Re:Creation

i laid in the darkened room, eyes staring up at the ceiling. i was on my back, and the sound wafted in shimmering waves, alternatively of rain and moonlight, from the direction my head was pointing. the lights were off, but the blinds were open, allowing a ghostly pale yellow to filter in from the street lamps outside the apartment. the yellow carried enough photons to illuminate the white ceiling, and at the same time cause it to glow faintly at the edges; an optical illusion due to the surrounding darkness.

already i could begin to make metaphors for the experience, but we’ve not yet got to the crux of it. the light was just so, such that my eyes couldn’t exactly focus on anything at any particular depth in front of them. the ceiling was no help–glowing ephemereally as it was, it completely failed as a point of reference. thus my focus involuntarily went up and down (or outwards and inwards, as it were), causing a most curious sensation.

this sensation was more or less perfectly symbolic of the music. for over an hour i was virtually comatose, willingly paralyzed by ( ), the new sigur ros album. it faded into and out of view, hazily, just as it flitted shadow-like away from my attempts to force it into a structure. heavily atmospheric, unbelievably sad, despairing even; yet, triumphant, brokenly joyful; annoyingly beautiful and implacably angelic. the hour passed, and when the room lights were flicked back on, dissipating the hovering cloak dripping with musical fantasy, it felt as if i’d gained a year, having spent it still and silent amidst the sorrowful singing.

never pass up a cd listening party for a band reputed to have the makings of genius, especially if that band is from iceland.

virtual disc on spin: agaetis byrjun | sigur ros

a horrible feeling sank down and hung on my shoulders today as i ate three reese’s peanut butter cups and three bite-size snicker bars in rapid succession. the feeling consisted mostly in the following thought: “there will come a day, self, when you won’t be able to do this anymore.” and it’s certainly true. sooner or later my insane metabolism will slow down, and bite-size chocolate will become bite-size fat, instead of whatever happens to it now. the only solution, in looking at almost all the middle-aged people i know, is to set good eating and exercise habits now. habits suck, though. the only thing i’m really in the habit of doing is having bad habits. so we’ll see.

in other news i am no longer going to england over thanksgiving, since i ended up finding cheap fares home after all, so i’m going to orlando. unfortunately i get in at 7pm thanksgiving day, so we’ll be having a late thanksgiving dinner. still, being with family will be great.

i’ve been “writing” a paper for the last few days and it has been hell. this is a new and scary experience for me, and i hope it ends up ok.

fall retreat this weekend for crusade, so i’ll be out through sunday. should be pretty cool, but i have a tendency to get bored at these things and so stop paying attention. anyhow, i’m now officially procrastinating for that paper and other work, and this is something i promised not to do until friday, so…au revoir.

virtual song on spin: “rooms and gardens” | appleseed cast

and that, in fact, is why i took to inventing languages. words are not tired revisions used to form the same expressions, that, despite any significant emotional cause, export a mundane sense to the listener. (this, is, of course, why we have made the writer’s craft the way it is — to say something novel, rather, to say something in a novel and thereby more interesting/emotive way, we are forced to use already existing words while investing them with new meaning). no: new words are new. in creating a language i bring myself to a clean space, uncluttered by the gnarl of English; a space rather like a pristine snowscape. there is no need for devices like metaphor, because i can impute the full artistic meaning and emotion of my angst or joy in the words themselves. to me, this is power. i stand and survey my antarctic scene, devoid of everything save my own footprints, and unsullied by the mucking about of millions of other people who’ve forgotten what language is for. it is powerful because it is pure, a fresh start, an eden with all the potential beauty not yet crushed by brutal actuality. if i could, i would live there, and take that purity for my own cloak, leaving behind the sordid and mind-numbing particularism of the Present Age. i would speak new words in my language: the language of the Age to Come.

Nai silta an meira silveth nailoth, celda vue anma andusto em parith; eco silta an cern eleth, an iselyato ais em Vanorema. Silnova, seumadima nosiema, ler te’aledivuma felonni.

….and in return school fools me by letting me think i’ll get away with it. that is, until monday morning faces me with a ferocious, gloating, smile. “pay up!” he cries, and interest accrues each time i hit the snooze button. i realize the loan i took out from this sly banker in order to buy time is due, and i’ve got nothing to show. the new day is the repo-man, and my defaulted collateral consists of peace and a balanced existence.

still, i feel as if i’ve been spared my full share of consequences, and here i sit without too much to do this afternoon before i leave tomorrow for home. that’s right–home. my aunt linda, elder sister of my dad, is getting married for the first time on saturday. i have the dubious honor of being cameraman for the event, and, while the honor may be in question, the advantage of such a situation is certainly not: i won’t have to sit and fidget for the entire ceremony.

