Who trusted God was love indeedSo... I guess I consider myself to be somewhat of a closer. And it's time to close the deal. As my great teacher, Dr. Jerome Bump, once told me, "take what you learn, or want to learn, and leave the rest behind" [3] Well, one thing I've learned is don't give up. Certainly don't cower down to people would live their lives just as well if you fell as a result of them and never think twice about your reality. Don't leave anything behind that you really wanted--or you'll regret it. When something you want is in front of you, grab it. Reach for it. Sacrifice. Jump forth like your as enlightened as Buddha and take what you earned-- if you earned it. Make the leap. Help people. Breath.
And love Creation's final law -
Through Nature,red in tooth and claw
With ravine, shrieked against his creed -- [2]
[4]Not only is this a great photo, the citation will take you to an interesting article that sort of inspired this so-called 'expressive' post.....
Sometimes, we encounter set backs. But the strength you gain from life is how you manage to rebound from what has already taken place. I'm pretty sure I've learned enough this semester here to equip me for my remaining 2 or 3 years. (hey, I don't have a crystal ball.) Yet, to me, it doesn't matter what happens anymore in that it won't change who I become. When it's all said and done, I'll be more than grades or my GPA. I'll be enlightened by the experience I sought fulfill. I am here. And I have and will continue to work hard as long as I'm at UT. And one thing I've learned thus far is you can't put a letter on me, or even a number and come close to accurately defining who I am. You could give me an F, and it wouldn't change what I try to do tomorrow. I'm thankful that through my education I've learned what my limits are and what my strengths are. More important that this, I've learned areas I'm able to improve on--like speed blogging. I'm not going to lie. I've never tried to lie about it; I didn't get into UT because I'm a great scholar, writer, poet, mathematician. I got in because I worked at it as hard as I wanted to in order to do what I wanted to do. I gave it every bit of my all, even at the (dare I say?)community college level. There came a point where that became pretty easy, but I still did it because I liked what I was learning and the effect it had.
For me, college is something entirely different than an experience. It has come to shape my perspective about the world and myself. I found something out about myself before I came back seeking an education at a prestigious university. I found that I like to challenge myself. And one day I decided to do that. I was 28 going on 29. I decided to stop bouncing from car lot to car lot, or job to job, temporary service to temporary service. It got really old. Not to mention, how I sometimes jumped from relationship to relationship, aimlessly. Additionally, from place to place as if it were musical Austin.
Speaking of music in Austin, I wonder what I would have done had music not been coaxed into my life by someone who understood it wasn't a bad thing to play the electric guitar--it would just hurt your ears. After a long struggle with my parents to get involved with music, I finally won the debate. I can say that this is the first time I had any interest in anything outside of sports or the opposite sex when I was a young teenager. And I owe a great deal to this guy (as well as my parents for caving), Larry Seyer, for getting me started and teaching me when he was so busy making music himself. When I see him at family functions, he doesn't seem know just how much he changed my life by showing me the ropes of music. It kept me busy... Below is a picture of one of my youth's mentors.
[5]
But the picture doesn't really do this guy justice. He's compassionate about the role of music and its positive impact, he does a lot for the community, he loves computers and plays many instruments. If you've been around central Texas, you've probably heard of the people he works with. But you probably haven't heard of him because he likes doing the more challenging, "behind the scenes" stuff.
Speaking of music in Austin, I wonder what I would have done had music not been coaxed into my life by someone who understood it wasn't a bad thing to play the electric guitar--it would just hurt your ears. After a long struggle with my parents to get involved with music, I finally won the debate. I can say that this is the first time I had any interest in anything outside of sports or the opposite sex when I was a young teenager. And I owe a great deal to this guy (as well as my parents for caving), Larry Seyer, for getting me started and teaching me when he was so busy making music himself. When I see him at family functions, he doesn't seem know just how much he changed my life by showing me the ropes of music. It kept me busy... Below is a picture of one of my youth's mentors.
[5]But the picture doesn't really do this guy justice. He's compassionate about the role of music and its positive impact, he does a lot for the community, he loves computers and plays many instruments. If you've been around central Texas, you've probably heard of the people he works with. But you probably haven't heard of him because he likes doing the more challenging, "behind the scenes" stuff.
