tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2432037230241675462024-03-18T19:55:18.716-07:00oodalolly!it's a thinga beautyBentley Snowhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12276828854041057296noreply@blogger.comBlogger40125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-243203723024167546.post-58784552206145479952017-07-11T02:24:00.001-07:002017-07-11T11:48:58.453-07:00DOW' NUNDAH! -- June 13, 2017 – Many Meetings (Aussie Edition)<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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The Spice Girls greeted us in Brisbane. At least, as soon as
the plane landed and the “seat belts on” light went off and the cabin lights
went on, the radio started playing, and I heard those sonorous sounds of the
90’s:</div>
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<i><br /></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; text-align: center;">
<i>I’ll tell ya what I want<o:p></o:p></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; text-align: center;">
<i>What I really really want<o:p></o:p></i></div>
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<i>So tell us whatcha want<o:p></o:p></i></div>
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<i>Whatcha really really want...</i></div>
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<br /></div>
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Ok, so "Wannabe" was always a
stupid song. But it welcomed us to Australia. </div>
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<br /></div>
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhyuoPFw9BBNPmECT8Co5qyKxGIJ6N8UbFKvm6yWh2h-9nGLvtl17lbDtWR3gDt7mfbhgqX9iFyV0_-OwE269QYb4vjf43uEi6VjGE5JMhhGKRNOH9iwy6oJPVemA0aXp9BAlnY-AIV-tE/s1600/Landscapes-Sunset-over-the-Lake-in-the-Mountans.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1200" data-original-width="1600" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhyuoPFw9BBNPmECT8Co5qyKxGIJ6N8UbFKvm6yWh2h-9nGLvtl17lbDtWR3gDt7mfbhgqX9iFyV0_-OwE269QYb4vjf43uEi6VjGE5JMhhGKRNOH9iwy6oJPVemA0aXp9BAlnY-AIV-tE/s320/Landscapes-Sunset-over-the-Lake-in-the-Mountans.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">I figured you'd rather see a sunset than the Spice Girls.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
A bit later, the power
unexpectedly went out in the plane—come to think of it, it’s scary to think it
might’ve a few hours earlier—and everything went silent. Just then, the lone,
lonely voice of an Aussie broke the silence:<br />
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<br /></div>
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“Awh, the Spoice gihls
uh roff!”</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;">
I swiveled my head and
saw a dryly grinning steward. I liked that guy. Soon the power was restored and
things went on as usual.</div>
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<br /></div>
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Speaking of things you might rather see than the Spice Girls:</div>
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<br /></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgb7Yd8-qbn94QAr1bMouuNKpR-y8PoLqIoUJtLxuFJO2eLvVOcKlByWKbFc4waCWgadA7z0HDAT7AJkh0iIT5pToj7UO47XhZCKdBDXgAOD8rTKpgPkAzmCY7mfGsEYQKFizMWjw0JMWM/s1600/star-wars-episode-8-film_1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="576" data-original-width="1024" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgb7Yd8-qbn94QAr1bMouuNKpR-y8PoLqIoUJtLxuFJO2eLvVOcKlByWKbFc4waCWgadA7z0HDAT7AJkh0iIT5pToj7UO47XhZCKdBDXgAOD8rTKpgPkAzmCY7mfGsEYQKFizMWjw0JMWM/s400/star-wars-episode-8-film_1.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">"Friendship never ends" - The Spice Girls</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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<br /></div>
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<br /></div>
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*</div>
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<br /></div>
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After passing through customs, the airport corridor forked
and we were forced to choose between a sign that said “Pilots” or “Airline
employees” or something on the right, and a huge, glamorous display of liquor
on the left. Couldn’t see another door anywhere. The lady in front of the
liquor display saw Mom and me looking confusedly around and pointed through her
store. Apparently, we had to run the gauntlet to get out of the airport.</div>
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<br /></div>
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“How’d you know [we were wondering where to go]?” I asked
her. </div>
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<br /></div>
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“Jist a woild gies,” she said, smoiling charmingly.</div>
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<br /></div>
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*</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Soon we met a car rental employee whose English was hard to
make out (it wasn’t his first language, and an Aussie accent to boot made it a
little tricky for us). Eventually he said something condescending, as if we
were a bit slow to not be understanding him, which irked me a bit. We were
trying to wade through his perhaps oily attempts to upsell us when he made the
comment. My mom brokered peace and settled on a higher rate than we probably
wanted for insurance (which we hadn’t been told about when we’d booked the car
in advance), then told me not to let it bother me. It wasn’t worth it. It’s
easier to write about now since I got Qantas to revoke his VISA. </div>
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<br /></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhvq7gkY-X23zLFXMTOEmHjfrZ_Khxnr_HY0P7S_OdtyrnDI1NVKbyDliu__Ltm1LMDHha8vBImPUXHVXogzVAsIed2Zxz2uqBph_GBM8PFRqcoDctOAvTSGKapdlMzRb5QES5NnacoUFw/s1600/trump-smug-grin-670.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="447" data-original-width="670" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhvq7gkY-X23zLFXMTOEmHjfrZ_Khxnr_HY0P7S_OdtyrnDI1NVKbyDliu__Ltm1LMDHha8vBImPUXHVXogzVAsIed2Zxz2uqBph_GBM8PFRqcoDctOAvTSGKapdlMzRb5QES5NnacoUFw/s400/trump-smug-grin-670.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">(I'm actually a conservative, but I thought this would be funny.) </td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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Actually, the rental company asked later about our
experience and that led to things smoothing over. Much calmer by then, we still
weren’t sure how to put it and the manager insisted on a true report. I said
the guy probably shouldn’t suffer any sort of punishment, but just a tip that
his tone could be gentler might improve people’s experience. That was right
before we left Brisbane to Cairns (where the next car we’d booked was
unexpectedly upgraded to a chartreuse muscle car, perfect for navigating
jungles and mountains near beaches), but that comes later in the story.</div>
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<br /></div>
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*</div>
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<br /></div>
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The sturdy wood door of the mission home—headquarters—opened,
but no one stood behind it. To the right, a cute lady with a silver bob haircut
and twinkling eyes appeared, wearing a nametag that said “Sister McSwain” and
holding a video camera. My mom turned her head to the left where a radiant face
framed with dark blonde hair appeared—Sister Snow, Malissa, the littlest of her
children, from whom she’d been an ocean away for about a year and a half.</div>
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<br /></div>
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“Mom!” Malissa said, in a tone that said happiness and
relief and something so sweet there were tears. Mom didn’t say anything, she
just cried and took Malissa in. Malissa beamed with her eyes closed, holding
Mom tight, leaking tears down her cheek.</div>
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<br /></div>
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It’s quite a sight, the reunion of an empty nest’s guardian and the last and littlest bird to leave it. I didn’t see Mom’s face
for awhile, but I’m sure it mirrored Malissa’s. They have a similar
beauty—people commented on it all through Australia, how they resembled each
other—and similar spirits, sweet and caring.</div>
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<br /></div>
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I wasn’t sure I should have come, thought maybe this was
supposed to be just a trip for the two of them, but Malissa sweetly beamed and
hugged me too, and later in the car she turned back from the passenger seat to
take my hand and say, “I’m glad you’re here.” She always gets whatever she
wants,” I’ve said many times, in reference to getting to serve in Australia for
example, “but she’s so sweet no one can resent her for it.” </div>
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<br /></div>
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*</div>
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<br /></div>
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Despite an inevitably busy schedule, President and Sister
McSwain nonetheless took the time to welcome us to their home, talk to us about
Malissa and her good work and influence, and give us tips on enjoying our trip.
The welcome occurred largely in their living room—a sunken room with a vaulted
ceiling that had clean grey couches and a hearth with a beautiful picture over
it—Carl Bloch’s famous painting called “The Rich Young Ruler.” <br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhZQ61jafCV3FMC3ICgiAgMxSyvKh2Aqaa2eVv_gYloGPJiMlU8mn8AJzBt7o2u71Nba3ibH2lEwxQhGbKJapdPudGsJaJQX03K4GFCBEOrOrwTKcefG6ifN4Ncm3USTY_u8ykiccXsX8M/s1600/christ-rich-young-ruler-hofmann-1020802-tablet.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="768" data-original-width="1053" height="291" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhZQ61jafCV3FMC3ICgiAgMxSyvKh2Aqaa2eVv_gYloGPJiMlU8mn8AJzBt7o2u71Nba3ibH2lEwxQhGbKJapdPudGsJaJQX03K4GFCBEOrOrwTKcefG6ifN4Ncm3USTY_u8ykiccXsX8M/s400/christ-rich-young-ruler-hofmann-1020802-tablet.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The truly conservative--and liberal--candidate.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
In it, the Savior calls the attention of a
clearly </div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
</div>
affluent young man towards a few obviously poor and suffering people
nearby him. It represents a story in Luke 18 that addresses the heart of
Christianity—letting go of whatever it is you want most for yourself so that
you can be the greatest blessing possible for your fellow men. President
McSwain explained they also use it to tell their missionaries—who often come
from wealthier backgrounds—that the Savior wants them to look to the poor as
their equals and to love them duly as such.<br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
President McSwain had made his money in the gas and oil
industry, which he’d worked in over in Roosevelt—eastern Utah. He was probably
well off himself, like most mission presidents—to drop all business affairs for
three years to simply serve, one has to be well-situated. It illustrates Jacob
2:18-19 for me, how if we find the kingdom of Christ, thereafter if we seek for
riches, it will be with the intent to do good. It’s neat to me that he was an
example of what he was trying to get his missionaries to be.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Sister McSwain might have impressed me even more. She was sweet,
energetic, and caring—things that are tremendous when you actually encounter
them, although as a description they might not mean much, since those words are
too often and irresponsibly used. The way she took my hand and looked at me
seemed to recognize my worth and affirm it. It mattered to me. She didn’t know
me at all, besides as Sister Snow’s older brother, but she cared. I think she
would have whoever I was. When she learned about our tangled flight plans, she
offered to have someone bring Malissa’s luggage to the airport to meet us, so
she could take a simple travel bag for the next three weeks. It was an
unexpected offer to sacrifice on our behalf in a very helpful way. More
movingly, it was a sweet, energetic, and caring gesture.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
*</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
After dropping off our stuff at our lodgings, Mom, Liss and
I went off in search of dinner. Google Maps told us some cheap Indian food was
.3 miles from our place, so we decided to walk.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
