words, words, words
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If I begin to detail myself here, will you understand?
P. I am me
Q. I don't always know exactly who that is
R. I am Quaker
S. I like words and playing with them
T. I like genmaicha tea
U. I like the word napkin more than most others
V. I spend time walking my neighborhood
W. I cook rice often
X. I sleep well most every night
Y. I eat large amounts of fruit and vegetables
Z. I munch, sleep, write, create, cook, bike, watch, walk, listen, hope, learn, drink, live, breathe, touch, know, question, taste, copy, read, stare, carry, talk, dance, finger, try.
raisin@gmail.com
albums:
Magnetic Fields: 69 Love Songs
Erasure: I Say, I Say, I Say
Depeche Mode: Black Celebration
The Beach Boys: Pet Sounds
Marvin Gaye: What's Going On?
David Bowie: Hunky Dory
George Michael: Listen without Prejudice
George Gershwin: Porgy and Bess
Yo La Tengo: And Then Nothing Turned Itself Inside Out
songs:
Wild is the Wind: Nina Simone
Come Undone: Duran Duran
Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini: Rachmaninov
My Funny Valentine: Chet Baker
Feeling Yourself Disintegrate: The Flaming Lips
This Must Be the Place: The Talking Heads
Hyperballad: Bjork
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Monday, June 07, 2004
My dad first mentioned football while we were running. He and I ran around three miles a day when I was 12, about to enter 7th grade at a public school. I had gone to a Christian school for most of my life and then homeschooled for the past year. I was scared of the new school, scared of all the people that weren't Christians, that I expected to make fun of me. But while running, I was more focused on not wanting to run. It wasn't my choice that we ran together, or at all. My dad had always made my brother and i exercise, some to our benefit, some just over the top. But during that summer, my dad mentioned football as an alternative to running. If I played football, I wouldn't have to run three miles with him. I had never played organized sports and didn't want to, but I didn't want to run every day either. I said something like I'll think about it, and before I really had time to think, I was in the store trying on football cleats. 7th grade football wasn't completely funded by the school, so parents had to pay for the equipment. I've never been good at protesting, so I just went along with it, hoping it wouldn't be as bad as I expected. of course, my brother looked at me in shock, saying I would hate it, and asking why I had agreed. Had i agreed?
The first day, I hated it. told my dad i didn't want to play, it wasn't fun or good or anything. What i didn't tell him was how frightening it was. I had never hit or fought much, had never been in any kind of a fight. I had thrown my temper a few times, but that was during fits of rage that I had done my best to control. Tried, so hard to control. I had always been conscientious of my actions - growing up the younger sibling made me feel like i had to apologize for living, because I always seemed in my brother's way. I acquiesced to him in everything, except every once in a while, his teasing got too much and i would fight back. One hit, a bite, even throwing a toaster and chasing him with a hammer.
But I felt horrible for those outbursts, knew that God would want me to control that anger, to not unleash it at my brother but to endure everything he did to me. So after a lot of thought and prayer (i was around eleven at the time, and this kicked off during a Bible camp I went to which consisted of at least 6 hours of worship, sermons, and prayer meetings each day), I decided I had to control my temper. The best way I saw was to take I Corinthians 13, the love chapter, and apply it to my life. If God is love (as it says in I John 4:7), and Paul told us in Corinthians the exact nature of love, wasn't I bound to be like God and therefore like love? I figured on yes, and began to focus my life on those verses. Love suffers long and is kind, love envies not, vaunts not itself, does not behave itself unseemly . .. I read it over and over again, every night before I went to bed, several times, until I burned it in my mind and tried to become love, to be longsuffering and kind, to be as like God as I could be.
I was strong enough to control my temper and change the way i looked at everything in the world. Aggression was wrong, at least from what i could see of it. That first day of football asked me to be aggressive and to hit others. How could I do that? How could I go against what my Bible told me? Isn't this what my parents had taught me? i wouldn't play, I told my dad. unfortunately, I didn't trust him enough to tell him why, to explain to him why I couldn't be aggressive, why it hurt me so much. I knew he would make fun of me, would just laugh at my seriousness, would not attempt to understand what I was trying to do. He told me no, that I had to play, that I wasn't allowed to quit anything once I had started it, that he had payed too much money for the equipment. i wish I would have burst into tears, I wish i would have stood up to him, I wish I would have understand the difference between pacifism and passivity.
11:37 AM
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