With engineering, writing and producing, his ideas are always evolving, making the next one different from the next. Yet there is a system to it all, with whichever realm he's working on. When he teaches guitar, and you're lucky if he's ever found the time for that, he tells you the less effort you use the better you'll be. Watching this guy play guitar is amazing. Also, watching him play about 20 other instruments--literally--better most who play one is an amazing experience if that's the guy you're learning from, because his ideas... are always evolving. He talks about his career this video and he has obviously kept up with the pace of evolving technology and intertwines old ideas with new ones.
[6]
As I grew older, learned another valuable lesson about my life around the same time I decided to seek a college degree. I learned I needed to slow down and rethink some of my ideas. It's funny how we're in such a hurry to get to the next thing--to accomplish the things at the top of our hurry list, we'll put of important things that are your responsibility or even people--like my family, who I hold (most of them at least) as my responsibility. I have mixed feelings about, as the delightful Dr. Woodard says, "plowing through" my last reading. I have mixed feelings as I sit here ready to finish it and sending it to Dr. Bump. My thoughts flow back in time, recalling memories, so that I give my chance every possibility of earning an A in the hardest class I've ever taken. I think, in a way, the fact that Victorian Literature (E 375) was difficult for me was one reason I felt so compelled to hang in there and not give up. I'm not brown nosing, I don't think teachers get enough credit for what they do. I'll be honest, I've had some bad teachers in my life. Someone might wonder how I got into UT having graduated in the bottom 10% of my class... My response is, I had to challenge myself not for the sake of challenging myself, but to live out the "dreams" I set out to accomplish. It seems like, with almost everything I try to do, that if I challenge myself with something that pushes me and my capacity (don't laugh...OH, that's so WRONG. You laughed). Digression aside, I had great teachers. And I'm gracious towards all of them because they've inspired me along the way and taught me a great deal, thus expanding my knowledge of the world around me.
For some, life really is just dust in the wind. As I sit here listening to Kansas play Dust in the Wind, I find myself wanting to fall asleep. I'm tired from taking my studies so seriously. I am literally only held upright by sheer will. This is something that only I have control over. If I shut my eyes, I know my academic fate. Everything I've worked hard for this semester would be down the drain in terms of my ultimate goal. So, on the one night were everything--and I do mean everything--in me is fighting for the cause; my well being, the future, achievement. I wander, what will it take for me to achieve what I set out to do?
As I sit here, relentlessly blogging for points, I ponder how my life will make a difference in the end--if at all. Will I be just another piece of dust in the wind who tried hard for nothing? The thought of it really doesn't scare me that much. Right now, I'm finding comfort in Tennyson's lyrics and Kansas' Dust in the Wind while I ponder life's uncertainty and my determination to take things as they come as the wind blows.
As I close my eyes I can hear the song taking me over throwing me out to the wind--gravitating my body towards "shut eye". My body is tired, as if dust, but my will won't die; not over something it can control or suppress for these next few moments. Considering what I've worked for, it's a small task. And I've realized, I somehow come through, just in time when it matters. This is why I sometimes reject Darwin's 'struggle for existence'. He writes, "Man may be excused for feeling some pride at having risen, though not through his own exertions, to the very summit of the organic scale; and the fact of him having thus risen, instead of having been aboriginally placed there, may give him hopes for a sthill higher destiny in the distant future".
[8]
I couldn't agree less with Darwin in this regard, he doesn't strike me as a someone who painfully exerted himself to rise above a challenge. For me, given life's adversity, that is a sweet feeling.
As I think back in time, and close my eyes and daydream, I can see the shells buried beneath the earth that have fossilized them self into the allegorical rhealm of history. Questions come to me. Do fossil time lines really make sense? Or is it our adapted way of thinking that structures our thoughts to think this way about time? As sleep begins to wear on my consciousness, all of this science starts to become confusing and I start dreaming of flowers as I thank those who have guided me along the way.