It was winter dow nundah, what with the season of the
southern hemisphere being opposite ours in the north, so though it was only 5
or 6, it was already totally dark. The Big Dipper, North Star, and Little
Dipper were all gone as well—or rather, they shone somewhere directly up from
below us, on the other side of earth (although it was day there, so northerners
wouldn’t have seen them shining). As a coastal city, though, Brisbane’s climate
was moderate though, so walking was nice—especially when we caught a whiff of
Indian food on the breeze. We joked about following our noses instead of the
Google Maps directions to find it, which suddenly struck me as an actually
brilliant idea, </div>
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhRh6GDN0xNzU_ArwTYHt90APvd2pumTjSPFjLOE0Rau8N2daK8wXo0WixwUdo7I46hIvB8ik4qTmGO2236D8Bifzzl8UgcBs-21skhyI2MWFoPIXfD8fjSh6qkJRQuNT2f8u_Uumg5lhM/s1600/gandalf_the_lord_of_rings_mines_moria_fellowship_desktop_2954x1965_hd-wallpaper-512088.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1065" data-original-width="1600" height="265" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhRh6GDN0xNzU_ArwTYHt90APvd2pumTjSPFjLOE0Rau8N2daK8wXo0WixwUdo7I46hIvB8ik4qTmGO2236D8Bifzzl8UgcBs-21skhyI2MWFoPIXfD8fjSh6qkJRQuNT2f8u_Uumg5lhM/s400/gandalf_the_lord_of_rings_mines_moria_fellowship_desktop_2954x1965_hd-wallpaper-512088.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">"If in doubt, Meriadoc..." </td></tr>
</tbody></table>
but Mom implied she actually didn’t think so.<br />
<br />
Malissa laughed
at the delicacy of Mom’s insinuation and the differences between Mom and I,
then Mom and I laughed too. Turned out we probably wouldn’t have found the food
but I still would’ve liked to try. The food itself was delicious and the menu
was excellent, with the chef straight up dissing dishes he didn’t like. Gotta
love personality. (Sorry I don’t remember his disses, just that he was
anti-sugar.)<br />
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Waddling homeward after stuffing ourselves with chicken tikka masala, we detoured to pick up some groceries for
breakfast. I asked the cashier how his day was going, and he said it was great
until just now when he’d had to call a guy out for shoplifting. Just then, Mom
asked me if I had put everything on the scanner and in context it seemed like a
gentle hint to cough up whatever I was hiding. I suddenly panicked and worried I
actually did have something hidden, and the cashier—a chill guy of about twenty—bobbed
his head to one side then the other, seeming to scan my pockets and hands. My hands
came out empty and we all laughed and shook our heads.</div>
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<br /></div>
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“’Bye!” we told him.</div>
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<br /></div>
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“Cheers,” he said.</div>
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Bentley Snowhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12276828854041057296noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-243203723024167546.post-9943960736246351862017-07-11T01:31:00.004-07:002017-07-11T01:32:08.513-07:00DOW' NUNDAH! -- June 12, 2017 – In Memoriam<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgGQ06xq8wOnCHxKMjj-w13rm2fl7OI86EFyYK0TpDrLCjFAkgE9cHF4RbUhF0-edDOsyw-4_CDGZBC-pnvVXz77QT0b0beI0b7Mq4GDqg2pbYazFRqpp3Q2jHIvqQWXyLXyOzsep1CLn0/s1600/1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="480" data-original-width="852" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgGQ06xq8wOnCHxKMjj-w13rm2fl7OI86EFyYK0TpDrLCjFAkgE9cHF4RbUhF0-edDOsyw-4_CDGZBC-pnvVXz77QT0b0beI0b7Mq4GDqg2pbYazFRqpp3Q2jHIvqQWXyLXyOzsep1CLn0/s400/1.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
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I say, “June 12, 2017 – In Memoriam,” although technically I
have no memory of that day. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
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Technically, I never lived it. </div>
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<br /></div>
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At 11 PM or so,
Pacific Time, on June 11, Qantas Flight 15 left LA. Before it was 12 AM—June
12—we had reached another time zone west, and thus gone back an hour. This
process repeated for several hours through the night, while I was out on
Sominex—Doot doot do doo do doo doot DOO!—until we crossed the international
date line, and it became June 13, 2017<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null">. </a>June 12<sup>th</sup> had simply vanished. Or rather, it had never even appeared. No sight of it at all, besides the way the clock approached 11:34 PM or so before a new time zone switched it to 10:34 PM.</div>
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<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null"><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi27E16W9NQCG-ql44vhpH4FdG5UyoOpUpySxUYu8nyzPWzPIdgQQxD6vzV6OWq4-HFMav_1Fpy_WkgjT55m1BY3VY3BFfNhrmEqYzISoiSWq3sXn38bv-J2qwzhabArZB_V8Lkumc7SdI/s1600/date-line+%25281%2529.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="322" data-original-width="600" height="171" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi27E16W9NQCG-ql44vhpH4FdG5UyoOpUpySxUYu8nyzPWzPIdgQQxD6vzV6OWq4-HFMav_1Fpy_WkgjT55m1BY3VY3BFfNhrmEqYzISoiSWq3sXn38bv-J2qwzhabArZB_V8Lkumc7SdI/s320/date-line+%25281%2529.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Samoa wasn't where we went to.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
</a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
So I guess I don’t remember you, June 12, 2017, but I
remember that you might have been. For me, you were worse than forgotten—you
were never known—but what you might have been. That will always be with me.</div>
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<br /></div>
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Maybe I’ll have to learn of you from other people’s blogs
and such.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
(Don’t start reading them though now, people reading this.
I’m sure it’s way overrated.)</div>
</div>
Bentley Snowhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12276828854041057296noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-243203723024167546.post-70649599223456619222017-07-11T01:16:00.002-07:002017-07-11T01:19:53.378-07:00DOW' NUNDAH! – June 11, 2017 – Sominex and the Spirit of Australia<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhtzLD_si4fnYJD_lBv4CbWM5gFDmaV0IyDHyxczpEzIXZBfaJLbTXgciTjX54KzI2HWdMeCLvOSmd3yoF_kr5tGOZHkWp0dpfTp7umryaoR1AP5BDhtjfF6hcYU571IZlQWOBd_Jx5Oqk/s1600/267547-qantas.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="366" data-original-width="650" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhtzLD_si4fnYJD_lBv4CbWM5gFDmaV0IyDHyxczpEzIXZBfaJLbTXgciTjX54KzI2HWdMeCLvOSmd3yoF_kr5tGOZHkWp0dpfTp7umryaoR1AP5BDhtjfF6hcYU571IZlQWOBd_Jx5Oqk/s400/267547-qantas.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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I meant to write all about my trip to Australia in this
segment of my blog, my journey along with me mum to go pick up my youngest
sibling, Malissa, from her 18-month LDS mission to Brisbane, but it turns out
I’ll have to interrupt that tale right off the bat with a commercial break.<br />
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SOMINEX! Doot doot do doo do doo doot DOO! (Catchy <a href="https://www.blogger.com/null">ditty</a>.) </div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhtj9pHpHsFQLcyglvRB-kaMeJ8LUkA_KrlAncLQJzSDqx0_EWxQh2e61ZvqdZiU2m5CyrHgmLoIdhz2nYvlWPDBj3X1SKYMd8pSiP-tCrif42r1mxOHcyo-xn-bkdkxhTq50bZz5Yaosw/s1600/IMG_20170711_014024855.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="900" data-original-width="1600" height="180" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhtj9pHpHsFQLcyglvRB-kaMeJ8LUkA_KrlAncLQJzSDqx0_EWxQh2e61ZvqdZiU2m5CyrHgmLoIdhz2nYvlWPDBj3X1SKYMd8pSiP-tCrif42r1mxOHcyo-xn-bkdkxhTq50bZz5Yaosw/s320/IMG_20170711_014024855.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Can you honestly tell me Sominex isn't making millions off this pic?</td></tr>
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The stuff is magical! I slept for 8.5 hours <i>on the plane</i> thanks to those pills—and
they’re not even habit forming!</div>
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But let me rewind a little.</div>
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Waiting in the LA airport for the flight that would take us
down under (hereafter, dow’ nundah), I gushed to my mom about some magical blue
gel pills Uncle Johnny had once given me before my study abroad to Jerusalem. Miraculously,
they helped me sleep all the way across the Atlantic, allowing me to completely
skip over the hours of waiting in cramped airline confines and to simply wake
up relatively refreshed (but for some jet lag) as our plane was about to land
in Austria (en route to Jeru). It was like in <a href="https://www.blogger.com/null"><i>Jack </i></a><i>and
the Beanstalk</i>, how he gets some wonderful, magical beans from a mysterious
source but once he’s used them, they’re gone—he can never get them back again. </div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiBppn2YD1gO22WMacOLgAQlIp7nhDFtpt7OPBXgGh8JTTyB2g-mQyhpQSNI6cj0wPyMSGln8g2iLT3dsutevenLaFdRhKRN0I2cDEoBClqreKx4XH5R_dmazbVyCU_NfW_LcLmE3ChaUQ/s1600/morpheus.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="763" data-original-width="620" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiBppn2YD1gO22WMacOLgAQlIp7nhDFtpt7OPBXgGh8JTTyB2g-mQyhpQSNI6cj0wPyMSGln8g2iLT3dsutevenLaFdRhKRN0I2cDEoBClqreKx4XH5R_dmazbVyCU_NfW_LcLmE3ChaUQ/s320/morpheus.jpg" width="260" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">This is a much cooler picture of gel capsules than I could find by googling "Jack and the Beanstalk."</td></tr>
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I didn’t know how to get my pills again because Uncle Johnny had given them to
me in an unlabeled bottle. I raised an eyebrow at the bottle but he insisted
(like the vender of the beans) that they were magic, so I went for it, and it
turned out that they were.</div>
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I guarded them jealously for years, hoarding them (he’d
given me about 10) for a long flight now and then, alas, now they were gone. If
only I could get them again. Mom sympathized, but what could she do? I
continued rambling about their wondrous power, until after an hour or so Mom’s
phone rang.</div>
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It was Uncle Johnny.</div>
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“Sominex,” he said, “Diphanol hydroxine.” (Actually, I can’t
remember the generic name, so I just scrambled some sciency syllables together
to sound convincing.) Within moments I found some at a kiosk in the LA
airport—hallelujah!—and within hours I was zonked out on a plane.</div>
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Now I am left wondering about the magic of Sominex, but
perhaps even more so about the magic of timeliness. I’m not sure what it was
that prompted Uncle Johnny to call, but he did—right then, right as we were in
need (or rather in genuine want, as my rambling showed). He doesn’t call that
often either. He lives rather far away in <a href="https://www.blogger.com/null">rural </a>Nevada, when he’s in the country. </div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgxgxdbKANL7s8IZRE4UDl9CKSbmk0_iBgJP0wqkFpKyeW5bZrGLXoSHdxT7hxi3LvCr4pqOB2FfoN9siNLxyc9nn02bfegUTWVb3w1MVYXKHR4jGxXAMPWMsWnNSJj3zD9BGJASsQ7v0E/s1600/856088424_04e7445e11_z.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="480" data-original-width="640" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgxgxdbKANL7s8IZRE4UDl9CKSbmk0_iBgJP0wqkFpKyeW5bZrGLXoSHdxT7hxi3LvCr4pqOB2FfoN9siNLxyc9nn02bfegUTWVb3w1MVYXKHR4jGxXAMPWMsWnNSJj3zD9BGJASsQ7v0E/s320/856088424_04e7445e11_z.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Nevada's desert may be deserted by most, but never by Uncle Johnny.</td></tr>
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Maybe he
only comes or calls when he is called—when he senses his relatives are taking
initiative to some far-off place or other. Maybe initiative has some sort of
gravitational pull. Whatever the case, he’s 2 for 2 in my book. So here’s to
you, Uncle Johnny, and here’s to Sominex!<br />
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(Sadly, no time today for anything except that word from our
sponsors.)</div>
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(Please give me money, Sominex.)</div>
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*</div>
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This just in from Sominex: “No money for your commercial.
