Okay. In a previous post, I listed one or two made up names of furniture at my workplace. Well folks, reality is better than fiction...feast your eyes these:

Mission
Marston
Kate
Leigh
Morgan
Luc
Andre
Marcel
Blaine
Cartwright
Lido
Eaton
Grafton (clear and frosted, mind you)
Chatham
Asbury
Bistro
Spritz (I love this company...but I hate this name)
Ravello
Paradigm
Siena
Ashford

While this may provide entertainment...I'm mainly trying to learn all of these names...the next thing will be matching them with the proper item. =) 'night folks

When I got home today, the sky was so blue. Really, really pale, pure blue. If Malibu Barbie came with her own sky, this would be it. Even the clouds were perfect little fluffy clouds. And this is at 6 o'clock. Really surreal.

I'll stop writing in half sentences. =)

The sky was rather nice, though. It's been a long time since I've even looked at the sky to rate it. Looking up at the sky reminds me of an aquaintance from Moscow. Her name was Olga and she was one of our translators--just a little bit older than me and very blonde...I had a little bit of a crush =). I remember originally meeting her in Indianapolis, where I was taking Russian language and history classes. Our classes were held on the converted 13th floor of this old hotel building in downtown Indy (on Meridian, for those familiar). The view was spectacular, but after awhile of staring at it with a Russian teacher in front of it berating you about your vowel pronunciation, you start to lose intrest.

Anyways, I was walking around on the 13th floor one day when I hear this really loud, "WOAH!!!" from around the corner. It sounded like Olga was hurt, so I rushed around only to find her staring out a window, a huge smile across her face.

"What's wrong?," I said.

"I can't believe the sky!" she exclaimed, positively effusive, "Can you believe the sky! We are soooo lucky, Keith. Stand and look at the sky for a moment."

At first, I looked out the window just to please her for the moment. But then, after a minute, the sky really did start to effect me...the colors were so intense and the patterns of clouds were so varied...it was a great moment--not so much because of the sky, but because I realized that there were people in the world who could be made intensely happy just by looking at it.

This made the world just a little bit better. It's kind of cool to be able to have just a moment of that feeling today. Even if it was just a moment.

Love to all! (Look at da sky, folks!)

For this post, I'm asking that everyone put on their proverbial "Christian Fundamentalist" thinking caps (which, actually, would negate the whole "proverbial" thing since we're going to interpret things real literal-like, ya hear?).

Mom and Dad invited me to attend a dinner that they threw for three older couples at our church. These three couples define the word "dear" for me, as in the quality of being dear, not the animal. The dinner was great in all aspects, even as conversation even turned rather gothic (Southern Gothic, if you will =) ) toward the end. What a kick! If you haven't heard seventy year old people chat pleasently about corporal punishment, gutting and bleeding animals, and how far men can drive after they've had their necks slit, you haven't really had dear people over for dinner.

Sometime before the downward spiral of social subject matter, we landed on the topic of heaven and whether human beings will recognize each other once they're in heaven and have "glorified bodies," the perfect bodies given to people in exchange for their imperfect ones when they get to heaven. Some said that we would recognize our loved ones, other said "no." Then the general consensus was "It won't matter because we will be worshiping our Lord."

But something in me said that it does matter, and furthermore, that people will recognize each other. I think that there is a false impression out there that heaven will just be continuous singing to God, in neat little rows, everyone singing their part. I mean, I hope that that's a part of what people will be doing, but it seems to me that if there's more to worship down here on earth, shouldn't there be more to worship in heaven?

Helping the fatherless and the widow is considered worship to God on earth. These actions seem to carry the implicit necessity of interpersonal relation. Why would interpersonal relations be thrown out the window once people are in heaven? If we're going to follow everything literally and logically to its end, I would have to say that people most likely will remember each other in heaven and will interact in such ways as to worship God.

That's just my two cents. Too bad I only had half-a-cent when the conversation was going...lightning wit strikes again.

Despite the "pile and burn" approach to CD maitenence suggested in the last post, I'd have to keep one out from the rest at the moment.

I am recieving much ministry from Beth Orton's new album, "Daybreaker"...especially the song that shares the album's name--dark, dark orchestration for such a simple sentiment:

We lay on our backs in the grass
silently watching the rain clouds move by far too fast
you said it was a night where anything could happen
but nothing was gonna last

And we're doing fine now
yeah we do
we don't feel sad or bad or blue
and you know we ain't never defeated
not broken inside all that is fine
yeah all that is fine

We, we burn our boats each new year
silently watching the flames and the old life disappear
we're burning new sunrise into yesterday's skies
an ashen fingerprint melts into the sea

And we're doing fine now
yeah we do
we don't feel sad or bad or blue
and you know we ain't never defeated
not broken inside all that is fine
yeah all that is fine

***

Heartrending stuff when word and music are combined...but good. Real good. Kinda cleansing, in fact.

Speaking of cleansing--it's time to clean the apartment. =)

Things that have been mulling around...

You'd think from this blog that all I care about is work and DVDs. Sometimes, it feels like that's all have time to care about. But I don't. You could plop all my CDs and DVDs into a big pile and burn 'em up and I'd just breathe a secret sigh of relief...while running away from the horrid burning plastic fumes, of course.

And work. Work I just do to make money and see different people every day. Retail is good for that--seeing lots of people. But after awhile, one just has to realize that all we're doing is pushing really expensive merchandise on people who have decided that they are well off enough to consume it. So, really, you could take that away too.

And then there's writing. I love to write. I love it when a story takes shape and I don't exactly know how it got there. I used to make fun of creative-writer-types who would announce things like "I just sat there until the character took me where she wanted to go."

Yeah, right.

But not anymore...it's not that the fictional characters are doing anything (they're not real, if you haven't noticed yet)...but there's these wonderful moments when you're so focused on what you're writing, but somehow not paying attention at the same time; those are the moments when your subconscious takes a test drive of your hands and things spill out that you weren't really planning. I love that kind of thing.

But you could take that away too.

I guess it all comes down to people for me. That's what life is about. Friends, family, loved ones. And the time to see them, to experience their lives with them, is getting shorter for me...work is 40+ hours a week and now there's an apartment to take care of.

I can see why people like living on communes. Oh well--I've visited a commune and I knew I couldn't stay. The warm milk straight from a cow on my cereal was enough to send me packing.

My silver lining (and there's always one with me...I think it's probably genetic): Each of my encounters with other people are now worth more. I can't take them for granted. That's a wonderful thing.