over and out.

switching over to my website fulltime now. i'm going to miss this blog. it has been a great outlet for me... but we are leaving fadedmemories behind and are beginning "whatever... wherever".

ooh. how exciting. shoot me an email if you'd like my website address. until we meet again.

farewell, and may grace and peace abound!

winding down.

so, it has been over a month since i've posted anything. while much has happened during this time, i do not feel it has warrented a 'post'. besides, simply knowing i will have to leave this blog once i go overseas hasn't given me much motivation to continue my writings. this blog's end has been for some time now. i've still got 40 days till departure, so i will not end it quite yet. i will leave occasion for yet another writing, but nothing to promise.

we will see.

being defined by our things.

i've often heard that people are defined by the things that they own. that what we are passionate about can be summed up by the things that we spend money on. if this is in fact true, then right now i am not much. or at least it doesn't look like it. i am stacks and stacks of cardboard boxes. sitting in my parents basement, no less. presently my life has been compressed into many, many small cubes, compartmentalized by their contents, which have been arranged by function, or by their similarity in function with other objects.

it's quite interesting moving places of residence. i like to be organized as it is, or should i say i like for things to have their own place. so when i put everything i own into a place that is not it's own, essentially into the same place, i didn't really enjoy the thought of it. Everything seems, well, out of place.

but, i do enjoy the idea of it. the idea that all this 'stuff' doesn't have a real place anymore. That now it really does belong in a box somewhere. because in truth, most of it is just plain useless anyway. items that have been collected, consequences of living in one place for 4 years.

but what i like even more, is the fact that i get to leave it all behind. that now, since these objects have found their place in the anonymity of a wall of cardboard, they no longer have significance. they have lost their place. making it easier for me to leave them behind.

easy or not, though, i can't take it all with me anyway. Because you see, moving to another country puts many limitations on one's idea of how many things they actually need to be comfortable, to live, to survive.

i love it. not having things, yet having the ability to be mobile. to travel light. To travel vulnerable. Leaving behind your blankets of security, the things that we folded nicely into boxes. Traveling to expose yourself to a world that you so desperately want to return the favor.

The favor of shedding the ‘stuff’ that builds these cardboard box walls between us. Breaking down these barriers that are nothing but stuff in a box. In order to leave behind something more meaningful and valuable than anything we could find to fill them with.

The heart.

rocky votolato

white daisy passing

(click the pictures to see the white daisy passing video)

drives and community.

I dropped my roommate off at the airport today and was enjoying a nice Sunday drive back to Blacksburg when I began slipping into that introspective wandering of the mind that happens when I drive sometimes, and I realized, “I won’t be able to do this anymore.” And by ‘this’ I mean taking a drive. The simple act of walking out to my car and taking a drive, will become much more complex without a car.

I love taking drives, jumping into the car, and speeding off to a world of freedom on the open roads. Winding through the mountains of southwestern Virginia is very close to therapy for me, it’s a great place to go to free your mind of whatever is trying to get out, or stay in for that matter. But when I leave, and move to a different country, I will not have this luxury of personal freedom anymore.

I have to be open to a new perspective. Now, my feet will be my car. I will have to slow down and my travels won’t be as far, but they will definitely be more deliberate. I will notice more of what I’ve been missing over the years while racing down the highway in our Americana frenzy getting to our next destination. This will force me into community with others, also known as public transportation. New opportunities await.

So why is it that far too often here, in the states, community is sacrificed for comfort? I believe it’s because we take community for granted. We hold it up high as this ideal that we think we are living in, while the honest truth is, we don’t have to slightest clue what it means to live in community. If we did maybe worship would become more of a permanent way of life, as opposed to a once a week task.

I know I have taken it for granted during my time in Blacksburg. I am thankful He has been opening my eyes to this aspect of life, because over the next few months it is going to become my life.

I crave community now. Living transparently with other people. I want that.

one foot in eden- ron rash

and one out.

i glance up at my reflection in the window, then back down to the screen, then back up, my eyes glance around my desk to all the artifacts that are set rightly in place. they will be moved soon. for good. i watch the minutes pass on my travel clock that sits on my set of matthew henry's. my eyes are heavy from the long day of work in the hot sun. flying gables, i glance back up [in thought], are quite challenging. something about it is satisfying, though. it feels good to be outside working in the hot sun, dripping wet, having trouble keeping water in you, before you sweat it out, having your arms cut by nails while banging the wood into place, struggling to hold the gable all while your biceps are burning and your eyes stinging, and yet, it's a great feeling when it's complete. that sense of achievement. [i stretch my fingers as even now they are sore and achy]

and this experience is something i share with the guys i work with. we all feel this. this physical triumph of sorts. but it's not my body that will continue to hurt days and years down the road, it's my heart. physical pain and sacrifice is so brief when dealing with the longing of the heart.