Sorry.<br />
PS – Please don't sing that ditty around our product."</div>
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Guess I’ll finish my post.</div>
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*</div>
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Mom and I actually might’ve saved even more money by booking
with the ultimate discount airlines—Tigerair and Jetstar in the Australian neck
of the world—but to avoid stressful distractions on such a meaningful trip for
Malissa, we decided to go with Qantas Airlines—in Dad’s words, “The Delta
Airlines of Australia,” in other words, a main player. Then the travel agency
(Travel By Design) got us the same tickets for $950, so we had the best of both
worlds—quality and savings.</div>
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Good thing we did, too, since once we flew on Delta from SLC
to LA, we discovered we couldn’t check in to our Qantas flight. We eventually
found a Qantas desk and a helpful Hispanic lady named Brenda. As we talked, she
asked, “Do you have your electronic VISAs?” I always thought of VISA as a
credit card, but VISA also refers to permission from a country to enter their
country—an unfortunate coincidence, I think. But anyway, Mom and I looked at
each other:</div>
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“Uh, no. We don’t have our VISAs. We sort of forgot those.”</div>
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Brenda exhaled slowly.</div>
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“So, you’re fortunate you booked with us, because at Qantas,
we have access to a system that lets us get you VISAs right now, which is what
I’m doing—but most airlines don’t have that. The other day, a lady came in
without a VISA and couldn’t get one before her flight, so she missed it and had
to buy another one. A VISA for Australia usually costs $50 but I can get you
each one for free.”</div>
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In other words, “You were idiots, but I’m taking care of
everything."</div>
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<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null"><br /></a></div>
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We exhaled in relief. Maybe too much, so Brenda began going
on, trying to make sure we learned our lesson without having suffered any
consequences. </div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjgzEVIPsh96UGfLMuWd5mw-6XFVZTZhIV6eTIeqvyZwTYPNWyHwebU4Gvl052DGv_lMPp6ZDOzMYKAO4hBjAlgRn_Fwkg0aCZ3m9s-0jOkoa7unD6T10_VZ8XwqXBYvf2lOaq6evq7IAw/s1600/25143-mr-bean-100.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="720" data-original-width="540" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjgzEVIPsh96UGfLMuWd5mw-6XFVZTZhIV6eTIeqvyZwTYPNWyHwebU4Gvl052DGv_lMPp6ZDOzMYKAO4hBjAlgRn_Fwkg0aCZ3m9s-0jOkoa7unD6T10_VZ8XwqXBYvf2lOaq6evq7IAw/s320/25143-mr-bean-100.jpg" width="240" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Go on, Brenda. We're listening.</td></tr>
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I can’t really remember what she said, because it didn’t really
seem to matter—I’d just gotten off the hook without any consequences—but I do
remember her sort of straining to say things as politely as she could despite
how dumb people who needed them explained must be. “So, you can’t get into a
foreign country without a VISA”—things like that.<br />
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And we knew all that, now that we thought of VISAs, but
somehow amid our school years and planning the trip and finding cheap flights,
somehow we’d both clean spaced getting VISA’s—it might’ve had something to do
with being American too, how most countries are happy to trust and welcome you
anyway, bless them.</div>
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At any rate, thanks to Qantas’s system and Brenda, we got
our VISAs to Australia, and soon got on our way. </div>
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Qantas’s slogan is the Spirit of Australia, by the way, and
if that’s the spirit of Australia, letting absent-minded but well-meaning
people in, then it’s the place for me.</div>
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I smiled, and zonked out on Sominex.</div>
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Bentley Snowhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12276828854041057296noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-243203723024167546.post-43762267356248272862017-07-11T00:33:00.000-07:002017-07-11T00:36:10.856-07:00DOW’ NUNDAH! - Introduction<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi62zkFDJFC2_oKqSWs51cRxhK28xXpy26DaxxFkK00EsrUHf53a4UA25TUegwKnTKF8a1u1lvttBPqvz6zO6Z_B1XkmvVfx0gp_FM2S9giG54n7hfazUf2l4GeS8QnkhuSntReFLWdn1g/s1600/australia-world-trade.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="210" data-original-width="623" height="209" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi62zkFDJFC2_oKqSWs51cRxhK28xXpy26DaxxFkK00EsrUHf53a4UA25TUegwKnTKF8a1u1lvttBPqvz6zO6Z_B1XkmvVfx0gp_FM2S9giG54n7hfazUf2l4GeS8QnkhuSntReFLWdn1g/s640/australia-world-trade.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-size: 24px; text-align: center;"> “Dow’ Nundah!” </span></div>
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<b>-- Introduction -- </b></div>
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<b>I Come from
the Land Dow’ Nundah!</b></div>
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Like most Americans, journeying to Australia— “Down
Under”—has always sounded adventurous to me. Like most, I never thought I’d go.
Unlike most, I had a sister, <a href="https://www.blogger.com/null">Malissa Snow</a><span class="MsoCommentReference"><span style="font-size: 8.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><!--[if !supportAnnotations]--><a class="msocomanchor" href="file:///C:/Users/bdsno/Desktop/Snowsbury%20Dow'%20Nundah!.docx#_msocom_1" id="_anchor_1" language="JavaScript" name="_msoanchor_1">[BaDS1]</a><!--[endif]--> </span></span>, who volunteered to preach Jesus Christ
and him crucified for 18-months of her life. </div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi76iZdYu16EiGn8GN9EIjnUh6-_0quoWn90xEALMRAqG9F2Lek9rkW_IRjqkiWlugVXVS7C68zUXUOc_Al4TUuROmgolrrzQH3yCWXtBarzDo_PXpqm227OXLnO-z3KClg3Hj1FRsdbGw/s1600/P1020199.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1200" data-original-width="1600" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi76iZdYu16EiGn8GN9EIjnUh6-_0quoWn90xEALMRAqG9F2Lek9rkW_IRjqkiWlugVXVS7C68zUXUOc_Al4TUuROmgolrrzQH3yCWXtBarzDo_PXpqm227OXLnO-z3KClg3Hj1FRsdbGw/s320/P1020199.JPG" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">"Sistah" - Darth Vader, <i>Return of the Jedi</i></td></tr>
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She didn’t know when she
volunteered to go that she would be assigned to Australia, but she was thrilled
when she got that assignment. LDS missionaries can be called anywhere, and that
was exactly where she wanted to go—there or New Zealand, anyways, that neck of
the woods. She is the youngest of five, naturally sweet and content to live her
life without getting much attention. Part of that may be because her older
siblings, of whom I am the eldest, have quirky personalities that occasionally
call for any attention at hand. Whether she gracefully adapted to this or came
gracefully prepared for it, I don’t know; I do know it’s easy to be happy for
her. Thus, I laughed at loud with my own happiness at her reaction, which was as follows.<br />
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What I remember best is sitting on the couch watching a
movie as a family, maybe fifteen minutes after she’d opened her mission call
and assignment. She was sitting on the couch to the side of mine. As I watched,
I suddenly heard a high-pitched sound to my left. It startled me, sounding a
bit like a kettle boiling. I turned to see the sound was from Malissa. There
was the faintest trace of sheepishness in her face when we turned to see “What
was that?” but that was overshadowed—or overlit—by her radiant delight. “I’m
going to Australia!” she explained. She was the kettle that had boiled over
with happiness—unwatched, since that’s the way <a href="https://www.blogger.com/null">kettles </a>boil best. </div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgeAlkcjHA2-qPLNJHIlCXXe2IvYJKK7DcB86mSEJHwXOMMAYONQvDKcIwdyCdqebFXBRy4j2PHtGDQFxnoULXBppNEG7iRUUruXqqtX6oTqE-KMM2YrAfvcHBTXUbh8QU7mqw9o0kG1Gw/s1600/kettle.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1200" data-original-width="1600" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgeAlkcjHA2-qPLNJHIlCXXe2IvYJKK7DcB86mSEJHwXOMMAYONQvDKcIwdyCdqebFXBRy4j2PHtGDQFxnoULXBppNEG7iRUUruXqqtX6oTqE-KMM2YrAfvcHBTXUbh8QU7mqw9o0kG1Gw/s320/kettle.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Like a pot, this isn't boiling because someone is looking at it.</td></tr>
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It was an emblematic moment of
her, since, like I say, she’s never asked for too much attention. She’s rarely
been watched as much as she ought to have been—maybe that connects to all the
joy that is bubbling up within her<br />
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*<br />
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A year into her mission, she had learned to love
serving—learned to lose her life a little more and to begin living the life of
Christ—and Mom was planning a trip to visit her. Mom was excited to go meet the
people that mattered so much to Malissa, and to explore Australia a bit to
boot, so she’d set aside some funds for the two of them to travel together after
Malissa’s mission ended. She had to fly from our home in Utah to Brisbane, then
up to Cairns (an area Malissa was in and was loving—right by the Great Barrier
Reef), then over to New Zealand before returning home. “If it’s not too
expensive, could we go to Hobbiton too while we’re down here?” Malissa had
asked Mom. The flight total for Mom was going to be about $1750. I heard that
and was certain we could do better, so, that Saturday I spent 4-5 hours
scouring every option online, and ended up finding all the flights she needed
for around $1300. (4-5 hours to save 400 is about $100 an hour savings—per
person. Not bad.) The main breakthrough, in case you’re interested in flying on
the cheap, was realizing that flying one way from LA to Brisbane to Cairns to
Auckland to LA was actually more expensive than flying round trip every time—as
in, round trip from LA to Brisbane on both ends of the trip, from Brisbane to
Cairns and back first, then Brisbane to Auckland and back last, then, as I
mentioned, the flight back from Brisbane to LA.</div>
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Anyway, then we called a travel agency who had special
discounts available and they said they could get the same tickets for $950.
