hipster

"Ivan Illich was once asked what is the most revolutionary way to change society.
Is it violent revolution or is it gradual reform?
He gave a careful answer.
Neither.
If you want to change society, then you must tell an alternative story."
Tim Costello

my brother says that i'm a hipster, in fact, he's pretty emphatic about this point. i'm not sure what this completely means, i'm not sure what part of me he's pointing out, whether it is my gear, my facial hair, my political leanings, my friends, my spirituality. all i know is he thinks i'm a hipster. i think he's just bitter that no one is grunge anymore.

however due to my potential hipster leanings (i say this tongue in cheek), i like to think that i have been in the revolution business, in small grass roots ways.

i was a college pastor for several years and attempted to tell a different story about Christ, not that he's an institution, but rather that he's a person and this person calls us not to an introspective selfish faith, but to one that is active and alive in the world, telling a story of redemption, not only personal but one that stretches out into all our relationships (read both with people, our worldly systems, our environment, etc...) and that invites others into this relationship that fosters community.

one important factor however is to note, that this does not only happen in the church, or with believers, but is happening in the world, (due to God's activity there) and when i see it, i want to draw attention to it, because we are to be not where we are working, but where God is working.

i've been playing hoops since i was a freshman in high school, but it wasn't till i was a junior in high school that i actually cared about it. this was during the michael jordan phenomenon, and more specifically, the air jordan phenomenon. i wanted a pair of air jordans more than i wanted to be good at basketball. however the price always kept my parents from dropping the $125 that it cost for them in 1989 (even though they bought my brother a pair, go figure). i was thus forced to turn to the purple and gold cons that magic pimped (i wore them proudly, however they were tough to match with any clothes that i might throw on). i did this till magic retired and succumbed to my affinity toward nike and bought nike whenever my shoes went south. this changed when i heard they used small children in thailand to make their soccer balls and shoes and so being the "revolutionary" that i am, i boycotted them, and told my friends to too, and bought adidas (who i'm sure have been using small children to make their shoes for a lot longer than nike, however i've never heard about it, and am too lazy to do the research). i have been wearing adidas ever since, but this week i'm about to make a change, mainly because someone who doesn't have to, is telling a different story. so the next time you throw on some sneaks, or are looking to buy some sneaks to play hoops in, remember, who's side are you on? the exec in his platinum tower telling you your worth, or embracing the story that makes you believe you have worth.

tell the alternative story and exit the matrix.

oh, and if this makes me a "hipster" then i guess i'm a hipster

Dirty South

so after sending out over twenty resumes and being entirely sick of my cover letter, no matter how much i change it up...

oh, a quick thought on job hunting. i don't think i've done something this depressing in a long time. not only do i read through the list of skills necessary and think to myself, i could do this job, i have these skills. then comes the litany of questions as i apply for a job: but is it apparent through my resume? will they give me a chance? why won't they give me a chance? am i not good enough? do i have any skills that anyone wants? what have i been doing with my life? why am i so undesireable?....like i said depressing. i understand why the process has become such, but i've got to say, that i much more prefer getting jobs though people that i know who know people and getting in that way, not this cold corporate way. but i didn't want to talk about that today, so sorry if i've depressed you.

what i want to talk about is a new business that I am going to start.

i am opening a clothing store, but not any clothing store. this clothing store is going to be about an image, i'll let that image speak for itself.

first off, i am going to have all the windows to my store painted bright orange, this is to ensure optimum success in this town.

there will be limited handicap parking, but there will be specific parking for trucks and any other SUV's.

once you enter this establishment you will see several sections:

• short pants: khaki will be the only color offered, but the short will either be a plain khaki or have the cargo look
• shirts: no t-shirts and no long sleeves. only polo shirts. now the polo shirts will be varied in color, mostly pastels, but you will be able to buy whatever color polo shirt you want, because well, you never know...
• hats: baseball caps, of any color and size representing whatever sports team you would want, doesn't matter, the only requirement is that the bill be a little ripped and perfectly curled so that the outside ends of the bill nearly touch. all of my hats will look like this.
• shoes: any kind of running shoe, but for the shopper who wants a freer feeling in his feet, we will be selling man-dals, any kind of comfortable male sandal.
• at the counter will be an assortment of hemp necklaces, braided belts and Skoal.
  