[9]
[6]
As I grew older, learned another valuable lesson about my life around the same time I decided to seek a college degree. I learned I needed to slow down and rethink some of my ideas. It's funny how we're in such a hurry to get to the next thing--to accomplish the things at the top of our hurry list, we'll put of important things that are your responsibility or even people--like my family, who I hold (most of them at least) as my responsibility. I have mixed feelings about, as the delightful Dr. Woodard says, "plowing through" my last reading. I have mixed feelings as I sit here ready to finish it and sending it to Dr. Bump. My thoughts flow back in time, recalling memories, so that I give my chance every possibility of earning an A in the hardest class I've ever taken. I think, in a way, the fact that Victorian Literature (E 375) was difficult for me was one reason I felt so compelled to hang in there and not give up. I'm not brown nosing, I don't think teachers get enough credit for what they do. I'll be honest, I've had some bad teachers in my life. Someone might wonder how I got into UT having graduated in the bottom 10% of my class... My response is, I had to challenge myself not for the sake of challenging myself, but to live out the "dreams" I set out to accomplish. It seems like, with almost everything I try to do, that if I challenge myself with something that pushes me and my capacity (don't laugh...OH, that's so WRONG. You laughed). Digression aside, I had great teachers. And I'm gracious towards all of them because they've inspired me along the way and taught me a great deal, thus expanding my knowledge of the world around me.
For some, life really is just dust in the wind. As I sit here listening to Kansas play Dust in the Wind, I find myself wanting to fall asleep. I'm tired from taking my studies so seriously. I am literally only held upright by sheer will. This is something that only I have control over. If I shut my eyes, I know my academic fate. Everything I've worked hard for this semester would be down the drain in terms of my ultimate goal. So, on the one night were everything--and I do mean everything--in me is fighting for the cause; my well being, the future, achievement. I wander, what will it take for me to achieve what I set out to do?
As I sit here, relentlessly blogging for points, I ponder how my life will make a difference in the end--if at all. Will I be just another piece of dust in the wind who tried hard for nothing? The thought of it really doesn't scare me that much. Right now, I'm finding comfort in Tennyson's lyrics and Kansas' Dust in the Wind while I ponder life's uncertainty and my determination to take things as they come as the wind blows.
But trust those we call the dead
Are breathers of an ampler day
For ever nobler ends, They say,
The solid earth whereon we tread I close my eyes
Only for a moment, then a moment's gone
All my dreams
Pass before my eyes a curiosity
Dust in the wind
All they are is dust in the wind [7]
As I close my eyes I can hear the song taking me over throwing me out to the wind--gravitating my body towards "shut eye". My body is tired, as if dust, but my will won't die; not over something it can control or suppress for these next few moments. Considering what I've worked for, it's a small task. And I've realized, I somehow come through, just in time when it matters. This is why I sometimes reject Darwin's 'struggle for existence'. He writes, "Man may be excused for feeling some pride at having risen, though not through his own exertions, to the very summit of the organic scale; and the fact of him having thus risen, instead of having been aboriginally placed there, may give him hopes for a sthill higher destiny in the distant future".
[8]
I couldn't agree less with Darwin in this regard, he doesn't strike me as a someone who painfully exerted himself to rise above a challenge. For me, given life's adversity, that is a sweet feeling.
As I think back in time, and close my eyes and daydream, I can see the shells buried beneath the earth that have fossilized them self into the allegorical rhealm of history. Questions come to me. Do fossil time lines really make sense? Or is it our adapted way of thinking that structures our thoughts to think this way about time? As sleep begins to wear on my consciousness, all of this science starts to become confusing and I start dreaming of flowers as I thank those who have guided me along the way.
[9]====
1 http://youtube.com/watch?v=1qxSwJC3Ly0
2 Tynnyson - In Memoriam course anthology
3 Jerome Bump
4 http://seedmagazine.com/news/2005/10/what_buddhism_offers_science.php 5http://www.audiosparx.com/sa/zdbpath/artistpix/2902.gif
6 http://youtube.com/watch?v=_SLcczSWIRg
7Tynneson, In Memoriam (course anthology), 387
8 Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species, (couse anthology)_ 369
9 http://static.howstuffworks.com/gif/house-plants-1.jpg
1 http://youtube.com/watch?v=1qxSwJC3Ly0
2 Tynnyson - In Memoriam course anthology
3 Jerome Bump
4 http://seedmagazine.com/news/2005/10/what_buddhism_offers_science.php 5http://www.audiosparx.com/sa/zdbpath/artistpix/2902.gif
6 http://youtube.com/watch?v=_SLcczSWIRg
7Tynneson, In Memoriam (course anthology), 387
8 Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species, (couse anthology)_ 369
9 http://static.howstuffworks.com/gif/house-plants-1.jpg
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