NINE FIFTY. </div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjzgvCmgmELkUwASfqR60A0Szq0sA-ChkLfz6n5PlbYt_GX4kE4XcpStJ7xQ6NAiuvSgJxHnZBgrZGhjnu8IiFEpxYkwc9wsZYbp8JIcvLauIR-DqlZ-sBE7kZbhzKdLD2bsm_XiBgpOCE/s1600/e3cd4d47bd740bfa314730ecdcf4b39f.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="723" data-original-width="500" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjzgvCmgmELkUwASfqR60A0Szq0sA-ChkLfz6n5PlbYt_GX4kE4XcpStJ7xQ6NAiuvSgJxHnZBgrZGhjnu8IiFEpxYkwc9wsZYbp8JIcvLauIR-DqlZ-sBE7kZbhzKdLD2bsm_XiBgpOCE/s320/e3cd4d47bd740bfa314730ecdcf4b39f.jpg" width="221" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">"Fiftay! If it wus whon!" - someone in <i>Braveheart </i>that I couldn't find a pic of online</td></tr>
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Suddenly I realized, freshman adjunct instructor that I am,
even I might buy a ticket at that price.</div>
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So I did. (Sadly, the rest of our family couldn’t come due
to various responsibilities. Malissa graciously allowed me to join in though.)</div>
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<br /></div>
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This next section of my blog (which has basically been
brought out of retirement from several years ago), is dedicated to the
meaningful moments of that trip. Early on in Brisbane we passed a freeway sign
for a place called “Nundah,” which sounded like the second half of “Down Under”
pronounced with an Aussie’s accent, and thus I introduce the title of these
tales of travel: </div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-size: 18.0pt; line-height: 115%;">“Dow’ Nundah!”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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Oh, and I almost forgot. Just in case you haven’t ever
caught a glimpse of Australia and thus don’t know how cool it promises to be, I
recommend watching this video, which was officially designated by the
Australian government to represent their most chill and friendly nation:</div>
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<iframe allowfullscreen="" class="YOUTUBE-iframe-video" data-thumbnail-src="https://i.ytimg.com/vi/XfR9iY5y94s/0.jpg" frameborder="0" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/XfR9iY5y94s?feature=player_embedded" width="320"></iframe></div>
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(Alternatively, you might watch <i>Finding Nemo</i> or<i> The Man from
Snowy River</i> – both great flicks, just not as culturally representative as
the aforementioned music video.)</div>
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<br /></div>
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Cheers for tuning in, chums,</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Bentley</div>
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<br /></div>
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PS - Just got back from the trip, actually, which went from June 11, 2017 - July 6, 2017 (two July 6's, actually--stay tuned for more). Amid my other writing projects--most notably the trucking memoir, <i>6 Fingers Left to Lose--</i>I'll be uploading my stories retroactively as I write things up from journal entries. I hope to get this done quickly before memories fade too much.</div>
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Bentley Snowhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12276828854041057296noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-243203723024167546.post-6839110446773758872017-06-28T04:42:00.001-07:002017-09-06T14:16:12.150-07:00“A Brilliant Music Stilled” (In Memory of Brian Doyle)<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh5kV8F0hurDymJ24hPFauFwCACONYYw-u4iVK7sBNx_m-jH0SxFvVyB7o8w2KriHfdkDMGZTwoCed7TduF5oehbhtnOq556gSgJzstp7Ki6EZP6dMv5He2AT6J8ooDKQWn2m-OHDOmM_E/s1600/brian_doyle.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="262" data-original-width="175" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh5kV8F0hurDymJ24hPFauFwCACONYYw-u4iVK7sBNx_m-jH0SxFvVyB7o8w2KriHfdkDMGZTwoCed7TduF5oehbhtnOq556gSgJzstp7Ki6EZP6dMv5He2AT6J8ooDKQWn2m-OHDOmM_E/s1600/brian_doyle.jpg" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">“…And
please give Teacher the grace to be alert to the real questions being asked
here, which are usually silent and in the eyes...</i>”<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 6;"> </span>—Brian
Doyle, “Room Eight”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
One month ago, Brian Doyle, whom I consider the
greatest personal essayist ever, living or dead, ceased to be among the living.
I preached his stuff to friends, told them that he had the unique gift of not
only changing you with his writing, but often doing so within a single page or
so. How many writers were both that striking and succinct? Few but the greatest
personal essayist ever, living or dead. I was thinking of essays like “How We
Wrestle Is Who We Are,” “Leap,” “Pea by Pea,” and “Original Skin” as I preached
the wisdom of reading his stuff, though I also believed the slightly longer
ones (in the whopping 2-3 page range) are equally worthwhile, stories like “Joyas
Voladores” and “Rec League.” Not all of those essays were created equal, but
all in at least one moment struck me in a way that made the day I read it a day
worth having lived. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
One time, as a creative writing MFA
student at BYU, I got the chance to introduce Brian at the school’s English
Reading Series, and I took the opportunity to preach to people there too.
Generally, authors were introduced with a list of accolades, but as I thought
of Brian’s work I felt like the implications of accolades fell far short of his
real value. Accolades weren’t why I planned to give him my full attention. The
spirit I felt in his stuff was, the life. So I wanted to give the audience
that, the real reason I thought they ought to listen to him. Despite believing
this was the best way to actually introduce him, I still might not have had the
guts to do it though—after all, I’d never heard of simply skipping the
accolades in an author’s introduction—but as I reflected on the idea, I
remembered a tip he’d given writers: “Follow the energy.” I didn’t think he’d
mind me taking his words seriously. I explained some of that to the audience as
I introduced Brian, setting them up for a sample of what they had coming:<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
“Great writing is an arrow,” I
quoted Brian, “shot into the hearts of others.” And then I riffed, following
the energy. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
“Brian’s metaphor makes writing
sound dangerous, even fatal,” I said, “which I like, because there are parts of
me I want to die—a whole version of me in fact. His phrase gives me hope that
the right story could kill my inner demons and make me a new man.” I claimed
then and claim still that Doyle has a bevy of such arrows in his quiver, and
that thus we ought to listen to him, because one of those stories might be that
arrow with our name on it, might be the thing that hits us dead on and kills
off our darkness for good.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
In other words, I agreed with another
of Brian’s great lines: “If we told the right story, we could change the
world.”<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
Because I was already introducing
him for the English Reading Series, I was also given the chance to drive Brian
from Provo to Salt Lake City where he’d do another reading. That might sound a
bit like the school pulled a Tom Sawyer on a gullible grad student, convincing
me I was lucky to handle the logistics of their Reading Series (“Does a boy get
a chance to whitewash a fence every day?” asks Tom), and maybe sometimes
schools do that, but in my case I was more than lucky. This was the greatest
essayist ever, living or dead, and I had an hour alone with him for a handful
of dollars in gas.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
I picked him up at his hotel in
Provo and we went north to SLC, talking more about life than writing. I was
happy we did that at the time, but I feel especially glad we did now. It was right,
considering we were on “the brief sunlit road between great dark wildernesses,”
that we talk about what mattered most. Brian didn’t just write words. He
offered companionship to others on the road.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
I saw Brian for the last time in
2015 in Flagstaff, AZ. He was keynote speaking at NonfictioNOW, a writing
conference, which was taking place in one wing of a fancy hotel. A long
corridor served as the heart of the conference, pulsing with people. Booths
advertising books and MFA programs lined it on one side, backlit by tall
pleasant windows, while doors to capacious conference rooms stood on the other.
Brian wasn’t always around, but when he popped in, he’d trigger mild heart
attacks, cause people to clot around him listening to whatever he was saying, even
answers he gave to other people’s questions. I was always part of the clot. Despite
feeling like a fan boy, I wasn’t willing to miss out on what Brian might say. I
suspect others felt the same.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
As people fighting to pass by
compressed the circle around him more tightly, at one point, he glanced up and
noticed me. We hadn’t talked in five years. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
“Bentley! It’s great to see you
here! Do you wanna catch up in a bit?”<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
“Definitely!” I responded,
obviously.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
A little while later, he told the
people around him “I need to talk to Bentley for a minute” (as if anyone had a
clue who I was), nodded kindly to me and gestured towards a conference room. A
conference organizer approached him with some keynote speaker stuff on our way
to go talk. I didn’t hear what he said, but apparently he took a rain check. Soon,
I found myself alone with him in a conference room meant for 300. We might has
well have been in that car headed to Salt Lake when we began to talk. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
In the conference room of
NonfictioNOW’s hotel, Brian asked me about life and I expressed some angst
typical of MFA grads—“I don’t really know what I’m doing. I thought about going
on for a PhD, or maybe teaching high school. (Frankly, I wish I could go back
to my MFA and keep whitewashing fences.)” <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
My typical answers had a twist
though, although it didn’t come out in my words—I didn’t know how to put it
into them. It wasn’t just a crossroads that concerned me. It was a deeper
struggle which had left me revolving head over heels in the several years since
I’d graduated. I didn’t know how to explain it, and certainly knew that even if
he wanted to, he didn’t have time for it, so I simply tried to ask about its
application—where I might ought to go with my life to enjoy what really
mattered. He gave me some predictably Romantic answers—principled, “follow the
energy” type stuff, “consequences be hanged.”<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
For me, such Romantic answers were
predictable, since I know Brian and am something of a Romantic myself—at least
in how I think. I think I was on my way to living like a real one too, back
when I met Brian in grad school. I had lost my way though, and lost it badly,
and I still can’t explain how on the page any better than I could tell Brian in
person.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
The terrible irony of it all was
that as Brian gave me his lofty, moving thoughts they led me to despair. This
was the right path, I believed, but I didn’t know where I was. It was like
having someone hand you a map to heaven when you can’t see where you are on it.
I wasn’t even sure if where I was was <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">on </i>the
map. It wasn’t that I doubted the destination was breathtaking. So as he
continued giving me Romantic advice for the journey, I brokenly concluded that
not even he knew how to find me. Not even he, an unusual soul
who’d specifically sought me out, could help. There was nothing left to do
but stop troubling him, to let him go back to whoever was waiting in the hall,
to hear him out while I hid my misery at his words, which, though they were
very wise, all told me, “I don’t actually get you.” In “Joyas Voladores,” Brian
himself once said, “We are utterly open with no one in the end”—essentially, we
eventually wind up alone. As he talked, I felt alone already. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
Unexpectedly, Brian stopped
talking. He looked at me.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
“Something’s wrong,” he said.