this is all my store will offer and i will ABSOLUTELY KILL IT. i will have the corner market on an image, the image of the south. just call my place, "Dirty South".

ps. i wish i could take a picture of the guy sitting next to me and place it in here, you would understand

dis-ease

i know that it has been a while since i got on here and wrote down ideas and thoughts. so many really and not much time to really have a chance to stop and to reflect. i'm glad that my life has slowed down a bit. i feel that this is fairly apropo given the part of the united states that i currently reside in.

since my last blog, i got engaged, married, i quit two jobs, went on a honeymoon, lead a missions trip, said good-bye to friends, moved out of my apartment, moved into my wife's parents home, moved out of their home, flew cross country and am currently in the process of moving into my new digs with my new wife and looking for a new job while starting up a part time gig on tues.

the past few days i've actually had a chance to make dinner, to read a book, watch my wife act, go and see a movie, to sleep in and go to bed early.

however looming over my head is this need to work and make money and that somehow i'm wasting my time and that i should be doing more, that there is someone over my shoulder looking at me and waiting for me to step it up. i spend my time driving around and looking at all the businesses around the city and wondering what i should to, where i should work and what would make the most money in the quickest amount of time. i feel this tension between doing what i want to do and doing what would benefit us the most, especially when i stop and think that we are only going to be here for two years and how fast two years goes and trying to make plans on moving to nyc and what that is going to cost.

for some reason i feel like all these decisions need to be made right now, at this very second and that if i don't that i'm never going to make them and things aren't going to turn out well.....so i again stop and recognize my need to control and my complete and utter lack of being able to control anything really, of the illusion that control is and that even if i did have a "handle" on it, i really would only have a "handle" on an illusion. so i wait, i hope, i pray and i rest on faith, faith that there is Direction out there and Purpose and Meaning.

"Follow me."

when i grow up

do you remember the question?

when i was a little kid i would get asked the question
"andy, what would you like to be when you grow up?"

i heard all these stories,
and continue to,
of kids answering that question with:

firefighter
astronaut
professional (insert sport of choice here) player
police
teacher
doctor
etc...

none of these ever came to my mind

i thought of things like being a
dinosaur
(to be the biggest and baddest)
i don't remember wanting to be a superhero
(although my brother caleb thought he was condorman)
i remember wanting to be luke skywalker or han solo
(if only to have a lightsaber and kiss the girl)
or wanting to be a ghostbuster
(if only to be funny as i trapped otherworldly evil)
or indiana jones
(well, because, who didn't want to be indy?)

i guess i never wanted to be a profession
or a professional
i wanted to be a character
i saw characters in stories and wanted to be
those characters

what i'm seeing as i write this is:

i wanted to be something that didn't exist anymore
that fought bad guys
with weapons never seen
and mastered only by the experienced
all the while being funny and silly
getting the girl
and confidently, charmingly, innovatively
finding my way out of trouble
and travelling the world
looking for lost treasure

or the pearl of great price
in a story written by a mysterious hand
of a hidden kingdom

i'm glad i wanted to be a character

authenticity

i spent this past weekend up in the mountains.

i was asked to speak to a group of high schoolers, to inspire them, i guess, or to educate them, or to instill in them something new or bring out something old and not known or dealt with. i'm not quite sure. i just knew that i was going to speak what God has taught me and what i wished that i had heard when i was in high school, and that really, it was God's deal to do anything with it.

it was this weekend that i watched a friend let go.

