My Room in 4 Faux Toes

My room is, among other things. mythical. Seriously. It's a living entity, and it was probably stalked and hunted by some beefy Greek demi-gods a few millennium ago. Aside from the fact that it can reproduce it's contents, it can also hide things. This week I lost my wallet and my headphones to the beast, and I'm sure there's probably some sleep and common sense buried in the mounds of stuff.

One of the most perplexing things about the beast is where it comes from. I will go mad OCD, place everything in it's correct order, and yet within 48 hours it will have degenerated to a battlefield of clothes and books. I've decided to go on a walkthrough of it, because even though it is particularly ferocious, I am quite fond of it.

In Photo 1, you can see some Pearls Before Swine comics that one of my more awesome friends sent me. I then posted them on my door so as to share the joy with my whole household.

There's so much going on in this photo that I don't know where to begin. The window corner also holds

all my music stuff, so on the odd day if you wondered into my room you'd see me hunched over the kaossilator, making off-time loops (unintentionally) and mumbling into a mic about some disgusting personal shortcoming.

moving on to Photo 2:

This photo was taken from the south-west corner (the above was the north west corner). It depicts my trusty (and by 'trusty' i mean: super wobbly but has yet to have collapsed) loft bed. Beneath it is my desk and the computer on which I am currently typing this. The desk is a magnet for a odd assortment essentially everything. Within arms reach of me there is: money, quite a few books, even more cd's, body wash, an apple, a bass, a camera, a bowl of 70% coco chocolate, a coupon to $50 off a flight with DELTA airlines, an undetermined amount of both Canadian and American currency, a set of watercolor paints, Nintendo Gameboy Advance SP (with Super Mario Bros. 3 in it of course), a keyboard/drum machine hybrid, variety of writing/sketching utensils, a very succinct goodbye note from a very dear friend, even more books, sunglasses, 2 library cards (neither of which are mine I believe), camera, cell phone, iPod, et al.

And that's just the surface layer. Who knows what lies beneath the grime and paper.

This photo was taken from the south-east corner, the window and music corner. The dominant image is a microphone that is currently connected to my Kaossilator Pro, Virgil. One of the many features I love about Virgil is it's 15 vocal effects settings, taking all the skill out of singing and allowing me to sound like anyone from Daft Punk to Alice Glass to Imogen Heap. The only common vocal effect i have yet to find on it is Autotune, but theres too much of that already. This photo doesn't really display it as well as the next one, but you can see in the north w

est corner, my lovely shelving units. They contain a mix of books I read and loved when i was younger (Inkheart, The Hobbit, Lemony Snickets Series Of Unfortunate Events, Artemis Fowl) and books I have read more recently that I have enjoyed (The Orphaned Anythings, Trainspotting, Catch 22, Alice's Adventures In Wonderland). But the books I truly love are not on that shelf. They are either lent out to friends, or scattered around my room because I am in the middle of re-reading them/a friend returned it and it hasn't made it's way back to it's spot yet.

The west wall also has a collection of paper, including random concert stubs, an OCAD poster, paintings (both mine and friends), photobooth photos of old best friends I am no longer best friends with, doodles, an ex-girlfriends dream house sketch, a colouring book picture of Darth Vader (igniting his lightsabre), and some concert stubs and movie tickets.

All in all, I feel as though my room should be a set for a show about teenage life. There's so much going on, it's so evocative. I have some friends where their rooms are just places they sleep. Being in there is like being in a hotel. Everything is in order, nothing is personal.

It terrifies me. I don't see my room as a full expression of myself, I see it more as a small, small window into my mind. It shows a singular facet of my multi-dimensional being. So, when people's rooms are blank and impersonal, it makes me feel as though they too have a blank and impersonal side, and this concerns me.

Heatseaker

Today was my initial experiment with graffiti.

This is my favorite shot of the results:

He has a full body, but the only way to capture that was with flash, and that makes the image look too naked that way.

I know this post is short and a bit of a cop out, but I have a coffee date with my favorite male red head of the week, so this is all.

For now.