“Isn’t it?”<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
I pursed my lips, unsure of what to
say: “Yes, but you tried hard, and it didn’t work, and you’ve got to go anyway,
so why try”; “Yes, but really I don’t know if anyone can help me, so really,
don’t worry about it”; “Yes, but I can’t even tell you where I am—I don’t
know”?<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
He leaned forward intently. His
whole aspect, so prone to being merry, was now serious and responsive. His
eyebrows furrowed, his blue eyes focused through the small lenses of his
glasses. His skin like leather that had just begun to show age, his dark hair
(plus some gray) more desiccated and subdued than it used to be. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
“Tell me. What’s wrong?”<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
I didn’t know what to say. I really
didn’t know what was wrong, although he was right—something was. I tried to
explain though and he listened and gave me some advice that amounted to just
figure things out for yourself. Don’t take anyone else’s word for it. Find out
the truth for yourself.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
What lingers with me though was
that moment, right after Brian leaned in, when he chose to listen, to pry into
the silence. That choice felt substantial to me—literally, like, it was
substance, it had a shape: an orb that stirred somewhere between or throughout
him and me. I’m still chewing on it, on that raw recognition, that genuine
acknowledgement. That moment hits me in the heart as I think about it. And so I
think about it, and maybe I bleed as I do. Maybe the wound is fatal, the way to
find who I want to be. Maybe Brian knew the answer after all. It had something
to do with his priorities, how when everyone wanted to listen to him, he said,
“Nah. I want to listen to this kid.”<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
A few days after Brian’s passing, I went to the Provo
Temple, a holy place to Mormons. With some trees giving shade, I sat in the
grass to read. I had planned to resume my reading of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Anna Karenina</i>, but felt a sort of nudge to read <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Leaping</i>, by Brian Doyle. I’d brought
that book of his along just because.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
I’d read it once before, but had
picked it up a few weeks before to reread it—my favorite of his books—but I’d
only read the intro so far, so when I picked it up, I found my bookmark was at
the book’s first essay, “Room Eight.”<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
The story relates various
experiences Brian had while teaching Catholic Sunday School to fourteen
seven-year-olds. He ditches the textbook, makes the class Q&A, and tries to
be real with the kids. At one point, he shares a pretty amusing prayer that
shows what I mean by “real”:<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
“Dear God, please help us not be
mudheads for at least ten minutes, and please let Teacher remember that he said
he would give us a five-minute break in the playground, and please let us not
shout and interrupt and belch loudly so as to make the whole table dissolve
into fits of giggles, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">and please give
Teacher the grace to be alert to the real questions being asked here, which are
usually silent and in the eyes...</i>”<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
And suddenly I was tearing up without understanding exactly
why. I was remembering that chat with Brian at NonfictioNOW and realizing, I
think, that he had had other such chats with people, people like these
seven-year-olds (who might actually be older than me by now), that he had long
known that people ask the most important questions without words, and that
answering those questions matters. I was realizing all the more that Brian
really believed this, that this was really who Brian was, and I was glad to
have known him and sad he was gone. He always told writers that the key to
great writing was listening, and I think that he spoke from experience. His
writing hits me in the heart anyway, exactly like his listening. (Maybe somehow,
mystically, they are the same thing.)<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>So now I’m
going to turn this into a final introduction for Brian, and tell you all,
whoever you are, that if you’d like to be hit in the heart with an arrow (who
doesn’t?), or at least if there are parts of yourself you wish would die—or a
whole version of you even—well, then I know of some writing that’s dangerous,
some stories that might even be fatal. There are a bevy of them quivered in the
works of Brian Doyle. I recommend you read them. I recommend you listen. They
are shot by one who listened first then carefully took aim, so there’s a
sporting chance that they’ll hit you right where you live. They might just take
your life. They might give you something better.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>They have
changed my world.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Please
welcome, and give your full attention, to Brian Doyle…<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
(Here are some links to some of my favorite stories he wrote:)<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 9.5pt;">“Leap”
– about 9/11 – <span style="mso-field-code: " HYPERLINK \0022http\:\/\/www\.pbs\.org\/wgbh\/pages\/frontline\/shows\/faith\/questions\/leap\.html\0022 \\t \0022_blank\0022 ";"><u><span style="color: #1155cc;">http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/faith/questions/leap.html</span></u></span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 9.5pt;">“Joyas
Voladores” – about hearts and hummingbirds – <span style="mso-field-code: " HYPERLINK \0022https\:\/\/theamericanscholar\.org\/joyas-volardores\/\0022 \\t \0022_blank\0022 ";"><u><span style="color: #1155cc;">https://theamericanscholar.org/joyas-volardores/</span></u></span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 9.5pt;">“How We
Wrestle Is Who We Are” – <span style="mso-field-code: " HYPERLINK \0022https\:\/\/orionmagazine\.org\/article\/how-we-wrestle-is-who-we-are\/\0022 \\t \0022_blank\0022 ";"><u><span style="color: #1155cc;">https://orionmagazine.org/article/how-we-wrestle-is-who-we-are/</span></u></span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Leap: Revelations and
Epiphanies</i>, as I wrote, is my favorite book of his, followed by <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Wet Engine: Exploring The Mad Wild
Miracle of the Human Heart<o:p></o:p></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
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Bentley Snowhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12276828854041057296noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-243203723024167546.post-40450852398656611212012-12-05T14:34:00.002-08:002012-12-05T16:20:57.729-08:00TRIPTYCH<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">“Holy, holy, holy, is the LORD of hosts: the whole earth is
full of his glory.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">—Isaiah 6.3</span></i></div>
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<br /></div>
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<br /></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 24pt;">Kadosh</span></i><br />
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<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 13.5pt;">
<!--[endif]--><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: Garamond;">I traced the ancient fingerprints in
the slickness of the massive stones. Here a man had borne longing.
Here a son had borne the same. Here a son’s son also. I bowed
my head against the stones, adding a miniscule amount of yearning’s tangible
trace to the stones long slick with prayer. There was something poignant
about praying into a wall, about acting on hope while facing futility,
especially considering that this was where a peculiar people had literally done
so for almost two thousands of years—it was here that they had come to pulse
prayers through their fingertips, and here to store their wails and why within
the stone; and here that they had told a history of exile in the silent glaze
of once rough lime, the color of old Torah scrolls; it was here to this very
spot that they had come, because there was no closer place to holy nor a closer
thing than holiness to Home. Ache entered
through my fingers. I wished that I
could wholly grasp that slickness, but I knew I couldn’t, so with fingertips
and forehead, I pressed into the Western Wall again. </span><span style="font-size: 13.5pt; line-height: 200%;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">* * *</span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 13.5pt; line-height: 200%;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">The
Western Wall, or Wailing Wall, is the closest thing to where the Temple was,
which is why nothing is more holy, more <i>kadosh</i>, to the Jews who worship
there. That house of the Most High stood until 70 CE, when Rome realized
the Jews would never accept their rule, especially not here in their homeland
and absolutely not here near their temple, which charged them with a crackling
zeal, a zeal which lashed in blinding arcs from revolt to revolt against
Rome. One of these revolts finally
provoked Rome to storm the Holy City with so many legionnaires that though they
could be defied and were they could not be deterred and weren’t. The
Jewish resistance was decimated and the Temple demolished and the first of half
a hundred generations sent off to their wanderings, which began in Yavneh, a
place, as Rome would learn, still too close to Jerusalem and its humming wreck
of sacred stones. After the Bar-Kokhba
Revolt, which ended in 135 CE, Rome had learned, and so the Jews were
scattered, not merely from Jerusalem but from Israel altogether. Scattered, the last of Israel’s tribes.
For the next two millennia the people of Judah were persecuted for coming
to places they weren’t welcome, which they could not help but do because they
were not welcome anywhere.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">Until
Spain: there they found a refuge and perhaps, they thought, a home, until
Columbus sailed the ocean blue. That
year the climate of the court changed too, such that after centuries of safety,
the Jews found themselves adrift again, and aimless—there were no other harbors
in existence. Our professor of Judaism in
the Jerusalem Center tried to convey the effect of the expulsion from Spain: “It
is considered one of the three great calamities of our people,” he said—the
second, actually. The first was the destruction of the Temple. The Shoah
was the third.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">* * *</span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 13.5pt; line-height: 200%;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"> After I had prayed, I crossed the broad clearing before
the Wall and joined some friends. A somber haze hung in the evening air:
I recognized it from a week ago: I’d woke up to the oriental, exotic Call to
Prayer, ventured groggily onto a balcony, and seen the Holy City, all dust-blown
and amber and shrouded with sunrise. O for more sober stirring
amber. My friends had been writing
prayers to put between the seams of the Wall and asked if I had written mine
already. <i>My </i>prayer—no, I hadn’t written it. I wasn’t sure
what it was. I had to figure out what it
meant to write it too. When they asked me about it I remembered hearing,
as a kid, of a place where people scrolled up their holiest hopes and placed
them in a wall, though I’d had no idea why they would put them there, which is
probably why it stuck with me. Having felt the Wall though, I felt I knew
something of why.</span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 13.5pt; line-height: 200%;"><br />
</span><span style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"> I looked up, prompted by an elbow in my side, to see my
friend looking pointedly towards an austere looking man. Apparently he
was policing the promenade, which overlooked the clearing before the Wall, to
ensure no one violated the Sabbath, by writing, say, which was a form of work.
I looked around at the sky, which was still that stirring amber.
True, a maze of beige buildings hid the sun in the west, but that didn’t
mean that it had set. A different Jewish man apparently shared my
opinion—he was writing nearby—so once the stern man passed I also wrote my
prayer.</span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 13.5pt; line-height: 200%;"><br />
</span><span style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"> Returning to the Wall was more difficult, now that the
sun had almost set, which is when <i>Shabbat </i>begins. A throng was
slowly forming in the clearing. As I worked my way east, I was
temporarily stunned by a passerby’s cylindrical hat, which was as broad as his
shoulders, upright, and spooled with something like fur. His forelocks
dangled like coiling springs beside his ears: <i>Haredi</i>—ultra-orthodox—the
most inflexibly obedient of the Jews. Everyone at the Wall covered their
heads out of respect, but most Jews, as well as visitors like my friends and I,
wore the much less conspicuous <i>kipas</i>—small, circular caps. Perhaps
the man wanted to do more than the minimum for God.</span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 13.5pt; line-height: 200%;"><br />
</span><span style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"> By the time I got to the Wall, black-robed figures had
formed dozens of lines before it, each five or six deep. I only wanted to
place my tiny, crinkled prayer in the Wall, so I quickly slipped between two
lines to do so, then stopped, abruptly, stunned: the Wall was full. I
looked up and down a four-foot vertical seam, hoping for the space to wedge a
single, sacred spitwad. Not a prayer. I don’t know how I hadn’t
noticed the paper prayers earlier, while I had read in Braille of all those times
the words had failed. They were everywhere, tats of white and pink and
yellow pleas compressed as much as possible. I walked twenty feet in both
directions, weaving in and out of worshippers—some muttering scripture in
haunting, Hebraic tones—ran my eyes along the only horizontal crease in reach.
Prayers burst the entire way like popcorn, littering the ground like the
floor of an emptied theater. No space, no hope.</span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 13.5pt; line-height: 200%;"><br />
</span><span style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"> The Wall had stirred me like an ocean floor; as sediment
swirled, I glimpsed beneath. I had tried to pray for the peace of
Jerusalem, spent some ink and space for her sake, but a deeper void or prayer
had poured out through my pen. I wrote what I wanted more than anything
on that paper, and now my hopes felt threatened by the way the Wall was full.
I read through my prayer, needing to sacrifice everything that I possibly
could. Then I tore it down to the two
words that I couldn’t: “Reach me.”</span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 13.5pt; line-height: 200%;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">C.
S. Lewis once said that God, who dwells outside of time, answers every prayer
as if it were the only one in existence.
He is like an author who can stop writing, to consider a prayer and a
pray-er for an eternity, before answering the moment He is asked. I
wonder about those other prayers, those other words they hold: like the sands of
the sea or clouds of desert stars, they are not known nor numbered, nor could
they be by me. I wonder at the One who reads
them all, who is therefore worth worshipping, as the Mezuzah says, with all thy
heart and soul and might—which explains why frizzy-bearded elders bob so oddly
before the Wall, whipping from their knees, to their waist, to their neck, then
head, towards what they hold most holy. They repeat and repeat and repeat
it, with heart and soul and might, with all, because that is how you love the
one whose name is Endless; the One whose love was like that first—that’s why he
is to whom you pray, even if his inbox looks full.</span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 13.5pt; line-height: 200%;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">* * *</span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 13.5pt; line-height: 200%;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">Jerusalem
was ruled by Rome until the 7</span><sup><span style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 7.5pt; line-height: 200%;">th</span></sup><span style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">
century CE, when Islam swept west from Arabia across northern Africa.
