Damn Computer

I should have seen it coming. My computer after 5+ years of faithful service finally kicked it. I am formatting my hard drive right now to reinstall windows. As the bar keeps moving from 0% to 100% I think back to all the things the papers I wrote when I was an undergrade, stupid things like my resume, and things of paramount imporatnce that have ignored that I now wish I had spent more time going through. Among these things I will miss are pictures. Libby and I love the Smith Tower. When in Seattle it has always been something that we have looked at. The radiant blue light at the top is briliant and very pretty when we see it from gas works or whatever park we would go to look at it from. Anyway, I found two good picture of it; one in black and white and the other in color. I liked the black and white because it made the building look cool contrasted with the rest of downtown Seattle at night, but I wanted the brillant blue light to be as it is. So I had a friend (who know something about this kind of thing) take the blue light and paste it on to the b&w photo. I printed it off, framed it and gave it to Libby.

Back when Libby and I were first dating, Libby and I went to different schools. She went to SPU and I when to CWU. These two schools aren't too distant that we couldn't see eachother on the weekends but they were far enough away that AIM was our primary form of communication. I had saved all the converstation that we had, with the intention of going back through them. Now thay are being eaten away one byte at a time.

I wish I had had the forsight. And while this may sound stupid I hope that this is an oppurtunity to mourn the loss of something meaningful to me and not just something I can hold at a distance.

I hope I do it well.

Moments

My school has recently moved down to belltown. As a result I now take the bus from Everett to Pikes Place Market. This gets me with in a mile of my school. Needless to say I have been walking more than I have been accustumed. Walking through Pikes Place can be a religious experence at times. I was coming out of this really good tabaco shop and in the hall way, just as you are about to walk outside, there was a pigeon picking up crums from a near by bakery. Standing right by the pigeon was a man snacking on his recently purchased pastrey. Back lit by the slightly veiled sun and framed by the passing crowd behind them. In the reflection of the floor you saw the shadowy images of both them and the crowed rippleing like water. The man had a mild look on his face. Not one of ammusement or even interest in the pigeon but he look and observed the pigeon as he took a bite of his pastery. Now that I think of it the look was an interesting one, when walking downtown city hustle and bustle gets ignored. People handing out fliers, sidewalk evangelists, people coming and going, a woman running to catch the bus, all these things and this man stops for a few moments and looks a pigeon. I am sure that both him and the pigeon frequent that particular bakery, he didn't seem suprised at the presence of the bird, but indifferently observed it anyway. When I saw what was going on I have never had a stronger urge to take a picuter. This is not a urge that come over me regularly but it felt like a moment that was worth capturing. I was observing another person having a moment, which in itself was a moment for me. I leaned against the wall book in hand and took it in for a bit and then was on my way back into the flow of the poeple which took me down stream to my school and on through the rest of my day.

Words

Once my mom told me that when I was little and learning to speak my dad and her refused to speak down to me. She said this with a little bit of a tone of self mocking. As if the desicion was made with their nosed turned up to baby talk, when in reality I am sure they did it my best interests in mind. And indeed, I did benefit from their decision. Of all the aspects of my life that I have problems, having words doesn't seem to be one of them.

When I was in about 6th grade I won 3rd place in a creative writing contest. It was an Indian Jones type story, that was 4 or 5 pages long. I have it somewhere but I haven't read it in years. Maybe I will post it. A few years later I wrote a speach about my time in J.R.O.T.C. that I was asked to read twice, once for a cerimony that J.R.O.T.C. held annually and once in front of the School Board.

During my sophmore year in college I finally started reading and interacting with the ideas that I was being taught and since then all my words have been used to get decent grade on papers. I have increasingly become better at grammar issues, spelling, and the like and my papers have gotten increasingly better. But my words have ceased to be my own. Sometimes it feels like all I do it "regurgitate what I read" (to put it in the words of Nate Goshe). Sometimes it feels like my papers ammount to is citing such-and-such a guy and this-or-that paper, make is sound decent and turn it in. All this only serving to keep my GPA.

I was watching a slam poet a few days ago named Rives. His words are nothing short of inspiring. While I was watching him I thought about what I have been writing, about how I spend my time and I wondered if I could ever create something half as beautiful as his words. Its not about comparision, it about using what I have and using it well. Its about using my words for me as well as my GPA, something I don't do well or often. I hope this at least a start.