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.