Muslims venerate Jerusalem as the place where Abraham offered Ishmael,
his oldest son, and where Muhammad ascended to the Seven Heavens, spoke to God,
and returned with instructions for the faithful. The Dome of the Rock now
enshrines the stone where his feet left the earth. The Jews believe that
same stone to be where the heart of their temple, the Holy of Holies, had
stood. Some Christians believe Abraham offered Isaac in the same spot.
The only thing anyone seems to agree on is that this place is holy.</span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 13.5pt; line-height: 200%;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">And
alas for the fertility of holy ground, for mingled seeds of strife and
sacredness: how can it be that here of all places such conflicts have come to
fruition? The crusaders took Jerusalem around 1100 CE, then mercilessly
slaughtered the Holy City’s civilians, even the Arabs who were Christian.
For some reason they spared the Dome of the Rock, topping its great,
golden semi-sphere with a cross rather than eradicating it, two hundred years
before Muslim forces would return to reclaim Jerusalem. Suleiyman the Magnificent, builder of the
mighty crenellations and walls and gates about Jerusalem, also allowed free
worship, such that one might find a mosque and cathedral and synagogue all on
the same street. Eight centuries of Muslim rule ended with World
War I, when the Ottoman Empire, which had coerced the Palestinians to fight for
them, fell beside Germany and the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Britain took
Palestine, the Holy Land, from the Ottomans, and governed it as a protectorate.
So the unfortunate Palestinians lost a war that wasn’t theirs, and thus
lost a land that was.</span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 13.5pt; line-height: 200%;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">Not
long after all civilized peoples had been staggered into silence, as the world
learned of the Shoah, Britain pulled out of Palestine to let the Jews who had
taken refuge there fight with the Palestinians for their homeland. Yes,
“their” homeland. Both sides fought for their homeland, both watered holy
ground with blood, but only the Jews won.</span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 13.5pt; line-height: 200%;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">* * *</span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 13.5pt; line-height: 200%;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">In
a crack within a seam, I wedged my prayer, then sidled through the crowd back
toward my friends. Things were beginning to feel chaotic. Groups of
black-clad worshippers clumped around rabbis who read from Torah scrolls while
a variety of hymns from different groups collided in the air, mixed further
with loud calls in Hebrew between friends and even the mirthful shouts of
dancers. Everyone seemed to be saying “Shabbat Shalom!” “Peace upon
the Sabbath,” literally, and “Welcome,” commonly. Several times it was
meant for me: I heard it first from a guy that I’d bumped into, who said it
merrily while he waved away my apology; second, from a man with a long, grey
beard and kindly crinkles near his eyes—I’d stepped aside to let him and his
grandson (I’m guessing) go by. The four- or five-year-old surveyed the
atmosphere around him with brown, orblike eyes, tentatively clapping his free
hand to the one his grandfather held in imitation of the crowd, now enjoying an
energetic tune. And I received a few
“Shabbat Shaloms” after I tried greeting people in Hebrew too, which often
uncorked too much for me to handle. “No! I don’t speak Hebrew,” I’d have
to laugh as I explained myself, “I’m just visiting,” which, I noted, never
changed the tone of welcome. One of my friends must have looked
particularly Jewish. Once, after greeting an old man, the man deeply said,
“Welcome home.” <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">Eventually,
I ended up in one of the circles of dancing Jews. It was a lot like
playing ring-around-the-rosies in elementary school, except here we played in
Hebrew. Also, some people had assault rifles. The military guys
unnerved me a little, until one guy, who didn’t have green fatigues and black
boots and a rifle on his back, was so friendly and enthusiastic as he
encouraged me to join, that I did. I noticed my friend Dan Jones jumping
around, arm in arm with them already and hollering his best imitation of
Hebrew—which was passable, or at least inaudible—to tunes he didn’t know, and
remembered, “I know some Hebrew too...” </span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 13.5pt; line-height: 200%;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">Besides
the assault rifle issue, I had been worried about respecting this place.
We were probably fifty feet away from the Wailing Wall now—I could still
see people illuminated in yellow cones of light, bobbing with their hearts and
minds and strengths. Clearly, this clearing was for worship, though what
that meant was not so clear. I thought I
could understand all these groups, to some degree. I had sought salvation in obedience with
exactness, in the letter of the law; and I had failed and felt forlorn; then I
had tried forgetting the law, the impossible burden, and just do the feeble
good that I could manage. Lately I had immersed
myself in scripture, hoping its spirit would change me. I wasn’t sure what really worked though—though
how I looked and labored, heavy laden—so I wasn’t sure what to do with
conflicts between modes of worship. It
was then, while I stood wondering whether dancing were appropriate, that the
grandfather and grandson, clapping, had stepped by. After greeting me, the
elder looked to the circle of bounding and laughing Jews, who were about my
age. I watched him carefully. Light buoyed within his eyes. That was good enough for me.</span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 13.5pt; line-height: 200%;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">And
I am grateful that it was, because I can still remember one of the tunes, I
hear it as I write this, a year and a half later; I can still remember circulating
arm-in-arm, laughing and singing and dancing to the point of exhaustion, shouting
as we’d suddenly reverse our direction, or strike up a new tune. I remember the clap on my back as I was
brought into the circle—a holy clap, to me—and wondering if my idea of worship
was not a bit too somber. I remember
many things, but mostly, the face of a boy.</span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 13.5pt; line-height: 200%;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">I
saw him before the bobbing began in earnest, or the grandfather passed with his
grandson, or the dancing swept me up. I had just stepped back from the
Wall with ache still in me from my fingertips.
I wondered at the slickness. How long they had hoped for Home? How much hope was there for it? Can we hope without hope? I was so absorbed
that for a while I couldn’t even see the Wall, or the crowd, which milled and
murmured about me, as it was beginning to be.
Then I returned to my sight, and part of the blur before my eyes became
a boy. About sixteen and just barely
unhandsome—his nose just too upturned, his cheeks just over-round. I’m not sure that he saw the crowd, nor do I
think that they saw him. They bustled
and surged—rushing off to hear their rabbi, or write their prayers, or sing
their scriptures, or bob before the Wall, worship in whatever way that they
thought best—but he just stood and faced the stones. He looked so unremarkable that at first I
looked right past him. Then something
tugged my gaze back to his face, where I found the whole history of his people
and a feeling beyond words. He was
crying.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
<i style="line-height: normal; text-indent: 0px;"><span style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 24pt;"><br /></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
<i style="line-height: normal; text-indent: 0px;"><span style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 24pt;">Holy</span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
<i style="line-height: normal; text-indent: 0px;"><span style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 24pt;">Quds</span></i></div>
<!--EndFragment--></div>
</div>
Bentley Snowhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12276828854041057296noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-243203723024167546.post-16801389365716207512012-12-05T13:45:00.001-08:002012-12-05T14:28:27.248-08:00Lion Heart (Of the Great and Good in Story, and the Valour of Olde England)<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-family: Garamond;"> “What, Wamba, art thou there?” said Richard; “I have been so long of
hearing thy voice </span><span style="font-family: Garamond;">I </span><span style="font-family: Garamond;">thought </span><span style="font-family: Garamond;">thou hadst taken flight.”</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Garamond;"> “I take flight!” said Wamba. “When do you ever find Folly
separated from Valour?”</span></div>
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<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 1.5in; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: Garamond; mso-bidi-font-family: Garamond;">—Sir Walter Scott, <i>Ivanhoe</i></span><span style="font-family: Garamond;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Garamond;">When
I hear the word “plume,” which I don’t very often, I think of gallant knights
and/or Millie, and I suppose Millie has that attitude that we call chivalry:
the first to charge, the last to leave the battle. She protects the weak—such as myself—from invaders
like the mailman, and the merry voices of the Green kids next door, when their
giggles menace us through the fence (ages 4, 2, and .5). 14 pounds of oreo-furred ferocity, a panda
face of black eyes and that white plume sprouting up from between them (plus
that lopsided underbite) amply account for the perfect unconquered record our
home and castle has hitherto enjoyed.
Once a mailman knocked on the door then left, just wanting to let us
know a package was on our doorstep.
Millie howled like we were being assailed by Hitler himself, and when I
opened the door to pick up the package, she shot past me to tear the deuce a
new one. I had to run a good forty feet
down our long sloping driveway to catch her in the process of throwing out her
chest to get that devil off our property.
He laughed and heiled it off as he hopped into his truck. As Millie trotted back up the driveway, she
looked at me still full of wrath at the evil of we’d just seen. Nevermind she was a Shih-Tzu, the set of her
jaw was downright pugnacious, I could almost see “the challenging tilt of a
cigar”…and suddenly I realized I’d never seen such a striking resemblance to
Winston Churchill: the “never give in” ideal personified. It made me a little jealous to realize that Hitler
himself could not have bombed our dog into submission, to think she would have faced
the whole Nazi Luftwaffe. She would have
led the charge, like The Last Lion (the Churchill biography I’ve been reading,
two years after that mailman moment), and in her howls we might have heard, “Let
us therefore brace ourselves to our duties, and so bear ourselves that, if the
British Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will still
say, ‘This was their finest hour.’”
Shih-Tzu means “lion” in Chinese.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Garamond;">There’s a moment in <i>Braveheart</i> where Robert the Bruce’s
father dismisses William Wallace’s fearlessness by saying, “He has courage—so
does a dog—but it’s precisely the ability to compromise that makes men
noble.” I’m afraid I fit far too well under
his definition of “noble.” Isn’t faith,
the soul of heroism, as Talmage said, more like the soul of Reepicheep, the
mouse-knight of Narnia who only wanted worse odds, that he might have greater
glory, or perhaps that he might better glorify?
Do I have to write the whole St. Crispin’s Day speech right here, to
show what heroes think of impossible odds?
Why yes—I do:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: Garamond;">WESTMORELAND: O that we
now had here<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Garamond;">But one ten thousand of
those men in England<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Garamond;">That do no work to-day!<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Garamond;">KING: What’s he that
wishes so?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Garamond;">My cousin Westmoreland?
No, my fair cousin;<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Garamond;">If we are marked to die,
we are enough<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Garamond;">To do our country loss;
and if to live,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Garamond;">The fewer men, the
greater share of honour.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Garamond;">God’s will! I pray thee,
wish not one man more.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Garamond;">By Jove, I am not
covetous for gold,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Garamond;">Nor care I who doth feed
upon my cost;<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Garamond;">It yearns me not if men
my garments wear;<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Garamond;">Such outward things dwell
not in my desires.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Garamond;">But if it be a sin to
covet honour,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Garamond;">I am the most offending
soul alive.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Garamond;">No, faith, my coz, wish
not a man from England.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Garamond;">God’s peace! I would not
lose so great an honour<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Garamond;">As one man more methinks
would share from me<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Garamond;">For the best hope I have.