Perspective and Expectations

"But a few leagues off the shore, I bit a flashing lure/and I assure you, it was not what it expected it to be!/I still taste its kiss, that dull hook in my lip/is a memory as useless as a rod without a reel"

'Messes of Men' - mewithoutYou

On Saturday it occured to me how much expectations shape my world.

Recently when Inception came out, I was super stoked to see it. Chris Nolan. Dreams. Ellen Page. Awesome looking advertisement. Big budget. This movie had so much goodness stacked in it's favour, but in the end, I wasn't impressed by it. I went into the theatre thinking about how amazing Memento and The Dark Knight were and thereby assuming that Nolan would continue his tradition of kicking up his movies into the next level while maintaing a relational believability in the characters actions and conversations. He certainly kicked it up to the next level, but as everyone associated in the making of the film was given their due in white fuzzy letters, I just felt an acute sense of disappointment. Leonardio DiCaprio's dialogue often felt forced, and his relationship with Ellen Page grows so randomly and sporadically that Ellen stays a very 2 dimensional character, even though her role calls for depth. All the action sequences (save for the amazing gravity-shifting hallways) were as cliched as some sort of cliche for being very cliched. The biggest letdown of all though was the whole concept. Entering and controlling dreams in order to extract or plant ideas is one of the most thought provoking premise' I've heard of in a while, and as the opening dialogue explained how it worked I was left salivating for it to be taken to each and every extreme. Rather, it remained rather bland. The sheer possibility of having stray imaginations bring in ANYTHING while still retaining believability is the ultimate gift for writers. Anything could have been done, but it rather remained rather un realistically real. The whole concept of nightmares wasn't touched on, and in the end the untapped possibility of it being pushed further left me feeling hollow.

All because I had expectations for it. If I had gone into the movie not knowing the director, the budget, the actors, I probably would have enjoyed it a lot more.

Now, I'm not advocating not having faith in things, rather I'm pointing out how the expectations shaped my experience so much.

In a similar way, people's expectations of me seem to shape my actions far more than I realized.

I'm not fully sure how people view me entirely, but I do pick up on certain subtlities and I usually end up doing what people seem to expect of me.

I noticed this through contrast. Last week was my first real week of Grade 13, and it was supremely enjoyable. I spent the majority of each day in the art room working on my self-portrait (which the photo of doesn't seem to want to paste into this blog for whatever reason) and I didn't really have much human contact. When I did, I found myself to be quite a bit more pleasent and less sarcastic than I normally am. Come the weekend and youth retreat, and I caught myself being a jerk in every which direction. While trying to figure out the causation, I caught myself thinking "but it's so easy to do it here." And I realized that one of the reasons I said the things I did was because I could. People are used to me being crass and uncaring, so when I was, there was no reaction, no outrage. Whereas at school, people would be taken aback and shocked. I would quickly lose contact with people because of an offbeat sense of humour which really isn't that funny. I'm not blaming other people or their reactions for my problems or behaviours. Why they react doesn't matter, what matters is that I shouldn't be creating a cause for there to be no effect to.

Oddly enough, a few hours after having this train of thought, the youth pastor had a monologue about putting aside our expectations and allowing things to just be (or something to that affect). Likewise, what people expect me to do shouldn't be a factor for or against my actions. I shouldn't make extremely insightful yet cutting remarks because thats not mirroring Jesus' love. The fruits of the Spirit are love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control, and it's excessively humbling to realize how lacking I am in so many of these catagories.

Now then, the flipside. Rather than focus on the victimized side, think about how your expectations shape the world around you. I recently had a rather heated conversation with a very good friend about how it's so much harder to change if no one expects you to. The particular person in question was some overly-obnoxious sounding boy on her res. floor, and she made the argument that he had had his chances and blown them, whereas I advocated that he be given infinite chances with the expectation that he'll eventually come around and come into his personhood.

I realize how far-fetched and idealistic it sounds, but if he realized that there was someone out there who was counting on him straightening up his act, he'd have a lot more motivation than people who just expected him to stagnate as a douchebag.

link to song from preface: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iJFhXyd-F7Y

Success And The 4 Hour Sleep Experiment

As of this week, I've been trying to survive on 4 hours of sleep a night, and it's been going rather well. I stay up until around 4, then get up with my alarm at 8:08 and start my day.

