It's been a while since the last post! First things first --
Cole had a tablet lying around and during my transition between Nebraska and Evanston, I borrowed it. This has two advantages over buying a new pen. First, it's borrowing and not buying, so for the moment it's free. Second, my computer's in its screen-flickering death throes and its successor won't be a touch screen so a separate tablet makes life a lot easier.
I'm in Wheaton right now, getting ready to go back to school tomorrow. Tomorrow! It's hard to believe. Mid-September sounded distant a month ago, but I guess it's here.
The last three weeks I was in Nebraska, doing construction work and trying to see as much family as possible in a brief time. I told myself I would work on recording songs and writing some fiction during my evening downtime but didn't do nearly as much as I wanted to. What's new.
After three weeks, though, I walked away more convinced than ever that if I don't wind up particularly equipped or passionate for ministry in any specific locale, I'm going to live in Nebraska.
I love the openness. I love looking in every direction and seeing horizon, speckled with the odd farmhouse or short treeline -- windbreaks. It's people existing in the middle of an unending plain. Or plane. The sky changes color at the horizon. You don't see it when buildings are in the way, but it's lighter and yellow at the bottom.
And as much as I instinctively feel that buildings obscuring 10% of a sunset should diminish its awe by 10%, that isn't the case. An open sunset is matchless. Sunsets or sunrises over the ocean are alright, but it's about drinking in fresh air, seeing sky meet land on every side and watching the texture of the endless cornfields blend together while the light fades.
I love dirt roads, when it's rained and the tires slowly accelerate you beyond safety and the ruts in the road throw the car around but if you don't panic and oversteer, the ruts hold you on the road too. I love picking a dirt road and following it past civilization while night sets.
I love the stars beyond light pollution, when you have to take deep breaths because that's infinity and you can see the clouds of the Milky Way all in a line. And it's cold because nothing blocks the wind and there've been bobcat sightings but you still sit on top of the car and try to find constellations. The stars are so bright.
I would live in Nebraska. I miss the land and I miss the relatives there and I miss leaving the car unlocked parked on Main Street because no one steals anything.
Anyway, enough about Nebraska. This post is about memories.
I drove on a road south of town two weeks ago. The interstate is north of town so there's never any reason to go south unless you're going to the town 25 miles in that direction. I was, to visit some friends. And the summer before I had driven on that same road for the same purpose -- and during the year in between I had never touched that road because the turn to my grandparents' house comes just before it.
As soon as I started driving down that road, all the memories from that car ride last year swam back -- the dense fog, so that the lights from cars in the other direction lit up the air like daylight. My stop next to the irrigation company's building to sit in silence and try to feel God. It was as clear as if it had just happened a week ago.
That was the first time I experienced such a clear memory from a location, but I get glimpses like that pretty often from songs.
Me and Cole listened to Live Your Life by T.I. dozens of times on the last family vacation before he went to college and it still recalls snorkeling in bright blue water on perfect beaches.
On our way to church, our family would listen to Casting Crowns and The Altar and the Door puts me back in the light blue Sports Rider, driving past Carrefour week after week.
Anything by the O.C. Supertones reminds me of living in Dallas back in 2002 and playing street hockey on the neighbor kids' driveway.
And there's plenty of others. The new song The Proof of Your Love by for King & Country I can already tell is pretty tied to these three weeks in Nebraska because there was nothing else on the Christian radio stations.
But here's the part where things suck, and the reason memories are stupid. Every time I listen to one of these memory-bound songs and relive those experiences, the connection gets a bit weaker. And the song starts to get tied to the point in my life when I'm listening to the song, instead of the past memory it was associated with.
So now The Altar and the Door is as much about learning guitar as it is about driving to church, and Live Your Life is about sitting on my bed with headphones in.
They don't recall the experiences as vividly -- and sometimes, if I'm not paying attention, they don't bring back memories at all.
And that sucks because my memory is awful and having these songs was a neat trick to circumvent my inability to retain memories by power of will. Every time I enjoy a memory, it weakens it. That's stupid.
I started a word document a few months ago where I tried to write down all the memories I could remember. The deeper I tried to remember, the deeper the memories went. I filled four pages with a smattering from a couple very specific points in my life. I think it would take years to write down enough memories to feel even partly satisfied.
And I've tried taking pictures, but I'm not disciplined enough so what I wind up with is a couple random and unexciting pictures from big events. But I want to remember the little events too.
As I forget more and more (off the top, I can't remember more than a few main events even from two years ago, and it gets egregious past that), I feel like I'm losing part of what's made me me. I guess on some level I have to trust that my awareness of my development isn't integral for my development.
Anyway, that's why memories are stupid. Because they're hard to remember.