i watched him let go of a burden that he had consented to bearing under the presupposition that only by bearing it could he be approved by others (the image of robert deniro in "the mission", carrying the tools of his former life up a waterfall in the jungle comes to mind).
there is something weird about wanted approval, we lose ourselves. we become an imagined entity. this entity might not even be what the givers of the burden have imagined, but the one that we imagine that they imagine. it becomes a figment of our imagination only, something we bring into reality which is not real at all. it is making our yes a no and our no a yes. we participate in a lie to the detriment of only ourselves.
in watching the movie "before sunset", i was struck by the sheer honesty of ethan hawke's character as he laments his life decisions saying something to the effect that when he married his current wife he did so as his "best" self, the self that was responsible, the self that was buying into being a part of the expectations that surrounded him, the self that denied the importance of a connection for the greater good of commitment, but he wished that he had been true to his "true" self, the one that told him to wait for something special, that it wasn't a lie, that it was the connection, the inexplicable that was somehow true, that deep down inside he knew all along, but decided, regrettably, to go with the crowd.
it was freeing watching someone let go of a burden that they had carried too long. it was like jeremy irons reaching down, as deniro struggles to the top of the waterfall, and cutting his burden off.
no one really told either of these two they had to carry their burden, they were both self imposed, yet they carry them to the chagrin of those around them. the amazing thing is that it seems that these burdens are impossibly obvious to everyone around them, yet the bearer bears it in his isolation pretending himself, not to notice and that his struggles are just the regular struggles of a difficult task.

inauthenticity is a lie. if we are inauthentic then we consort with the Lie himself and we become people of the lie. in becoming people of the lie we lose ourselves and the very talent that was given to us we do not reproduce but bury deep down inside, and when we are approached by the giver of this talent he is justified in saying that he never knew us.
to be known, that deep desire of our hearts, we must be authentic. we must be both sinner and saint, we must not be our best selves, but our true selves.

come to me all who are weary and i will give you rest for my burden is easy and my yoke is light

bored

so i'm really bored right now.
i'm supposed to be in session, but my client's aren't showing up.
it kind of sucks when they don't show up,
i really like having something to do.
you know how people wish they didn't have to go to their jobs
and they were just rich and had all the money they could ever want?
well, i'm not one of those people.
i've actually thought about what it would be like and how the first
few days would be wicked sweet
and my friends would come over,
they'd make time to hang out becuase i was super rich
some would even come with me to go and buy a new ride,
or look at houses
but pretty soon the novelty of my life would wear off
they'd all go back to work, and well,
then i would have no one to hang out with.
i guess i could drive around town and meet them for lunch
and stuff like that, but what would i do in between?
watch oprah? go to the gym? prank call my friends?
how long could i seriously do this for?
the only way that it would be worth it would be if all of my friends had
as much money as i had and we bought some land by the beach
and built a bunch of sweet houses and just hung out all day.
laughing, tanning, eating, drinking, being entertained...
nevermind, this would get old too.
plus, i'd probably get really fat doing that
being really fat would be cool
for only one day.
but that one day would be sweet.
i could do all the things that really fat dudes get away with.
whatever that is, i guess just be a bit of an inconvenience to
everyone as well as to themselves.
but if i knew that it would only be for a day, it wouldn't be that much
of an inconvenience to me.
it would be a novelty, kind of like having all the money i could ever want.
but if i was super fat,
i would try and hang my neck over my torso and shake it
and scream like a dinosaur. i've always wanted to do that.
after that i'd probably run down a hill to see how
much speed i could pick up,
then again, i'd probably blow out a knee doing that.
i've blown out my knees already, that sucks.
you know what else sucks?
being bored.
did i mention i'm really bored right now?

democracy?