It's surprisingly easy. Conversationally I've found myself to be a bit more tongue tied, but I also feel a lot more patient. There's this layer of manic energy right beneath my surface, and I like it.

I don't expect to be able to keep this up for much longer, especially with the youth retreat this weekend.

But for now, being awake 20 hours a day is just thoroughly enjoyable.

This morning when my alarm went off at 8:08 (ya'll get hit with the boom! boom!) I got up and went for a jog. On my jog, I passed an abandoned house that I had tried to climb a year ago. Back then, I had been too

chunky and unplanned to scale a building without an obvious line up (T.V. antennae, yellow pipe. etc...), so of course I never made it up. Out of curiosity, I just sort of climbed up a pillar to see if I could proceed any further, and within a minute I was standing on shingles admiring the view.

It was surreal.

Over the last few months, and especially weeks, and even more so days, I have had this feeling like I've been growing more and more as a person (as a person meaning the whole caboodle: mentally, spiritually, relationally, et al). Sitting on that roof, I was just amazed at the obvious symbolism between having tried this a year ago and failed, and trying it now and succeeding with such ease.

God is good.

And, if this morning is any indicator of the weekend to come, it will also be good.

Ubuntu

I finished my first official piece for my art class today, and it felt good.

I forgot to take my camera and get a photo of it, so that will have to wait until Monday, but allow me to briefly explain all the idea's behind the piece.

,

So as in most art classes, the initial project is a self-portrait. Since this a senior level class, we are allowed to use any medium we want, with the only real stipulation being that it had to be big. So, what better and more obvious route for a self-portrait than a mirror?

I've had an old and beat up, junky looking, 4 foot high(ish) mirror in my room for I don't know how long, and it was pleading to have something done to it.

I began by staring at myself for a long time and trying to get a feel for the proportions of my body.

I then walked forward, sketched rough lines of my body on the mirror using an oil pastel, then stepped back and viewed the overall shape. I did this a few times until i had a loose but accurate silhouette.

I then mixed flour and water and made a sort of paste or podge, and slapped it on the mirror in the shape of my head and upper torso. Pieces of torn up newspaper were pasted on the glue-like liquid, and a body quickly began to take shape.

I left the eyes un-newspapered though, and clouded the mirror around my figure so that the only clear reflective spot is the eyes.

This is my personal interpretation of the idea of Ubuntu: I am, because you are.

Over the last two weeks, so many things in my life have revolved around the idea that people need people. Searching For God Knows What by Donald Miller, the sociology lecture I audited, a friend rehashing a conversation he had with our youth pastor, the speaker at youth tonight; it all centers around one thing: relationships.

Not the retarded high school dating kind, but the real, tangible and visceral relationships between people: peer friendships, older mentors, older friends, younger friends you feel a strange disconnected paternal link to, friends you talk with 'til 2 in the morning, friends you walk with while working on life; in short, honest relationships.

The shear importance of other people in our lives is staggering, and the shear potential of ourselves and these other people is also staggering.

An hour or so ago I was dropped off by an older friend who sat and talked with me and a younger friend for 3 hours in Tim Hortons. He said comparatively little, nor did he raise any new ideas to the forefront of my mind, but rather he carried himself in a humble and interested way.

It was very educational and extremely interesting.

Even though nothing he said was really 'post-discussion ponder worthy,' how he was is something that I can feel influencing me.

Before Springvale Senior High commenced tonight, I sat down with previously mentioned youth pastor. We were talking about something trivial, facing each other, each of us on our own couch, when I realized that I had automatically adopted the exact same pose of recline that he had had before I had sat down. This annoyed me, so I cursed him for his dominance and left.

Around 20 minutes later, said older friend from Tim Hortons was sitting on the same couches, and I went and sat opposite to him to talk to him. We weren't conversing for long when I noticed that he re-oriented his body on the couch to mirror mine.

I was mildly blown away.

According to Body Language, mimicking someones body language is a sign that you like them, and it makes whoever you're mimicking feel more comfortable around you. It's also a sign of interest.

All of this, from someone significantly older than me and at a completely different stage of life.

