king of the road

after a long day of work andy, my fellow reconstructer, and i embarked upon a long and arduous journey through the mean streets of nashville to the friendly confines that is our brentwood baptist home. traffic would be horendous that fateful day as traffic slowed to a halt numerous times on our voyage home. i suppose the traffic congestion could be credited to the fact that there was a wreck on nearly every major interstate.

tired and sun-beaten, we fled from the interstate onto less crowded streets only to find so many tired souls with the same idea.

again, we halted.

yet fate would shine on us this day, brightly with a vibrant pallet of colors. we would be treated to what i would call, easily, the greatest exercise routine known to man (with the possible exception of j'arming, the conductor's secret to a long and healthy life).

andy and i looked on with childlike glee and enthusiasm as a man danced his way down the street. it was as much as a shuffle as anything but he worked in a mighty fine moonwalk several times as we looked upon him in wonder. the man was clad in less than flattering blue shorts, a skin tight yellow tank-top, a yellow sweat band and enormous sunglasses. he carried his cd player close to his chest as it pumped out what i can only assume were motivational jams. here is an "artist" interpretation:
as this magnificant person shimmied his way down the road, he would continually point (in rythym mind you) to all of the following: the road, the sidewalk, passing motorists, stationary motorists, debree, restaraunts and a police officer.
for the, roughly, mile and a half that we kept pace with him, a senior citizen shimmying machine, i could not be anything but delighted with the life with which God has blessed me. he brought joy to my heart.

andy and i agreed that if there were more men like this on our nation's road systems, road rage would be no more. in light of that thought, i am developing a proposal for tdot which suggests the employment of various movers and shakers to patrol our good state's roadways to spread good cheer during the slowest of traffic days. i feel like this is the start of change. revolution is in the air.

pinball

as an ambivert (1/2 extravert, 1/2 intravert), i require an odd balance of community and solitude. i feel as though that balance has been attacked.

part of my reconstruct job requires me to sleep at the church with the teams of middle and high schoolers there for the week. sleeping at the church is quite odd. meandering through the halls in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom is even stranger.

for the most part it has been great. i love the work reconstruct does, not to mention how they go about doing it. the people i am working with are great. it has been fun.

i just haven't had the time to sit and do nothing, that downtime i so greatly cherish. my mind has longed for the chance to just rome free, to entertain the myriad of ideas that run through it. i am adjusting to it but it is taking a little time.

i think i am starting to want some stability in my life. i'm wanting to get rooted in something and start living. i've been wanting that for a while, praying for that for a while. it just isn't coming. God, at least i'm hoping, has me in this strange little threshold place.

it feels like pinball. i should note that i really don't care for that game. but that is how my life has been the last 3+ years. i've been knocked into one thing, got caught up in it for a while, spun around and spat out into another little doo-dad. sometimes they have shining lights and make funny noises. sometimes they are incredibly boring. but for the most part they leave me dizzy.

i just can't manage to see straight. i can't manage to get an answer. i can't manage to get going.

perhaps that is why i don't like pinball: there is no real goal. i've never been interested in points. i've been interested in progress, in moving forward. in pinball, you can't really win. you can't really move forward. you just go back and forth from one thing to another, never really settling down all the while trying to just stay afloat, trying to stay in play, trying to stay out of the gutter.

at the very least, i'm still in play. i'm still looking for some escape from the machine. i need out. i have this fear that i'm stuck here. i'm so very grateful for the experiences, for the things i've been able to do, places i've gone and people i've met. i can't say that enough. i am genuinely grateful. but i need something. i just have no idea what that is.

i apologize if this came off as a sort of whiny quarter-life crisis post, something not unlike a zach braff movie. but truth be told, i've talked to a lot of people who seem to be on their last quarter that feel the same way. ahh, the great release of incoherent blogging. i'd almost forgotten how strange it feels.

donald

yesterday ended the first week of my summer stint with reconstruct. i must say that i enjoyed the experience in spite of the fact that i wasn't able to read or sleep very much.

the week after easter i helped with a team that came in from washington state put on a few roofs. the home owner at one of the sites was named donald and i got to know him fairly well. this past week we had a crew paint his house so i made sure to stop by to see how he was doing.

donald told us in april that his stepson had murdered his birth son and then took his own life. as you can imagine, it had effected him quite badly. he would tear up whenever he mentioned him. donald does have one other son.

several times during the course of each week he made mention of things he and that son had done. he showed us the new patio set that his son had bought for him, told me about the time last year they went to see the fireworks at riverfront park and about how his son was trying to get him to go with them again this year. when he would tell me these things i would get the sense that he wasn't exactly being truthful. there was something about the way he spoke about these things that didn't seem right.

unfortunately, they weren't true. his son refuses to talk to him and will not see him. donald made it up so we wouldn't know. i could make guesses about why he did lie. i can understand, to a degree, why he lied. i suppose i've done and continue to do that too.

most of us care deeply about other people's perception of us. we want to be thought normal, or intelligent, or funny, or popular, or a good miny-golfer, or a good listener or somebody who cares more about other people than themselves or somebody who _____.

it is those few who don't seem to care that throw me off. they are who they are and that is all they know how to be. some times this is refreshing. sometimes you wished they would pretend at the very least to care (they probably do in reality).

i'd like to think that i've moved beyond this, that i'm a pretty genuine person. i think for the most part i am. but i still have those moments when i become something i'm not for whatever reason. so i understand donald wanting us to think that he and his son have a normal relationship, that his son would by a gift for the father he loves.

i understand the front, but it won't do him or any of us a bit of good. it won't build community for one of the loneliest people i've come to know. it won't alleviate the pain of his relationships with his sons. it will build up inside of him and hurt more.

i couldn't tell you how many times i've heard the classic advice of 'just be yourself.' i'm just now seeing how hard that really is for just about everybody. maybe we're scared that our self isn't good enough. thank God our self is good enough for Him. we don't have to create this perfect, utopian person to present before him. he comes to us as the wrecks we are, without prejudice. that is amazing to me.

young love

today, while driving in the reconstruct expedition, a pertinent song from my past bellowed through the spacious interior. it is safe to say that my fearless vocal performance was less than perfect. i was, indeed, a bit pitchy.

the song, since you're probably wondering, was foreigner's "i want to know what love is." the vocal range of this song takes me a bit past my comfort zone, a comfort zone i'll leave only for songs that lead me into wistful joy.

this song just happens to be the first and only "song" i've ever had in a relationship. in seventh grade (the beginning of the two-year period of my life which i classify as my 'prime') i was dating the head cheerleader, whitney wiggins. i must also mention that she was in eighth grade at the time, an older woman. as the song ended, it made me quite happy that i have moved beyond the awkwardness of my early relationships and into a new awkwardness which has been at the forefront of every relationship since.

the irony of it all is that i'm still not sure i know what love actually is. perhaps listening to cheesy power ballads will help speed that along. bands like journey and boston will be my new teachers as i search for it. i will learn of love as i sing in falsetto with frizzy haired men from the past.

cleansing

the other day i was told by two people that they were tired of reading that i stunk. the only purpose of this post is to declare myself clean and smelling delightfully like the springs of ireland.