obvious and blatant corruption and big brothering were things i assumed that the u.s. government was above, so i find it annoying and shady that halliburton (please read: cheney) is making a killing off of this war. but recently it has only gotten worse since these natural disasters (read: recent hurricane epidemics) hit our north american shores causing mass damage and suffering and loss. in tragedy is where you begin to see the north american community become active in its grief and compassion, coming to the aid of those in need and devastated (plus as christians we are called to bear one another's burdens).
the rebuilding process began immediately with just the help that was being sent, given and done. i heard an influx of ideas from friends and relatives about what to do with these destroyed cities and towns (my dad's suggestion being far and above the best). the problem with disasters is that there are people who see them as a chance to get rich, to take advantage of the suffering of someone else. obviously cities like new orleans need to be re-built, but lo and behold, who gets the contract to build new orleans? halliburton.
see i grew up in guatemala. at the beginning of my time there we were ruled by a lovely dictator who enjoyed killing students and teachers who protested against him. he enjoyed having the army set the spanish embassy on fire because some indigenous people were demanding land and had fled there for shelter and amnesty. lastly he enjoyed combing the countryside killing revolutionaries and mayan indians, whoever they happened to come across. so this resulted in several coups until we ultimately had "democratic" elections.
democracy in guatemala is a fragile thing, manily because if elected you will probably serve only one term, so the challenge of your term becomes how much money you can pilfer from the country during your time there. it is kinder, gentler, dictatorship. these presidents enjoy changing the constitution, firing their cabinet, stealing from the national treasury, but especially giving government jobs to their friends.
when i returned back to guatemala in the winter of '98 the country seemed to be investing in infrastructure, and i was really excited about these advancements, thinking, "what a great way to generate capital in the country". well, the story goes that the president is a memeber of the board of directors of this construction company in mexico, so they won the construction contract. this is a great thing for guatemala becuase all the government money spent on the expensive part of the construction of the roads (read: supplies, machinary, engineers) was being sent out of the country and the cheap part (read: labor, which is ridiculously cheap there) would trickle around the country. obviously election time came and this president's party did not repeat. but the next president (who happened to have shot and killed two people in mexico) gives the road construction contract to his gardner. HIS GARDNER!!! talk about a set up for him just to make cash. so as you can see, this sort of thing is what most of global "democracy" looks like.
why do i write about all of this?
well, halliburton getting the war contracts might look shady to some. i had a friend mention that they probably were the only company that could do it. so i'll concede that point, but i haven't put it out of my mind. but then the new orleans contract? i'm starting to get a little uneasy. things start to look a little similar. then i'm reading the l.a. crimes the other day for my daily laker dose when i look over at "the most e-mailed stories" and come across this story.
i don't know about you, but teachers and students had better start watching their backs.

mondays

i hate monday's!

i grew up reading garfield comic strips
for some reason this fat lazy cat, like roseanne, was popular when i was a kid
he hated monday's
this was his catch phrase
it made people laugh
"ha ha, i hate monday's too, that's genius!"

it's not genius
it's not brilliant either
in fact it's lame

the only thing lamer
(and trust me it's almost in a dead heat with saying
"you look like you have a case of the monday's")
is when the receptionist where i work,
upon my entering and saying good morning to her,
responds,
"good morning."
and when i say,
"how are you doing?"
she says,
"it's one day closer to friday!"
no matter the day
to which i give the courtesy smile
audible but short "hmph" laugh
and look away
because if i look at her when i do this
not only would i lose all respect for her
but for myself as well
conforming to a social ritual that is nothing but a lie
encouraging her to say the same thing to me the following day
even though i would give my liver for her to stop
or at least my firstborn

but i am starting to really hate monday's

not because the weekend is over
sometimes i'm glad the weekend is over
sometimes i'm ready to get back to work
sometimes the weekend is so chalk full of
activities
people to see
places to be
things that i hate doing but need to get done
and can only be done over the weekend
that i am glad that the weekend is over so i can breathe

not because i can't sleep in on monday
because i wake up at the same time for soccer on saturday
and for church on sunday
that i do every day of the week

not because i'm lazy
because, if i'm alone,
doing nothing drives me crazy
i have to do something productive
something active
something that gives back
and involves my brain
and my body

not because i have to go to work
because i enjoy what i do
i enjoy the people that i work with
it's unpredictable,
it's spontaneous,
it's anxiety provoking
and full of stories
and i like stories

no i hate monday's because
i hate saying good-bye

you see, i grew up saying "adios"
to acquaintances
to friends
to teachers
to best friends
and it hurt so bad the first few times that
i stopped feeling it
i pretended that there was no good-bye
only a pause
until i would see them again
this is a lie
some people i will never see again
most of the people i will never see again
a loss like death,
but not dead,
only gone,
divorced from my friendship
how many times can you grieve for yourself as a child?