Cole had a tablet lying around and during my transition between Nebraska and Evanston, I borrowed it. This has two advantages over buying a new pen. First, it's borrowing and not buying, so for the moment it's free. Second, my computer's in its screen-flickering death throes and its successor won't be a touch screen so a separate tablet makes life a lot easier.
I'm in Wheaton right now, getting ready to go back to school tomorrow. Tomorrow! It's hard to believe. Mid-September sounded distant a month ago, but I guess it's here.
The last three weeks I was in Nebraska, doing construction work and trying to see as much family as possible in a brief time. I told myself I would work on recording songs and writing some fiction during my evening downtime but didn't do nearly as much as I wanted to. What's new.
After three weeks, though, I walked away more convinced than ever that if I don't wind up particularly equipped or passionate for ministry in any specific locale, I'm going to live in Nebraska.
I love the openness. I love looking in every direction and seeing horizon, speckled with the odd farmhouse or short treeline -- windbreaks. It's people existing in the middle of an unending plain. Or plane. The sky changes color at the horizon. You don't see it when buildings are in the way, but it's lighter and yellow at the bottom.
And as much as I instinctively feel that buildings obscuring 10% of a sunset should diminish its awe by 10%, that isn't the case. An open sunset is matchless. Sunsets or sunrises over the ocean are alright, but it's about drinking in fresh air, seeing sky meet land on every side and watching the texture of the endless cornfields blend together while the light fades.
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| Basically. |
I love dirt roads, when it's rained and the tires slowly accelerate you beyond safety and the ruts in the road throw the car around but if you don't panic and oversteer, the ruts hold you on the road too. I love picking a dirt road and following it past civilization while night sets.
I love the stars beyond light pollution, when you have to take deep breaths because that's infinity and you can see the clouds of the Milky Way all in a line. And it's cold because nothing blocks the wind and there've been bobcat sightings but you still sit on top of the car and try to find constellations. The stars are so bright.
I would live in Nebraska. I miss the land and I miss the relatives there and I miss leaving the car unlocked parked on Main Street because no one steals anything.
Anyway, enough about Nebraska. This post is about memories.
I drove on a road south of town two weeks ago. The interstate is north of town so there's never any reason to go south unless you're going to the town 25 miles in that direction. I was, to visit some friends. And the summer before I had driven on that same road for the same purpose -- and during the year in between I had never touched that road because the turn to my grandparents' house comes just before it.
As soon as I started driving down that road, all the memories from that car ride last year swam back -- the dense fog, so that the lights from cars in the other direction lit up the air like daylight. My stop next to the irrigation company's building to sit in silence and try to feel God. It was as clear as if it had just happened a week ago.
That was the first time I experienced such a clear memory from a location, but I get glimpses like that pretty often from songs.
Me and Cole listened to Live Your Life by T.I. dozens of times on the last family vacation before he went to college and it still recalls snorkeling in bright blue water on perfect beaches.
On our way to church, our family would listen to Casting Crowns and The Altar and the Door puts me back in the light blue Sports Rider, driving past Carrefour week after week.
Anything by the O.C. Supertones reminds me of living in Dallas back in 2002 and playing street hockey on the neighbor kids' driveway.
And there's plenty of others. The new song The Proof of Your Love by for King & Country I can already tell is pretty tied to these three weeks in Nebraska because there was nothing else on the Christian radio stations.
But here's the part where things suck, and the reason memories are stupid. Every time I listen to one of these memory-bound songs and relive those experiences, the connection gets a bit weaker. And the song starts to get tied to the point in my life when I'm listening to the song, instead of the past memory it was associated with.
So now The Altar and the Door is as much about learning guitar as it is about driving to church, and Live Your Life is about sitting on my bed with headphones in.
They don't recall the experiences as vividly -- and sometimes, if I'm not paying attention, they don't bring back memories at all.
And that sucks because my memory is awful and having these songs was a neat trick to circumvent my inability to retain memories by power of will. Every time I enjoy a memory, it weakens it. That's stupid.
I started a word document a few months ago where I tried to write down all the memories I could remember. The deeper I tried to remember, the deeper the memories went. I filled four pages with a smattering from a couple very specific points in my life. I think it would take years to write down enough memories to feel even partly satisfied.
And I've tried taking pictures, but I'm not disciplined enough so what I wind up with is a couple random and unexciting pictures from big events. But I want to remember the little events too.
As I forget more and more (off the top, I can't remember more than a few main events even from two years ago, and it gets egregious past that), I feel like I'm losing part of what's made me me. I guess on some level I have to trust that my awareness of my development isn't integral for my development.
Anyway, that's why memories are stupid. Because they're hard to remember.
