is putting me on their hand?
Whose fingers am I doing the dirty work for?
Stretched and pulled
made to fit
into the spaces–
Deflation? No.
Rubber bands lose their elasticity
and balloons pop.

© Copyright 2006 K. M. Camper

Seemingly disconnected thoughts

There are at least two kinds of loneliness. Or, I am going to state a distinction in loneliness that gives two kinds of loneliness.

There is loneliness that arises from being apart from others (e.g. physical isolation or separation).

There is loneliness that arises from one being a part of a group of others but being aware of a difference between oneself and the group, and then believing that difference to be significant, thus causing some kind of discomfort or other non-pleasureable effect.

Simple observations.

I have a small work gestating. I could post it now, but it is not at all refined. Which actually kind of makes me think I should just post it anyhow. It'll probably be up, if it will be up at all in the next couple of days.

By the way, just a thought: I think that invisibility is less of masking, removing or hiding the physical and more of masking and hiding the inner to the outside world.

Yes, I know, the weirdest thoughts enter my head sometimes.

Lumberjacks

So, yeah. Moved and settled in. I didn't have the reaction I expected to. This is a good thing.

Living in the Spanish house. I expect my Spanish to improve a bit. Everyone's really nice. I think we'll get a long and it will be a good house. I'm missing the mandatory meeting tomorrow because I have to go down to Baltimore and record. Not too excited about that. I don't mind, but I just don't feel like driving to Baltimore.

I didn't go to church today. I wanted to and I feel bad for not doing so, but I feel if I'm going to go somewhere I need to plan where I'm going ahead of time. Good news is, though, that my attitude towards church (or should I say churches) is changing. Not necessarily my thoughts, but my attitude. Meaning while I still may think flaky theology kills growth, cold modernism kills joy, and the best way to be slain in the spirit is to be convicted of your sin (and the best response is to repent and do it no more, and perhaps you should do this in the privacy of your home, unless of course you're confessing your sin), I'm not so sure being negative about particular churches or about church in general is a good way to go.

That isn't to say we couldn't stand to clean up our houses of worship.

Anyway...

The Honors picnic--where were the drinks? I was really, really thirsty.

(Yeah, so I deleted a bunch of stuff here. It was getting really personal. Sorry. And now I'm teasing you by telling you I deleted it.)

But the day ended well, and that was good. Whit and I tried to sing The Sun Will Come Out Tomorrow, but we couldn't remember the words. We witnessed the demonstration of a vibrating alarm. Something about lumberjacks.

I'm back at school and I'm blogging. Aren't you excited? (I need to go back to putting up poems and stories and the like...)

Not a poem

(Wow, this thing is getting updated.)

The number of possibilities (we're talking about the future here) is sheerly frightening. When possibility becomes choice, then it becomes exciting. We have not reached exciting yet.

I hear the movement of a clock.

I don't want to go back to school. Scratch that. I don't want to move back on campus. I mean, if I do my math right, adding up all the parts, then I should at least come out with a positive number, something above zero, but it's just not happening.

Maybe it's just transition woes (see! there's the optimist in me speaking!). Maybe I need to actually start packing. Maybe I actually need to do things, like, I don't know, buying school supplies. But I think that requires motivation.

In other news...

I finished four measures of my dulcimer arrangement of "All the Trees of the Field Will Clap Their Hands." Like you care.

Maybe next time I'll have a poem or a story up or something. Maybe not.

Grandpop's Funeral Poem

Granny asked me to write a poem to read aloud at Grandpop’s funeral and this is what I came up with

“How are you all doing?”
We are—he is not—
the better question
is—how do you spell
hemorrhage?
Because he didn’t die
of leukemia—
but of too much
blood in the brain—
too much blood—
we never thought
he could have too much—
that’s why he went to the hospital every week—
because he didn’t have enough—
enough good blood, enough white
cells and platelets—
but even if he’d had the “normal”
amount, it wouldn’t have been enough
to stop the too much blood,
the bleeding in his brain.

Polaroid shots
on the table, snapped
just weeks before—
how flat a photograph can seem.

We get lost in our heads
trying to remember—
how flat memories can feel—

how real we want the photographs to become.

It’s strange how many times a person can die
inside our own heads,
when we put that tape in the VCR
of our minds and rewind,
the picture comes out fuzzy
and the sound never works right.

We reach out to touch the image
but our fingers are met with a distant
and cool, dusty, slick screen.

© Copyright 2006 by K. M. Camper

The Winter Sun

The winter sun was a brilliant white dividing the sky into a periwinkle-blue with purplish, shadowed clouds above, and an orange and golden horizon below with red-rimmed clouds and the silhouettes of the distant hills rolling underneath. The two of them sat on a worn, once-green wooden park bench together, comfortably separated, one absorbing what was before them, half of a lit cigarette with a glowing end matching the color of the lower sky in his right hand, and the other one peering into the sunset, bundled up in a heavy jacket, a tight, knit scarf wrapped around his neck, arms folded across his chest, shivering.

"It’s beautiful,” the first said after taking a puff of his cigarette.

“But cold,” the other said after a slight pause, his response falling with a dull thud like a heavy weight.

The first man’s cigarette grew brighter as he breathed in. “You always did look on the darker side of things.”

The other man didn’t turn to look at his friend who was squinting at him. The icy air burned his nose and lungs. “I never said it wasn’t beautiful. But it ain’t warming anything up, so it doesn’t do a damn thing for me.”

The first man sighed a mouthful of smoke. He continued to gaze at the silent, bright globe slowly descending into the earth.

“You forget that I used to make things beautiful.”

“I don’t forget it. I just wonder why you stopped.” His friend had stopped shivering and sat back limp on the bench. A piercing breeze dragged some wrinkled, curled-up, lingering fall leaves, crinkling as they disintegrated, through the stiff, frozen grass. “I haven’t stopped. I won’t stop.”

The other man returned his statement with a lofty grin. “Well, Hill, you have always been a better man than me.”

“Not better just—” But the other man cast Hill a look telling him not to continue the sentence he had heard him say many times before.

He then took his look and cast it down onto the ground. He gave a short sigh of a laugh. “Supposedly, I was once being redeemed, too.”

The bench creaked as Hill shifted his weight. He inspected his cigarette, which was almost through, and threw it to the ground. The cigarette rolled across the asphalt sidewalk in front of them until it stopped a few feet away, burning fiercely red against the black.

Hill got up off the bench and stretched. “Well, I think if you once were, you still are.”

His friend grunted as he rose from the bench. Before they walked away, his friend ground the cigarette into the asphalt with the toe of his shoe until it was out. “You’re going to start a forest fire that way,” he muttered flatly.

Hill only laughed and slapped him on the back, and they began walking to his house. The sun had finally crawled behind the frozen earth, leaving behind only a faint yellow-hued stain, with the blue-grey night speedily filling the empty space left by the giant orb.

(C) Copyright 2006 by K. M. Camper