Wise words, Ira.

9/11

I spent a great deal of today contemplating what happened in this country 10 years ago and how those events have changed my life and my outlook on life. I'm certainly not alone in this introspection, far from it. We spent most of our afternoon going to a concert at Cleveland High School (beautiful concert hall, by the way) with a packed house of people who all came to remember the same events and implications. For starters, it's almost an hour drive away from our house, and Kat and I spent a lot of that drive talking about our own perspective on what had changed in our lives. I had been stuck this morning while listening to NPR by really how much had changed, seemingly overnight, 10 years ago. The way we travel, the conversations we have with people from other countries, the way we feel about being an American and what that means.

The concert started with Fanfare for the Common Man, which rarely fails to move me and certainly didn't disappoint today. There were readings and a few other pieces, but the big showpiece was The Armed Man, which is quite an epic piece. It's a very ambitious exploration of war, not written specifically for this occasion, but an interesting exploration on this occasion. I found myself longing for more to discuss, though, than the military and militaristic aspects of this topic. There's so much more to my feelings today than the Global War On Terror or Al-Queda's War On Westernism, or whatever it should be called. I scrawled down the following during the concert:

It's not that I don't respect my brothers and sisters in uniform, because I do, but the memory of 9/11 means so much more to me than armed conflict. Today I remember a brave group of misfit passengers who decided their deaths were going to mean something; the rescue workers, in uniform or not, who looked for survivors, then bodies, then cleaned up the mess--some who gave their lives so the rest of us could continue ours in peace; civil libertarians who have recognized these 10 years as vitally important to keeping what's dear to us; artists who have continued on their lifelong quest for beauty, ignoring the ignorant who told them the search was futile; journalists and documentarians who stood fast in their quest for the truth, no matter how unattainable it has seemed; everyone who continues to hope for a better world despite evidence to the contrary.

I tried to paraphrase and expand on what I'd written at the time, but didn't like it as much as what I was feeling in that moment.

So if you're going to talk about the armed conflict which happened before, on and after September 11, 2001, I'll be happy to talk with you about it. There's a lot of good conversation to be had and a lot of opportunity for us all to grow in that conversation. I highly recommend The Armed Man, and I hope you managed to see one of the many live performances of it today. It's very moving, and a very interesting exploration of all kinds of armed conflict.

I'm still craving more discussion about the other things.

Shrimp Greens Pasta--better recipe than name.

I made an impromptu dinner last night and Kat liked it so well that she requested it again tonight. Tonight she requested that I not forget that one, so I thought what better insurance against forgetting it than to blog about it.

Get the pasta going. Put some cleaned & dried shrimp in a bowl with roasted Hatch (New Mexico) green chile and garlic. Sauté a bunch of fresh greens (rainbow chard and tot soi were the key ingredients but it could work with a lot of them) in olive oil with a splash of apple cider vinegar until barely wilted. Ideally, the pasta should be about al dente at the same time--drain it when it is, drizzle it in olive oil, and set it aside. Put the shrimp mixture in the sauté pan, sear it on both sides, and turn off the heat, mix the pasta in there, toss it all and serve with Parmesiano Regiano.

Yum. I'll try to remember to take a picture next time I make it.

can't focus on any one thing, so why not write?

I can't seem to focus my mind on any one thing right now. I keep hopping from site to site looking for something to occupy my mind, and nothing is really doing it for any length of time. I suppose that probably means I should just go to bed already, but there's this restlessness in me, too, which is keeping me up. So, yeah, can't focus--why not write? I don't know why that made any sense in my head, and furthermore why I'm writing it here in a blog instead of in some kind of journal. I guess there's that fine line between a blog and a journal these days. Well, some people seem to think it's a fine line, I don't so much. There's a big difference. I don't write in either as often as I think I should or as much as I aspire to do, but when I write in the journal, I'm not expecting anyone to ever read it; when I write a blog post, I feel like I'm talking to someone. Not necessarily anyone in particular. Not you, or the other guy who was just here, or his cousin; just talking to someone nondescript.

For some reason, this reminds me of a blog post a friend of mine from high school wrote the other day. She was talking about habits she's trying to get into and ended by asking for the readers aspirational habits. All I could think of was that I'm trying to get in the habit of brushing my teeth twice a day instead of only once. I swear, I don't think I've brushed my teeth more than once any day since I wrote that comment. What is that all about?

I also don't know how I managed to forget that I'm trying to get in the habit of writing. In a journal, a blog, on a project I'm noodling around with, in some way. That's why I started this blog.

So maybe that's why I'm here tonight with this stream of consciousness. Thanks for dropping by.

being outcasts

I heard something really captivating on the TV show This American Life (season 1 episode 3 "God's Close-Up"). Ben McPherson, a Mormon artist feature in the episode, does large scale, ambitious art works of the life of Jesus. He needs a lot of bearded men as models and it's not easy to find men with beards in Utah unless you look at people most would consider outcasts. When asked about this, the artist said "We Christians kind of tend to align ourself with Christ by the things that we do and our actions, but I don't think we ever think of aligning ourself with Christ in terms of being, being outcasts."

That reminds me of my days as a Christian. I was involved in the First Presbyterian Church in Ann Arbor, MI in my mid-teens, a period of my life which corresponded with an age-appropriate dose of rebellion and aligning myself with outcasts. The high point of my respect for that particular church came when our youth group watched The Breakfast Club together and one of the leaders of our group compared John Bender to Jesus. (This is the same leader who organized a group trip to see U2 in concert, which was my first rock concert.)

myspace facebook.com coup?

Granted it's kind of the middle of the night, but it's still a little surprising that I can't find anything on the web about this. It sure seems from where I'm sitting that myspace has pulled off some kind of DNS coup on facebook. When I point my browser to any facebook page, I get directed to myspace. It's weird, very clever (assuming it's intentional) and starting to get annoying. 

Speaking of annoying, myspace has gotten a lot more annoying-looking since the last time I wandered by. I wonder if they're trying to annoy me out of my facebook habit.

on the other hand...

Of course, maybe my sleep issues aren't really issues after all, but just me getting in touch with a more natural rhythm:

http://www.livescience.com/12891-natural-sleep.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Livesciencecom+%28LiveScience.com+Science+Headline+Feed%29&utm_content=My+Yahoo

Interesting. A big thanks to my lovely wife for sharing the article with me.

general unrest

There seems to be a lot of general unrest in the world this month--from Egypt to Wisconsin, for Pete's sake. OK, file this blog post under d for duh, eh?

The thing that's strange to me is how that general unrest is manifesting in my own life. From unexplained (and seemingly unexplainable) sleepless nights to computers acting wonky, it all seems to be hitting the fan right now. I even ran out of gas the other day for the first time in about 10 years, then locked my keys in the car two days later. I know what my scientist dad would say about our inane need to assign order to chaos--to see patterns in random occurrences--and that's probably all there is to the computers, the cars, and other little things I'm noticing. The strange sense of unrest in my soul, though, that's the one that worries me. Like there are big things happening in the world, and I'm missing it.

In the meantime, I'm loosing focus on the world around me. I'm so worried about missing out on some big picture event that I'm not paying enough attention to the world around me... my son, my wife, people I work with and meet every day, my friends online, my parents on the phone, etc.

And, you know what? This computer is driving me nuts. I don't care what my dad says.