it has been nothing to say good-bye

until now

i'm starting to hate monday's because
monday's have become synonymous with
me getting on an airplane at 7am east coast time
to fly back to my one bedroom apartment
and if it doesn't involve me going to the airport
it involves me having been there the night before
saying good-bye to jessica
it involves a tearing,
a tired grieving
a melancholy funk that i can't seem to shake the entire day
a loss that i feel in the depths of my being
that i feel i can't really tell anyone about
that it is something special
sacred
deep
unknowable
a longing
for who i leave or who leaves me

only this time it is only about a pause
this time i've let myself feel it
this time i'm not a child
this time i'll willingly grieve every time

goody-bye jess
i love you
i miss you...

God, i hate monday's!

day off

you should take a couple days off

my supervisor told me that when on tuesday the 11th of october, i told her that i had just found out that my grandma had passed away that morning
i was numb and i listen to people for a living
i didn't think that i could listen to anyone, all i could hear were my own thoughts

i had gone out to see my grandma two weeks ago with jessica
she was, according to her, "not in any shape to have visitors", but she had us in anyway

i sat beside her on her bed and held her hand as she talked
i sat in the living room as she sat in her chair either talking to us or falling asleep
i remember seeing her in her chair, asleep, and the only thought that i had was,
"she so near to God right now"
like a thin line separated her spirit from the infinite
i wondered if she could see it...

she can see it now

now, i wonder what she sees
i wonder what she feels
i wonder how much she laughs
i wonder if she sleeps
i wonder if she is a little girl there
i wonder if she is playing
or eating ice cream and saying to her self
"what does my ice cream taste like?
it tastes like ice cream, andy!"
and then laughing
at herself for saying that
at me for asking that
and then, just because she could

so i took the day off yesterday.

i spent some time with my friend aaron
he's lonely and he misses God, he's reconnecting with God now
it's painful for him
but he came out and hung out with me,
in the midst of his existential pain
to be present with me in mine

i spent some time with my friend mynor
he's a father of a one year old
he's trying to get back into shape after an achilles injury
he cares for a lot of people
he took the time to have lunch with me
to care for me
to sit in silence over food if that is what i wanted to do

i spent some time with my friend matt
he just got married
probably the most redemptive ceremony i've ever been a part of
he has a steel rod holding his pelvis together
he just got back from new zealand
he hung out with me last night even though it was today for him
he felt my pain for me, he felt his pain
it connected us