last night i checked out and watched lock, stock, and two smoking barrels, precursor to the highly-if-hesitantly-and-carefully-recommended snatch. if a certain amount of gratuitous violence and one certainly gratuitous strip-bar scene don’t scare you (perhaps prudently) away, watch this movie. it is genius.

in other news, i am attempting to go to england over thanksgiving break. don’t ask me why–it’s a strange combination of wanderlust, escapism, forethought, playing the mileage game, wisdom, and stupidity. but, i’m hoping that it will be an official trend affect theory 217 event, in that premier stud chris nyffeler (aka nyffy, aka dj chris cross) might come. if we can pull it off, we may just have an altimar 3.5 on our hands, which would be totally sweet.

nothing else interesting is really happening, save that i’m combating a number of physical ailments at the moment: ankle tendonitis, a recovering sprained toe, a recovering sprained finger, a recovering dislocated shoulder, a strained hip tendon, and, to top it off, a wart on my finger. needless to say, a number of these are fairly inhibitive as far as running, climbing, and playing ultimate frisbee go, so i’m not having the best of times in those areas.

my perspective, though, is sometimes realigned when i think of those who were never able to run at all, or those confined to a chair for the remainder of their lives. i really don’t have much room to complain.

virtual songs on spin: random shuffle of my 7.8GB cd-turned-mp3 collection. played end-to-end, it would take 5 days, 18 hours, 46 minutes, and 20 seconds to hear them all. i love music.

i’ve got it: i’ll fool school by not actually working, but instead checking out dvds from the library.

it’s 2am on a friday night and i’ve had a great day. apart from my 8 and 9am classes, it could almost have been a perfect day. i got an early start, performed suitably well in my school-related functions (even if i did act like an automaton that only very nearly passed the turing test), and went home to take care of some web business. that being done i had a beautiful lunch at bollard, before launching into an afternoon of quite litera[ri]lly novellic adventures. i read the last two or three hundred pages of my latest stephen r lawhead installment in one sitting. ah, the blessed feeling of the cool breeze mingled with sunshine through an open window while turning the pages of a good adventure, each page like a movie frame that when rolled at speed produces a sequence of fantastic images.

satisfied with my lazy indolence, i ousted my sluggish self from the suite and went to wilbur to play an hour and a half of pickup ultimate. i didn’t do well, but neither did anyone else really and it was low key and fun. then to dinner and back to the room to watch gladiator with nick bott. we both love that movie to a great extent, and we took full advantage of our new, beautiful surround sound system purchased at cost and well worth every penny. i’ve already discussed how powerful the score is, and the story is just as fantastic. each on its own has the power to bring that longing tear-tightness to my eyes, and both together is a rare cinematic experience indeed.

alternating couch-sitting with physical activity, the next and most recent step of the day was broomball at the ice oasis in some as-yet-unidentified portion of the bay area near menlo park. i ran like a crazy man for about an hour and shouted generally unintelligible things in an attempt to guide our team into some sort of winning strategy; of course, nothing of the sort exists in broomball, but it was great fun anyway, and i had several very existential moments while sliding on my back on the ice, or while running full speed into a plexiglass window in order to “check” someone from the opposite team.

of course, some of you may be wondering what i’ve been up to since october the third, but i’m afraid that for now most of that will go forever unnoted in this space. in any case, nothing of terrible importance happened, and i’ve used up my allotment of allowable non-important relata for the post, so it will have to pass. you can probably extrapolate most of my actions from my various involvements (groups) and commitments (classes), because these are the things in which i’ve poured my time.

my only disappointment recently is the my seeming inability to hang out with girls. i know there are lots of awesome ones around, but i can’t figure out what people do here, so i never have any reason to call anyone up to hang out. it’s this incomprehensible lack of creativity when it comes to thinking of ways to pass the time, or perhaps it’s a standard of which ways are cool that is set far too high. whatever, the point is that i think it would be good for me to hang out with people besides my guy friends, so that i don’t go around thinking the world is all like guys and guy emotional frameworks, etc… or maybe i’m not so wise and noble. maybe i have no reasons or justification, and need none. maybe the bottom line is that it’s just super lame to sit around with the drawmates and talk about hanging out with girls, a topic which has such a frequent occurrence in our conversations that the negative implication is straightforward: we talk about because we don’t, and because it’s not a natural part of our social lives. and maybe it’s this way with most stanford guys, apart from their predatory party stalkings. whatever it is it’s stupid, and i’ve spent far too much time staggering drunkenly around an issue that’s not even clear and that i wasn’t planning on talking about.

maybe i should just shut up and try and live out existential moments like this guy.

and welcome to our new home. hopefully you will notice an increase in speed!