O, do not wish one more!<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Garamond;">Rather proclaim it,
Westmoreland, through my host,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Garamond;">That he which hath no
stomach to this fight,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Garamond;">Let him depart; his
passport shall be made,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Garamond;">And crowns for convoy put
into his purse;<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Garamond;">We would not die in that
man’s company<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Garamond;">That fears his fellowship
to die with us.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Garamond;">This day is call’d the
feast of Crispian.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Garamond;">He that outlives this
day, and comes safe home,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Garamond;">Will stand a tip-toe when
this day is nam’d,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Garamond;">And rouse him at the name
of Crispian.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Garamond;">He that shall live this
day, and see old age,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Garamond;">Will yearly on the vigil
feast his neighbours,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Garamond;">And say “To-morrow is
Saint Crispian.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Garamond;">Then will he strip his
sleeve and show his scars,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Garamond;">And say “These wounds I
had on Crispian’s day.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Garamond;">Old men forget; yet all
shall be forgot,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Garamond;">But he’ll remember, with
advantages,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Garamond;">What feats he did that
day. Then shall our names,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Garamond;">Familiar in his mouth as
household words—<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Garamond;">Harry the King, Bedford
and Exeter,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Garamond;">Warwick and Talbot, Salisbury
and Gloucester—<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Garamond;">Be in their flowing cups
freshly rememb’red.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Garamond;">This story shall the good
man teach his son;<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Garamond;">And Crispin Crispian
shall ne’er go by,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Garamond;">From this day to the
ending of the world,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Garamond;">But we in it shall be
remembered—<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Garamond;">We few, we happy few, we band
of brothers;<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Garamond;">For he to-day that sheds
his blood with me<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Garamond;">Shall be my brother; be
he ne’er so vile,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Garamond;">This day shall gentle his
condition;<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Garamond;">And gentlemen in England
now a-bed<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Garamond;">Shall think themselves
accurs’d they were not here,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Garamond;">And hold their manhoods
cheap whiles any speaks<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Garamond;">That fought with us upon
Saint Crispin’s day.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Garamond;">There was apparently a
film version of Henry V, made during WWII in Britain, where the silhouette of a
soldier in a tent could be seen donning military fatigues during the St.
Crispin’s Day speech. There was nothing
rational at all about defying Germany.
France’s army had outnumbered even the Germans (and far, far outnumbered
the Brits), and yet it had fallen within 30 days. All the Brits had going for them was their
moat—the English channel—and their death before dishonor mentality, which they
all as one band of brothers shared.
“Like the great and good in story if we fail we fail with glory—God
speed the right! God speed the
right!” English blood itself is an
heroic heritage.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Garamond;">Millie’s blood also
carries in it the fearless and savage defiance of one who cannot know him or
herself beaten. The mere possibility is
inconceivable. Thus such
people—heroes—actually crave worse odds.
It was said of Churchill that after June of 1940, his “world of
imagination ‘coincided with the facts of exernal reality in a way that rarely
happens to any man.” These odds were
terrible enough that they were finally worth fighting for. And it wasn’t just Churchill. Even for the common Englander, morale actually
rose when France fell, and when they faced a Europe submerged by the Swastika,
utterly alone. As <i>The New Yorker</i> reported on June 22: “The individual Englishman
seems to be singularly unimpressed by the fact that there is now nothing
between him and the undivided attention of a war machine such as the world has
never seen before.” “News vendors
chalked: ‘we’re in the final—to be played on home ground.’” Wrote Dorothy L. Sayers:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: Garamond;">This is the war that England knows,<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><span style="font-family: Garamond;">When no allies are left, no help<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><span style="font-family: Garamond;">To count upon from alien hands,<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: Garamond;">No waverers remain to woo,<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><span style="font-family: Garamond;">No more advice to listen to,<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: Garamond;">And only England stands.</span></i><span style="font-family: Garamond;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Garamond;">I saved my textbook from
my “History of Europe: 1914-present” class, almost exclusively for a single
British poster from WWII which it showed: a flight of Nazi planes were sailing
in from darkness over the sea; beneath them, a lone British infantrymen raised
his fist in defiance of them all. I’ve
wanted that poster ever since then. I
haven’t stopped hoping I’ll find one.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Garamond;">While Hitler was staging a
victory parade through the Brandenburg gate—so sure England would see the
futility of resistance, and thus fold—a Gallup poll in may found that only 3%
of Britons thought that they might lose the war—and “by the end of July, the
percentage was so small it was immeasurable.”
This was due to the modern Lion-Heart and true. (I’ve heard the old Lion-heart, King Richard,
wasn’t quite what we know him as in Disney’s Robin Hood or <i>Ivanhoe</i>, historically, but I do not much know.) After the war, “Englishmen as skeptical of
politicians as Bernard Shaw [and others] agreed that had anyone but Churchill
been prime minister in the summer of 1940, Britain would have negotiated an
armistice with Hitler.” When Churchill
pleaded with the French leaders not to lose spirit and surrender (even the
hopelessly outmatched Poles had held out for 3 weeks), one of the French
lamented, not that it would change what happened: “If we capitulate, all the
great might of Germany will be concentrated upon invading England. And then what will you do?’ Thrusting his jaw
forward, the P.M. replied that he hadn’t thought about it carefully, but that
broadly speaking he would propose to drown as many of them as possible and then
to hit on the head any of them who managed to crawl ashore.” So Churchill deserved a lot of the credit for
the high spirits of his countrymen, yet they deserve the credit for adopting
his. As Churchill said of his people:
“It fell to me in those coming days and months to express their sentiments on
suitable occasions. This I was able to
do, because they were mine also.” And
hence people like Hugh Dalton, “long his opponent in the House, wrote [after a
speech declaring that “if this long island story of ours is to end at last, let
it end only when each of us lies choking in his own blood upon the ground,”
which caused many MPs to rush up shouting to his chair and clap him on the
back): ‘He was quite magnificent. [He is] the man, the and the only man we
have, for this hour.” This, their finest
hour. They had literally joined the
great and good in story.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Garamond;">Back to Millie, who was
the prompt for this Churchillian tribute, and
“ruminE/mediation/reflection/expose word” on courage. She too has something fearless in a feral
way, a legacy to her blood. Our little
Horton (“…Hears a Who”--a fluffy elephant, half Millie’s size) enrages Millie;
the sight of him awakens an ancient, feral thirst in her to seize by the throat
and rampage around the room thrashing back and forth so as to snap the neck and
let the blood and take the life of the thing.
I’ve probably seen her do this a dozen times (and I’m not always home
from school). I tried training her to do
it by saying “Millie—savage!” once she was already doing it, hoping she’d begin
to associate the thrill of slaking her bloodthirst with the sound of that word,
but it never worked. Instead, the word
would bring her back from the original instincts of her kind and leave her
wondering what the word meant. The way
she thrashes really is savage—violent to the point of blindness. It makes me wonder about that instinct, how
many lives have been lost to its origins her ancestors, those with a more
expressive scope.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Garamond;">I’m back on that idea of
blindness—Robert the Bruce’s father’s statement that the ability to compromise
makes us noble. I wonder if it’s even
noble to reason. Was it wise to defy
Hitler? I trow not. Was it right?
“Never in the history of human combat has so much been owed by so many
to so few,” said Churchill, of the RAF after their triumph in the Battle of
Britain. I’ve got an RAF pin (a
duplicate, I think), given to me by the kind man sitting next to me during
Evensong in Christchurch College, Oxford.
He’d learned the only souvenir I wanted was a Royal Air Force bomber
jacket, and only regretted he hadn’t brought one of his three to give to
me. A rather unreasonable thing, that,
too—he only knew one thing about me.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Garamond;">I wonder more and more
about this lofty blindness. Some people
are blinded by odds, and fear; others are blinded by honor, and believe. Our eyes were made to be single, perhaps, to
be blind to all but that thing which we love most; and where our treasure is,
there will our heart be also. Once our hearts are pure, then only we shall see (Him). So if it
were a sin to covet honor, how vicious would my own heart be? Millie barks before she calculates the
odds. She howls and charges the moment a
knock’s at the door (kind of annoying, actually--she's doing it right now and I lie not). Do the details (defeat or victory) matter? Or is she so committed to honor
that she already knows what she’s going to do: she is beyond the reach of odds. Goliaths are the ones who win through the odds. And what is winning worth besides a few more years? (To flip the cultural contexts, such that the English are the bad guys:)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Garamond;">Young soldier: “Home! The
English are too many!”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Garamond;">Wallace: “Aye, you can
run, and you’ll live—at least awhile.
But one day, dying in your beds, would you be willing to give every day
from that day til this, for one chance, for just one chance, to tell them that
they may take away our lives, but they’ll never take OUR FREEDOM!”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Garamond;">“Every man dies, not
every man really lives.” I believe that
if we die for principle, we die for all our principles—all the ones we would
have lived had God granted us more days.
I don’t think we have anything to lose by losing our lives now. Don’t get me wrong—I haven’t sworn for death
before dishonor yet—but I am working on it, as I believe God is working on
me. Hence I have some hope for
this. Faith is the soul of heroism, true
true--and thus heroes are embodiments of courage.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Garamond;">Reepicheep longed for
death-or-glory charges, forlorn hopes, and last stands. Why? Because his time and talents (his life and his blade) were but things with which he hoped to secure the only thing that mattered. I'm praying for such a shift in my paradigm. "God help me. Here I stand." - Martin Luther<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Garamond;">*<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Garamond;">Millie’s funny too, like
Churchill, “the most amusing warlord in history.” A lot of this comes from the fact that
neither he nor she ever went in for any of that nonsense that (s)he wasn’t the
most important being in the room. For
instance, my dad likes to nap, typically on the couch. Millie likes to catch him napping, hop up on
the couch, then settle herself on his face.
He pushes her off. She hops on
again. She just does that. I don’t know where her self-confidence comes
from: perhaps she’s a little inflated with herself, not wholly devoted to the humble sort of honour: "Perhaps you think too much of your honor, friend," said Aslan to Reepicheep. She didn't used to be. The Christmas Millie first appeared—puffy, small, and tentative—“taking her
out” (to do her business) was complicated.