we talk about God, and they only inform me of His silliness, how God is simply an illusion. One of them informs me how he thinks it would be great if he could convince someone to denounce their faith. my heart breaks at that statement, and i feel so helpless. ron rash has hit on something that is embedded deep within the soul. "that yearning, that sense that sense that part of your heart is unfilled."

why do i always insist on filling it with things that will not last?

the gift.

have you ever been given a gift that just blew you away? i have. i guess more than once, but most recently i was blown away by the banjo. jon, a good friend, was flying in from san fran on his way to va beach for a wedding. he stopped by to hang out some and presents me with a banjo for my graduation present. i was speechless. it was a good gift. it was a great gift. one of those that you know has a lot of thought in it, along with a lot of heart.

you see jon and i had this conversation once. he had not long before gotten a mandolin and was a playing a little for me over the phone, and being a folk and bluegrass lover, i was thoroughly enjoying it. like chris thile was right beside me. and i told him flat out... if there was one instrument i would ever want to play it would be a banjo.

so, as i am preparing to embark on my next journey i leave with a promise to jon: upon my return someday we will reunite, find a front porch, some rockin' chairs, a good cup of coffee, and then proceed to do a little pickin'.

ah, what a picture.

time to walk

Graduation: yet another season of change

It’s approaching that time of year. That time towards the end of April when thousands of students across the country are relentlessly hitting the books, some literally out of anger, and some metaphorically to cram those last few minutes before their final exam. Only one thing consoles them, and it keeps replaying over and over in their mind, “this is it… this is the last cramming session, for the last final, for the last class they will ever take as an undergraduate student.

This is a very exciting time. I am currently experiencing it myself. This is a time for change, though. I feel the whole world is opening before me with opportunity. There is no telling what city I will end up in, or where my job may take me… but wait, I like this city. I’ve spent the last six years just getting acquainted with it. Yeah, but I have a BArchd and endless opportunities await. But what about my friends? The ones I’m leaving behind and the ones graduating with me, but that are probably moving to different cities. A salary awaits you, though (which means a sum of money you can still hardly comprehend). Yeah, but… all the money in the world couldn’t buy a pita pizza as good as one from the Cellar. Oh, and what about the daily routine of a job. Well, I don’t’ know, I kind of like my sporadic schedule of studio hours.

All of this was running through my mind not half an hour after I finished my final thesis review. I was experiencing a feeling of relief and accomplishment, but also one of melancholy, which I didn’t particularly expect. I had worked the last five years to get to this point, and now it was over. I’m not sure I really thought it would ever end, or even wanted it to end for that matter, but it did.

And now I’m finished with college.

I literally sat in the room with my work for an hour or so. Just sitting there. I didn’t know what to. It’s been five years since I haven’t had a studio project to work on.

Talking with some friends helped come to this conclusion: there will never be another time in your life like college, specifically in the sense of so much change in the shortest amount of time.

This must have been how the Israelites, felt. Imagine it, they that had been enslaved in Egypt for a really long time, were finally led out and were on the outskirts of the promised land, but they didn’t want to go in! They didn’t want change either; they were comfortable where they were, even when they were presented with a land flowing of milk and honey. What are your promised lands?

I think it’s a good way to look at this stage of transition life. We are standing outside of our promised lands and all we have to do is cross the border and go in. But we must be anticipating and be willing to accept change, no matter what form it takes. Because complacency and indecision and doubt and hardship are a fact of life and they will never go away, even once we have gotten the courage to cross the border and inhabit our promised land.

thoughts on B&N

so. barnes&noble. i know that you all have them. i have to say, though, truthfully, it's a big box store that i don't mind. so, i sat down at one of their tables beside the magazine racks last week [and while looking at my trendy design and photog mags] and wrote a few lines. it went something like this... bookstores/coffeeshops are great places to be.

at least for me, i can't keep myself away. any given week will find me visting a coffeeshop/bookstore at least, at least 3 days out of the week, typically 4 or 5.

they are very inspiring places to be. so much creativity in one place is just amazing. i could go into a few different directions here, but i want to focus on the store itself, ideologically. could you not consider bookstores to be museums? that is the main question i'm posing. And I make that statment on this basis: writing is art. i'm not really aware if there are actual museums for books, maybe for like 1st editions or something, or maybe even libraries. but writing, as an art form, why would bookstores not be considered a type museum?

maybe it's because of the nature of the art of writing. there is definitely something unique about it. books can be reproduced many, many times and the copies are just as powerful as the original. if that doesn't speak to the power of writing, i'm not sure what would. i mean, take a Picasso or Pollock, or Rothko: do copies of this type of art speak the same as the original? I would argue no... there is something 'lost in the translation'.

It's a museum whose galleries are constantly changing yet remain the same to some degree. there is an antiquity about the contents of bookstores, yet most of the books were probably printed within the past year or so.

it's quite a phenomenon, and i can't get over it.