*changing servers for jonathanlipps.com…this site may disappear for a bit…*

i’m trying hard to remember what’s happened in the past few weeks. i guess it’s been at least 3 since i really said anything of importance.

my last week at home after portugal, before stanford, was really fun. i went up to gainesville for a few days to hang out with my brother and best friends there. we watched movies, ate big reds, smoked pipes, climbed rocks, and had an all around freakin awesome time. chris domeck went up with me, so the whole posse was there, sans andy, who’s in indiana.

a few days later i went with mawk to a rock show at the social in downtown orlando, with embodyment and blindside headlining. it was a dope show, and i totally rocked out hardcore. i felt as if i’d gone through an intense workout afterwards, when the seething suffocation of the mosh pit faded. needless to say, both bands just freakin kicked, and it was awesome to hang out with sean a bit before their set and catch up on life.

let’s see, what else…i went down to west palm beach to spend a day with my grandma, aunt linda and her new fiance peter. it was an interesting dynamic, as i’d never really spent alone time as an adult with my extended family like that (i.e., without immediate family also there). however, i would classify the time as really cool, because i was able to actually get to know them as people and not just family that gives presents at christmas. on the way up i stopped to see hannah at palm beach university for about 5 minutes…a totally random little surprise.

one of those days i went to see the sunrise at cocoa beach, which has become a solemn tradition for me. sometimes alone, sometimes with other people: whatever the case it’s always a huge mechanism for centering my life on what is important (christ) and sorting everything [else] in its right place. incidentally, the beach sunrise has become a sort of running theme or motif for myself and thereby my online presence, thus the new jonathanlipps.com design has as its centerpiece a picture i took on my most recent outing. anyways, i invited my friend amy to come with me, and that was fun. i was glad to be able to hang out with her several times while i was back, because she’s cool of course, and then also because most of my friends were away and i was pretty bored!

soon, of course, my halcyon week of summer laziness and fun came to an end. i flew back on friday the 20th, and got in to stanford that night. miraculously i got into my suite, though the move-in date wasn’t until sunday. unfortunately, i didn’t have a key. neither did i have any of my boxes which i’d scattered to various peoples’ homes for free storage. my room being more or less uninhabitable, then, i roamed around campus trying to see if any friends were around. to that end i joined the infamous orientation weekend band run, and went along with it from start to finish. ultimately i saw just about everyone whom i was expecting to be on campus there, and some besides. more importantly, it took up a lot of time and made me feel my travel exhaustion to the point where i was able to sleep on the bare mattress in my room.

saturday looked a little brighter, though smelled a little duller because of the cold that somehow sprung up then, whether because of the traveling or because of the unwise sleeping arrangements. i participated in crusade’s one-day ‘retreat’ where we planned what the quarter was going to look like. crusade planning meetings were to take up the bulk of the next week for some reason, and sunday, monday, and wednesday nights were thus occupied.

eventually i was able to get my boxes from kingscote, sammy, and the millers as they trickled in at various times and in various quantities. their arrival was coordinated with that of my drawmates, who began to arrive on sunday and were rounded out on tuesday with dave guo. those few days were filled with unpacking, getting things organized, choosing classes, and crusade stuff. from that point things have been a little blurry, and probably a lot more uninteresting to relate. basically i’ve embarked on a seriously hard quarter and between schoolwork, getting our apartment ready, playing a rocking show last thursday, and whatever else, i haven’t had time to do much of anything fun. sad, yes.

the pace seems to continue unabated, and i’m sitting here writing only because i’m waiting for my laundry to finish drying so i can go to bed, and i’m too brain-fried to continue reading “ontic decisions”, by willard quine. i really want to quote a paragraph of that text, just so you can see what an impossibility it is to actually do anything remotely considered reading to these words. better words would be parsing, translating, or deciphering. as you can imagine, 40 pages of deciphering is an amazingly daunting task, though our professor seems to conflate that with the commonplace notion of “reading”. sigh.

still, it has been fun to start classes at the graduate level and at least feel like i am not the least comprehending one in the group.

well, it seems i’ve run out of things to say. oh yeah, i turned 20. that was fun. and guess what? i actually got a birthday present from friends here! you know what it was? a GUN! a paintball gun. that’s right. i’m so excited. i can’t wait to shoot stuff with paint. “go go go!” “fire in the hole!” “you take the point” “affirmative” “get outta there she’s gonna blow!”

that should round it out. speaking of round, i missed my favorite live band tonight because i had responsibilities at crusade to lead worship. sorry, my spacecoaster! commitments come before shows, though i’d naturally cast it the reverse. i do try.

autumn quarter 2002: here goes nothing, with all the love and fury i can muster. lord help me!

virtual disc on spin: my spacecoaster | heartstrings