bloggin'

yes yes a couple of things...
Abigail, I was thinking the same thing about wonder. I was reading this story the other day that made me think of it. About two men in a garden who are each granted a wish. The one wishes to be enormous so he can travel the world with the ease of a step. So he steps to Vienna and he's so big that the Canals just look like little lines, then he steps to Africa and the beautiful rainforests just look like little green pieces of broccoli or something, and so on. The man is very disapointed. The other guy in the garden sees this and he then wishes to be made small. He then sees all the beauty that lies right before him in the garden. And he never leaves the garden again.
This just made me think as well that the world may lose wonder, but it will always have wonders. Crazy how I was just thinking that.

Which is a good transition now to the book I've been reading. Loosely related yet thoroughly profound. Sarah, here's an excerpt from that book I've been reading, Blue Like Jazz: "One of my new housemates, stacy, wants to write a story about an astronaut. in his story the astronaut is wearing a suit that keeps him alive by recycling his fluids. in the story the astronaut is working on a space station when an accident takes place, and he is cast into space to orbit the earth, to spend the rest of his life circling the globe. Stacy says this story is how he imagines hell, a place where a person is completely alone, without others and without God. after stacy told me about his story, i kept seeing it in my mind. i thought about it before i went to sleep at night. i imagined myslef looking out my little bubble helmet at blue earth, reaching toward it, closing it between my puffy white space-suit fingers, wondering if my friends were still there. in my imagination i would call to them, yell for them, but the sound would only come back loud within my helmet. through the years my hair would grow long in my helmet and gather around my forehead and fall across my eyes. because of my helmet i would not be able to touch my face with my hands to move my hair out of my eyes, so my view of earth, slowly, over the first two years, would dim to only a thin light through a curtain of thatch and beard. "i would lay there in bed thinking about stacy's story, putting myself out there in the black. and there came a time, in space, when i could not tell whether i was awake or asleep. all my thoughts mingled together because i had no people to remind me what was real and what was not real. i would punch myself in the side to feel pain, and this way i could be relatively sure i was not dreaming. within ten years i was beginning to breathe heavy through my hair and my beard as they were pressing tough against my face and had begun to curl into my mouth and up my nose. in sapce, i forgot that i was human. i did not know whether i was a ghost or an apparition or a demon thing. "after i thought about stacy's story, i lay there in bed and wanted to be touched, wanted to be talked to. i had the terrifying thought that something like that might happen to me. i thought it was just a terrible story, a painful and ugly story. stacy had delivered as accurate a description of a hell as could be calculated. and what i sad, what is very sad, is that we are proud people, and because we have sensitive egos and so many of us live our lives in front of our television, not having to deal with real people who might hurt us or offend us, we float along on our couches like astronauts moving aimlessly through the milky way, hardly interacting with other human beings at all"

Isn't that pretty amazing? You've got to read this book, everybody.

ANd Jake at 29, how do you like the music? Pretty hip, huh? Well I've got a lot more if you want it. Andrew at 22, looking to graduate and dive into the 'real world'. I've alerady had the Dad health care talk, I'm looking for apartmetns and jobs, I think I'll be okay.
Oh my, well this is getting rather lengthy and I've got to read up for class. Have a good day family. And if you're looking for real estate in Florida, I think I might know an O.B. boy to help you out. Paz!