Now, his mode of recline mirroring mine could have been entirely coincidental, and indeed probably was, but the fact that this happenstance made me feel so good just enforces this idea of how important other people are.

I wasn't even looking for validation as an interesting person from him, and yet I derived it and felt extremely good about it.

This all relates back to my self-portrait because it's really just about our dependency on other people to fill us. As I said, I left blank spaces for the eyes, so that the viewer may position himself so that his (or her) eyes fit exactly into the piece, and by them being in it, brings it to life.

But, that being said, there is only so much that people can fulfill other people. In the end, it will take something more divine, something more inspired in order for that paper mache newspaper man to arise from his glass bed and walk. Something else will need to fill him, just as something else aside from other people needs to fill us, and indeed, is the only thing that can fill us satisfactorily.

An Audit, A Mirror and A Thought

I had one of the most enjoyable airport experiences yesterday. There was a mechanical failure with my first flight, so it was a few hours late leaving the regional airport, so instead of the 3 hour layover I was expecting, I ended up having 19 minutes to rush to my next flight. So, I put 'Stress" by Justice on and dashed desperately to the designated departure gate. So much more exciting than the normal leisurely stroll.

So, that plane and a car ride home, it's one AM of the 21st, and I decide to start a homework assignment. At four of the clock in the morning I deem my task accomplished and retire to my bed.

I got up at 7:30 for the inaugural meeting of a weekly Bible study.

I haven't slept yet.

That back story is more of a disclaimer, a right for what follows this disclaimer (and precedes it also) to be slightly askew, be it grammatically or just downright nonsensically.

I spent the majority of my day working on a self-portrait for art. It was during this time that I rehashed something I've been thinking about a lot lately, and i was struck by a new revelation.

The rehash- no one's theology is perfect.

The revelation- apathy destroys.

In discussing Don Miller's books with people, I have found that he seems to have quite a large anti-following. People who dislike him and what he says. This had me down for a touch, because I think quite a few of his concepts are grand, when I realized that no one is perfect; it follows that no ones theology is perfect either.

It's not a defense of someone spreading a blatantly non-Biblical view, but merely an interesting idea.

The apathy destroys sentiment was given breathe by my reflecting on how much caring has shaped me. How much my decisions to invest when I know it will hurt me have forced me forward as a person.

And how much apathy allows me to stagnate. To me, stagnation is a crime. To remain unchanged, as a human, is wrong. It scares me when I don't see someone for a while, then come back into contact with them and they are still the exact same. Something is wrong.

And, on the topic of contact with people, I went downtown with a friend today and audited her sociology lecture. The topic was "Socialization and Education," and while Prof. Green didn't say anything that was earth breaking (or even mildly startling), he did put into words a lot of concepts that I had understood through observation. It was like slowly sliding into a hot bath.

He started the lecture off with a short video on 'feral children,' kids who have been neglected and abandoned by their parents, and subsequently get raised by wild animals. In being raised by these animals, the children begin to behave like them, becoming more and more animalistic and less human-like.

This was making me sad, because humans are awesome and abuse is terrible, but I was granted an interesting perspective on the issue: If humans are raised by wolves, they will act like a wolf. If wolves are raised by humans, they will still act like wolves.

I just thought it was interesting that it wasn't a two-way street, and that humans are so much more adaptive and ingenious than wolves.

The Lifeboat Theory and Zombies

I recently read Searching For God Knows What by Donald Miller (best known for his other book Blue Like Jazz (or, if you followed my old blog, you can read my review of his other book, A Million Miles In A Thousand Years here: http://ramblemss.blogspot.com/2010/07/la-la-la-la-la.html )).

Something I enjoy about Don Miller is that he has a distinctive thesis for each of his books. (Although I cannot at present recall what it was for BLJ...)

Anyways, in Searching, the two predominant ideas are that Christianity has fallen in with the rest of the world in two ways: reducing the complexity of life and it's solutions to multi-step formula, and falling prey to Lifeboat Mentality.

