the people that we love

Got to feel woke up inside again
Got to feel less broke more fixed
Got to feel when I got outside myself
Got to feel when I touched your lips

The things we do to the people that we love
The way we break if there's something we can't take
Destroy the world that we took so long to make

in touch

I bought a new soccer ball today at Dick's and we were kicking it around on the sidewalk in front of the store as we waited for my sister to finish shopping. Reminded me of Australia and keeping in shape with the guys from Bruce at ANU. I miss a lot of things. A lot of people. From the past year, and from the past twenty years. People I allowed myself to fall out of touch with. Some forgotten and now and then remembered. Some who've but altogether slipped out of mind. Some I never stopped thinking about. I always think that it's no big deal letting go of someone. I mean, I thought, there's always phone numbers and home addresses and Facebook messages to reconnect, right? How can you ever really fall out of touch with someone? I always thought you had to try to do that. But I guess I've learned that being in touch with someone is not simply about having their contact information and the ability to reach them. It's also about growing and sharing with them. And getting someone back after letting them go is a lot more difficult than you make yourself think it's going to be when you're saying goodbye.

Time. A fourteen-year-old goes to sleep one night and wakes up a nineteen-year-old who blinks for a split-second and opens the eyes of a twenty-one-year-old. And all you've got to show for it is yourself and your memories. Life lived. There is no such thing as life unlived. You're doing it now and you've got to know that everything's alright and you are okay. Not because someone tells you it is, but because you can step back for a second and see that life will go on and your task is at every moment the same as the moment before: to live. That is all you must do. How you do it is your call and your project. But do not think for a second that you are the ruler of yourself. You are at all times the result of an ongoing process of becoming. Who you are is in part a function of your parents, your friends, the people you influence, the people who influence you, the books you read, the authors who wrote them, the place you live, the places you've been, the music you listen to, the decisions you've made, and the next word you say to the next person you talk to. We are only who we are because of a lifetime of situations, circumstances, and shaping. We are always situated, shaped, and percolating. In transformation. In relation.

"A being does not regard himself as independent unless he is his own master, and he is only his own master when he owes his existence to himself." ~Marx

There was never any doubt that the world is shaped and determined. Aren't we too a part of the world? We have always sought to know the reasons behind each thing that happens. We think there to be a logical explanation for all matter and movement in the world. Thus we have developed a Physics which we rely on to understand the world and the laws which govern it. Are we not also just matter and movement? Can we not also be studied and understood?

us

---We like being special here on earth. We act like we feel small when we think of the vastness of the universe, but I think we feel big and important believing that we're "it" as far as intelligent life. I think it would really depress us and shatter thousands of years of human hubris to know that there is lots of superior intelligent life in the universe. Perhaps that's why we're prone to think of aliens with fear, and why alien movies are usually alien invasion movies. Either we can't stand the idea of intelligent life more powerful than we are, or we are so impressed with our culture and our achievements that it is threatening to think of a race of non-human creatures who may have developed similar things, perhaps greater things. What would it do to our theology!? What if we are not even close to God on the Great Chain of Being -- maybe we're more in the middle of the hierarchy. You know how we condescend to animals? They are our pets. We train them and treat them, at best, like children. And there are no animals we respect in the same way we respect our own kind. Well, suppose there are races of vastly superior beings out there -- not just in the way of technological and civil development -- no I mean that they themselves have greater capacities for all the skills we pride ourselves on, e.g. physical strength and endurance, thinking and reasoning, use and range of emotion, beings who simply have more potential. Would we not just be "animals" to them? How then do you suppose people would relate to God?

Of course, it may turn out that we ARE "it." But that's a hell of a lot of space out there. If we happened, why couldn't there be others?