jesus wept

geeking out

so it's the beginning of october and you would think that when you write about sports and october, you're going to write about baseball, but if i were to write about baseball, you would ask me to loosen my pants because it was muffling my voice.
when i think about sports in october, i think about training camp.
in the 80's i successfully avoided the mullet and by avoiding the mullet one seems to thankfully avoid all mullet related sports (with the exception of soccer in my case) and hockey was never a sport i could even bear to watch or even care about. the one hockey game that i did go to, on the assumption that the claim, "you just have to watch it live man, you'll be hooked!" was true, i found myself leaving at the beginning of the third period, ready to pay $20 to watch paint dry. so i never fell for the only sport i felt was hand tailored for rednecks, i mean, where would you ever find more mullet wearing, toothless grinning, facially deformed, hot headed, vocabulary challenged white men on one team?
when i start to think about sports in october, i start to think in purple and gold.
sports in october means hope, it means, potential, it means dreams of may and possibly june, it means get together's with friends, it means calls from my dad and brother and all my other friends who i have lethally injected with the purple and gold serum. it means the beginning of the year for the only team that people in los angeles care about. it means laker season is upon me.
last year october was a disaster. in fact, it was the first october that i wasn't even excited about the team. actually i couldn't even handle the thought of them. i knew that rudy would be a disaster and the lakes would throw up more three balls than loyola marymount from the hank gathers, bo kimbal days. i couldn't even believe who we got for shaq, three scrubs? i mean, i was pushing for nowitzki like it was my job, and only nowitzki would i trade shaq for (maybe garnett), and how could kupchack not get cuban to bite on that?? always trade big for big, never big for small! and at least get another freak of nature, not the same kind of freak of nature, but nowitzki is a freak, he plays like my brother benj if he were seven feet tall. silky smooth moves, great shot and absolutely no defense. kobe and that fool together would have made for an exciting october, even with rudy. but i couldn't even watch the season. it was kind of my protest against all things laker. kind of my way of letting the lakes know that they had hurt my feelings, that they had injured me personally. i would catch glimpses, of games, glimpses where the court looked darker, somehow foreign, to my eyes.
but things have changed in lakerland. i feel like i needed the time away, the distance to work on forgetting what we had, it wasn't like their best player got aids and the second best player's knees went out, these things i can understand and suffer through with a team... the time away allowed for me to come back a different fan, a more jaded fan, but nonetheless a fan whose blood runs purple and whose heart is made of gold. they reached out to the only coach they could reach out to, coach phillip, to make up for rash decisions. kobe has suffered through a year where he was given his reign of a team, a coach, and a city and lost them all, realizing that he is neither of the three and merely the key component on a team. if he can take the energy from the humbling he received and put them into his desire to win and into discipline on the court, and shut his mouth and just play, he could probably win the mvp this year. i guess that i am excited about this team because i have no idea what it is going to look like, i have know idea, or can i even predict what this season will look like. finally the lakers are back to being something worth watching because each game will be a complete surprise, each game will be a crap shoot, each game the lakers could potentially be competitive in if they all play together. finally they seem like a team again, finally they seem like family once again, finally i care about them again, finally it's october.

Unintentional comedy

i was going thru the profile section of this blog and it asks for your favorite movies. this is always a lame question, one that no one can really answer because after you put in one movie, you remember one that you liked even more, and this process becomes endless, well, not endless, but obnoxious. so i decided to only put in movies that i remember liking as a kid with an imagination when i used to rule the streets with my brother and friends on our bikes or flying our tree (yes, our tree was a space ship or whatever we wanted it to be) or just making up adventures and gadgets (see krull, his throwing star was the bomb, but i still don't know how he caught that thing). so if you want to check out any of those movies, they are all unbelievable, terrible, downright awful, but somehow made especially for me and my friends at that point in our lives. well, the reason i'm writing this blog is because the last one that i list there has a scene so downright awful, so full of unintentional comedy at the end of it, that as a nine-year-old i laughed everytime i saw it (even though i imagined my friends cheering me on to do something unbelievable). these are the movies that you love as a kid because if you were given the money as a nine-year-old, this is what you would make. if you haven't checked the links that my brother put on the comments section, you need to. attached is a picture of the final scene, this should be enough to get you to check out the review, i couldn't read thru the whole thing becasue i was laughing too hard and i couldn't see through my own tears. truly amazing cinema. i miss those days when i could watch this sort of crap and not feel embarrassed for myself.

welcome to the ...

so my friends are blogging now and even my brother is blogging and what i am beginning to realize is that i really enjoy reading their blogs and keeping up with them, so i figured that it was high time that i joined in the revolution which really isn't much of a revolution but kind of a joining with the masses to connect our disconnected lives and really is quite a statement to the fact that most of us spend more time with our computers than even with our fellow workers, clients, etc..
that, and i'm not so great at verbalizing what's going on with me, so i figure that this will be a bit therapeutic. so welcome to the blog.