The phrase Lifeboat Mentality is based on the ethical/hypothetical situation of being stranded in the ocean on a lifeboat with a variety of people (doctor, lawyer, nurse, Indian chief, preggo lady, gay rights activist, probation officer, nuclear physicist, garbage man, et cetera) and one must be thrown out in order to save the rest. So, each person must say why they should not be thrown out. Miller states, that because of the Fall, we are all automatically in this mode, always trying to validate our own existence to other people, always trying to stay 'in the lifeboat.'

It certainly is an interesting proposition, which he backs up with a host of experiential evidence. Why do we wear the clothes we wear? Why do we brush our teeth in the morning? Why do we listen to (or not listen to) the music we do (or don't)? What makes us feel good? A lot of the time, the answer is sadly other people (This can be loosely tied to the African philosophy of Ubuntu, which follows the lines of "I am because you are." This can be contrasted with the more selfish, Western philosophy of Cogito Ergo Sum (I think, therefore I am)).

Donald says that this is wrong, and that pre-Fall, we didn't have this because we were gaining all our affirmation through direct contact with God. Which ties into his other point: That the church is trying to solve relational problems through formula's.

Throughout the novel, Miller goes on several tangents about how God is a relational God, and how it makes no sense for us to try to have a relationship with him through formula. While this is a nice concept, it disregards all the formula's and rules laid out for Levite priests in Deuteronomy.

In spite of all that, I would recommend it. There's some fresh insight into Genesis, and a new view on Romeo and Juliet (that I disagree with, but it's still interesting from a clinical perspective).

Now then, moving on to moar intense topics: The Devil Wears Prada's new release, Zombie EP.

To break it down into a cliche, it's short and sweet. To add an extra adjective to the cliche, it's short and brutally sweet. The five track long, just over 20 minutes extended play based on the inevitable zombie apocalypse is a fun romp, but probably won't be remembered as their best work.

Over-all, the band has both grown while someone remaining stagnant. While there are obvious differences from their last album With Roots Above and Branches Below (particularly the lead vocalist' range) the overall feel is still 'oh, a metalcore band.' Of course, they're an exceptionally amazing metalcore band, but they really haven't done much to break any musical mold or explore new sonic turf (one musical highlight is a synth sound in 'Anatomy' (track 2) that sounds like a siren).

The drums, guitar and bass are all as interesting as can be expected, but one major disappointment are the synth textures. I'm not sure what the setting is, but I'm pretty sure every heavy music group that has a microkorg has employed it for at least one song. But on Zombie, it pops up everywhere. While it sounds good, it's a touch irritating to realize how much work was put into the rest of the album, only to have the keys fall prey to cliche.

As before stated, the vocalist' range has improved incredibly. His lows are much lower and guttural, his highs are as amazing as always, and his mid's are mostly perfect. The only real issue is his tendency to switch between highs and lows with no regard to the lyrics. Lines are given extra emphasis when they don't need any (prime example: 'Survivor' track 5). Lyrically though, they're as blunt as a baseball bat to the brain, which is presumably intentional because a baseball bat to the brain is one way to kill a zombie.

All of the songs are very tight and polished, but for a band that's as heavy as they are, a bit less perfection would be a good thing.

Comparatively, it's like Godzilla with a manicure. It's nice and all, but it's rather odd.

My Life in Narrative (Or, Why You Should Care)

I have an interesting life.

I realized this last week while wandering around an eerily silent and unnaturally chilly abandoned house. While the outside temperatures were hovering in the juicy 30's (Celsius), inside it felt as though someone had left the air conditioning running in winter.

Not only do I have an interesting life, I have an interesting mind. Maybe not to everyone, but I'm certainly fascinated by it. This blog is a place for me to lay out my life and mind twice (that's 2 times) a week.

Of course, just a simple duo of bullet points won't suffice. There is so much more to what goes on in life then can be captured in a book, let alone a blog post; In spite of that fact, this shall be my meager attempt to record my life in narrative.

Well, maybe not narrative. Just a record of my life. A record of how it feels to hate your toenails for being too long without actually thinking "i hate my toenails for being too long."

Or maybe it will just devolve into stream of consciousness writing because other things don't interest me.

I apologize for how alinear my thoughts are; I'm listening to Crystal Castles and it's a bit of a head trip.