Thinking too Much

I am just getting up to speed on my 1500 page a week average an now it seems to be slowly being derailed. I feel torn - I want to do a PhD in English Literature, but I'm realizing that maybe that's just not where I really need to be... it's a really long story but well I'm just muling things over so there isn't a lot I can say at the moment about that or anything else. So I offer this quote from the assistant conductor of our local Chamber Choir - he gave a guest lecture in my culture class on music today.

"Beauty is a terrible and awful thing! It is terrible because it has not been fathomed, for God sets us nothing but riddles. Here the boundaries meet and all contradictions exist side by side." Dostoevsky

Well That Is a New Way to Ensure I'll Never Date You

I had a run scheduled with two guys from one of my classes - both are marathoners - both are also children (even worse one is married and a child).  Only one of them had my number and I had neither of their numbers.  So of course I went on time and got to our assigned meeting place in the pouring January rain aka freezing rain... no boys.

It turns out that the one who had my number called - yes he did but he did while I was on the other line with my dad, after I was on the bus down-town - and he didn't leave a message or text me. I'm sorry but if you're going to cancel 15 minutes before the assigned time - you DAMN WELL better leave a NLLL message! So in the end my Dad and I met, ran and all this cancelling business I just found out now.  The boy who had my number is sweet but DUDE you in that one moment just got your ass seriously crossed off the list, like Sharpie over it and then cut it out of the list got taken off.  You do not, I repeat you do not EVER do that.

On the theme of rain -

Living on the Other Side of the Line

For all intensive purposes I am currently living below the poverty line.  I knew I would be when I started graduate school.  I knew that things would be tight, at times very tight.  I did not expect that they would be this tight.  I had to contact my church this week to ask for help - after almost two months of wrestling with the idea, knowing that despite how ridiculously tight things are right now, that there are always those who need more than I do.  I have a home right?  I have heat (well sort of - my landlord is stingy in that regard), I have some resemblance of health and more importantly I'm the only mouth to feed. Well in asking for help I'm realizing how socially shameful it is to be on this side of the line - regardless of how you get here. There are strings, lots of strings, and questions and judgements.  All I conceptually understand are well meaning, but they hurt.  They hurt a lot. They imply - they imply that I should have known better.

I guess this is also me venting at God too - I know I try to keep my faith out of this blog - but I guess in all this hurt, is the question of where is the provision? And if this is the provision why does it hurt, why does it come with shame and guilt attached to it?  Isn't that counter to everything that is who you are?  Funny somewhere in this I know there is an answer - just feels beyond reach at the moment.

This is not a hand out moment but may be a moment to remember that when you judge a person on the other side of that poverty line - the world on this side is full of enough hardship without that and for better or worse I now know that first hand.

Wear and Tear

My room-mate and I were having a discussion about younger men this past weekend.  I have been trying to get my head around the idea of dating someone younger for two reasons.  One because I think someone completely sweet is interested in me.  I think he's nice and I because I think he's nice I might on the off chance that there could be something more consider a date.  If he asked - at this rate he is definitely moving at a snails pace.  And who knows maybe the idea of dating someone 4 years older is a little bit of an issue for him - aside from him being smaller than me in every way.  That issue aside - in a general sense I know there are some really good catches at school they're just all in the 4-8 years younger range.  If you're wondering why the gap - there are a lot of new straight from their undergraduate people and then there are the rest of us near or over thirty who have worked or done other degrees - I having done both.   At the end of the conversation, my room-mate and I agreed that the age isn't so much of an issue and the life experience.  I want a man with a little wear and tear in his life, especially on his heart and soul.  I think your twenties are the time you bash yourself around a little bit, you figure out first hand why you believe something, why you love and even more generally what you love.  And while I don't think there is anything wrong with young people getting married - they normally do the experiencing together or they're completely oblivious to it.  But as someone well beyond that, I am very aware of what my decade-ish difference in experience has provided me with.

So bottom line - as cute as that 22 year old is, as charming as he might be - I cannot in good conscience even consider it knowing in the back of my brain, I'll be thinking of how many miles I've put into life, when he's still in many ways still just figuring out the basics of momentum.