She was so small we couldn’t tell if she was squatting in the snow or
just shivering in it, wondering why we were doing this to her.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Garamond;">The other thing she
does—simply freaking out—also happens when she feels something commensurate to
her capacity for wonder—like when you come home, after a long time off at
school. Then she may be relied upon to
rocket to the sound of your voice, and bunch up at your feet, and shake visibly
with excitement, literally to the tip of her nose—she sneezes when she’s
thrilled. Then she sprints back into the
living room as you greet and hug your sisters, leaps onto the back of a couch and
begs you for attention by basically having an affectionate seizure. Maybe I love her because she loved me first. Her heart in many ways is godly, so I guess it’s no shame to
want to be more like her, a little more gallant and doughty. Once, when I came home, I was so happy to see
her that I realized I couldn't tell her any better than she could tell me (how can you elocute affection to a dog?). I scratched behind her ears and along her back aggressively (my love language, apparently, along with persecution of siblings etc) such that it rolled her over a time or
two. Apparently she got the gist of what I meant, because it shot her off again, around our basement stairwell at a reckless sprint. Then she rounded it again. And then she did again. And then she did again. Her strides were the fullest, fiercest things
she could express, suspending her in air at full length for an instant before her toes touched the deep beige carpet and she tore herself onward again. She lapped the stairwell seven or eight times
at a breathless pace, then inexplicably reversed directions (I was laughing to myself) then lapped it six more. Then she lay down, panting </span><span style="font-family: Garamond;">desperately</span><span style="font-family: Garamond;">,
totally spent in her cause.</span></div>
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Bentley Snowhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12276828854041057296noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-243203723024167546.post-11178709200712155552012-01-23T11:41:00.000-08:002012-01-23T11:44:57.617-08:00Parallel Parking PR<div><img src="https://mail-attachment.googleusercontent.com/attachment?ui=2&ik=74b1df0e47&view=att&th=13506d78fa5684ad&attid=0.0&disp=inline&safe=1&zw&saduie=AG9B_P8QeCq0T3iO2KYjaurQaGxJ&sadet=1327347721817&sads=0BgFok2uoWE11FNWhR69FGdND88" /><img src="https://mail-attachment.googleusercontent.com/attachment?ui=2&ik=74b1df0e47&view=att&th=13506d99182fe731&attid=0.0&disp=inline&safe=1&zw&saduie=AG9B_P8QeCq0T3iO2KYjaurQaGxJ&sadet=1327347759117&sads=Jj77EoUiE8YilbvTfn8SZtUdMhY" /> </div><div><br /></div><div><img src="https://mail-attachment.googleusercontent.com/attachment?ui=2&ik=74b1df0e47&view=att&th=13506d836988e804&attid=0.0&disp=inline&safe=1&zw&saduie=AG9B_P8QeCq0T3iO2KYjaurQaGxJ&sadet=1327347738029&sads=0KY-UrdH7VcXm_aeocqdX6pBL3Y" /> </div><div><br /></div><div>Finally got the pics up for an old, old blog. I've since moved to somewhere parking exists and never hope to achieve anything near this again. So I had to post it.</div><div><br /></div><a href="http://oodilolly.blogspot.com/search?updated-min=2009-01-01T00:00:00-08:00&updated-max=2010-01-01T00:00:00-08:00&max-results=10">http://oodilolly.blogspot.com/search?updated-min=2009-01-01T00:00:00-08:00&updated-max=2010-01-01T00:00:00-08:00&max-results=10</a>Bentley Snowhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12276828854041057296noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-243203723024167546.post-77443134796181373782012-01-23T11:30:00.000-08:002012-01-23T11:38:32.749-08:00ESPN + Iceland<img src="http://static8.businessinsider.com/image/4d10b1bccadcbb6d55070000/tom-coughlin-new-york-giants-nfl.jpg" /><div><br /></div><div>I now have proof that Sportscenter has had a positive, cultural impact on me. It was always a good thing, but now it's a better. One minute, I'm watching to see how the NFL playoffs are going, the next I'm remembering my favorite music video within the bounds of time because it has become apparent that Tom Coughlin starred in it. This isn't a roundabout way of saying I don't want the Giants to lose (I always do, almost, not really for any reason); if anything, it's a straightforward way of rooting for Iceland.</div><div><br /></div><div><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qmXMA34CeoQ">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qmXMA34CeoQ</a> </div><div><br /></div>Bentley Snowhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12276828854041057296noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-243203723024167546.post-85851416657936871402012-01-21T22:58:00.001-08:002012-01-21T23:35:06.650-08:00The only thing that beats free laundry moneyI almost didn't go, but as I thought about all the glittering silver at the bottom of the swimming pool, flashing as the coins flipped over and over, sinking to the floor, I realized that I had to. Dan Jones doesn't lead his men astray, and he said this lead was hot. <div><br /></div><div>The Branbury Apartments had announced they were dumping $700 in quarters into a pool at 10 pm, and it was already 10:04 pm, which offered me an easy out to be lazy and not even try (the couch was so comfy) but I can't help but believe more and more in the idea that it's more important to fight in the face of futility than it is to win, so I threw on my swimsuit and ran to my car, hoping I wasn't too late. It was a good feeling, deciding to do it anyways, and it turned out, I was in luck, which I realized when I jogged up and a girl told me where the pool was, adding they had already done it once, but they were doing it in several rounds. "But it's not worth it--I got kicked in the head like three times when I went." Meh--I've been kicked in the head before. "Oh, dang. Sorry about that. Thanks." Kept jogging.</div><div><br /></div><div>There was a dance party in the Branbury's indoor section of the pool--people dancing in the pool and near it--and a few people with goggles still diving for the remainders of the first round's booty. The pool was a beautiful turquoise infused with the color of the cloud that comes out of your vacuum when you clean it. Oo la la. Dan yelled hey about the time his brother Ryan started hollering triumphantly: he'd found a dustpan in the bottom of the pool, which, apparently, they'd needed.</div><div><br /></div><div>Eventually the second round came and I applied Tom's advice of blocking your head with one arm and sweeping the ground with the other. I guess first several Branbury employees stood around the pool (all participants had to wait within the pool at the edge), sprinkling in quarters like pixie dust. Someone yelled go and I went under tried to see through the brownish grey cloud, found a quarter, fought off several people that tried to take it from me while I was struggling to get a fingertip under the thin edges. I was probably being touched by three bodies on average the entire time I was under the 6 feet of water. If you've seen the scene in Finding Nemo where the fish are netted at the end and flopping as the net leaves the water (before Nemo's clever idea) you'll know what I mean. Next dive I got pressed beneath people and panicked for a second as my air ran low enough for me to try to surface, which didn't work. Two seconds later bodies adjusted and I got up. Irrational but not a good feeling. Third dive I found two coins right away, got kicked pretty good (as opposed to indirect ones earlier), and realized there were better ways to get laundry money. So I called it good.</div><div><br /></div><div>Of course, my opinion changed while recharging in the hot tub with the other guys, when I realized each coin was a dollar. Three might just be enough for ice cream at Macey's. I split and twenty minutes later stood in front of the ice cream aisle, damp but no longer dripping (in a swimsuit, t-shirt, chacos, and January), calculating sales tax. I'd found two quarters, a nickel, and 5 pennies in my car. $3.60. Most ice cream was 3.49 or more. Sales tax at 7%...twenty five cents or so...14 cents short. I felt like a kid ogling a lollipop outside a candy store, and honestly harbored a hope some compassionate passerby or paternalistic manager would put a hand on my shoulder and drop a dime or two in, maybe even another quarter, but no love came. Then I found Western Family at 2.99. Thank you, Invisible Hand. (Vote for Mitt.)</div><div><br /></div><div>Also, on my way out of the pool area, still dripping but not so cold as you'd expect for being wet at 11 pm in January (go global warming), I passed a car with a lot of music bumping, surrounded by several dudes with one actually standing on top of it, who said, while the car started to move, "Don't go too crazy," which was probably a good idea.</div>Bentley Snowhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12276828854041057296noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-243203723024167546.post-66435970874616581852012-01-21T22:51:00.000-08:002012-01-21T22:57:54.043-08:00You have six fingers on your right hand--someone was looking for you.<div>If you too have been looking for a man with six fingers, and would like to hear a lead, as did a few dozen people at The Porch, a crazy storytelling place here in Provo, then here ya go.</div><div><br /></div>http://www.facebook.com/l.php?u=http%3A%2F%2Futahporch.org%2Faudience-stories-bentley-snow-and-dana-fleming&h=OAQHhFSGBBentley Snowhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12276828854041057296noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-243203723024167546.post-12661767301922965692012-01-10T14:01:00.001-08:002012-01-10T14:26:46.005-08:00MmmBop<div class="post-body entry-content" id="post-body-1598837032443246197" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0.75em; margin-left: 0px; line-height: 1.6em; color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 11px; background-color: rgb(33, 69, 82); "><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjzjsdxSe0sldOqwr60aeAqk2tkawBEl_1J5r_1F4ilojKMC6sMugMwRJuBRhMMGOG-on49bjHa-2HK1HgN6SuB0eSqYBIsxSRnLinTEokpdjVzT8g-ysF2zVtsmmOVpG5yqduSggVGjyY/s1600/m.jpg" style="color: rgb(119, 119, 102); "><br /><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjzjsdxSe0sldOqwr60aeAqk2tkawBEl_1J5r_1F4ilojKMC6sMugMwRJuBRhMMGOG-on49bjHa-2HK1HgN6SuB0eSqYBIsxSRnLinTEokpdjVzT8g-ysF2zVtsmmOVpG5yqduSggVGjyY/s320/m.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5696124447463447570" style="border-top-width: 5px; border-right-width: 5px; border-bottom-width: 5px; border-left-width: 5px; border-top-style: solid; border-right-style: solid; border-bottom-style: solid; border-left-style: solid; border-top-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); border-right-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); border-bottom-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); border-left-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); border-image: initial; display: block; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: auto; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: auto; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 240px; " /></a>You, like my mom, may be wondering why this is the sight greeting you as you open the fridge. Really, is that Weight Watchers Key Lime pie I see? And what's that apple juice doing between prepared and unprepared salads? Also, is that a wild boar skull?<div><br /></div><div>Yes.</div><div><br /></div><div>I'd happened upon this boar skull, a souvenir from two years in the Patagonia, a gift from an amigo and a half, while sorting through my stuff. I felt it hadn't got enough attention, specifically from Mom. Where would she be sure to see it?</div><div><br /></div><div>Malissa suggested "The fridge," and I cried in triumph, "YES!" as she, mortified <span style="line-height: 1.6em; ">a whit or two</span><span style="line-height: 1.6em; ">, audibly cringed and said, "Not really!" Oh yes really. Two seconds later she added, "You could put the milk out on the counter, so she'll open the fridge to put it back." I've got a twelve-year head start on her, and she's already outstripping my evil genius. That's okay--as long as evil wins.</span></div></div>Bentley Snowhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12276828854041057296noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-243203723024167546.post-6153930639005734892011-07-02T20:19:00.000-07:002011-07-02T20:21:57.837-07:00How do you guys edit these things?I think I've already spent my enthusiasm for tinkering with this sucker. Let it be. Hahaha. Props to Noah, who actually beams with the glory which here I've simply sought to echo. Aguante Noe.Bentley Snowhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12276828854041057296noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-243203723024167546.post-90063643837037547632011-07-02T18:54:00.000-07:002021-10-24T10:48:03.716-07:009 Asians wearing identical cowboy hatswas almost my favorite sight in Zion National Park this morning. God bless funny people. Someday, I will wander around misty rice fields bearing bucketed bamboo and wearing a nifty hat of theirs. I owe them an endearing. Plus, I owe myself a dream.
I had a stress fracture so I couldn't continue hiking into the Narrows with Dave, Derek, and Alan, so I ended up just writing poetry (of all things--I hadn't expected it). I'm not much of a poet, that is to say, I haven't made the money I hear a poet should; or been trained actually; or written more than a ditty to ask the occasional girl out in high school--so enter at your own risk.
Whatever happens, you'll know this:
you knew what I was when you picked me up.
<ominous and="" silence="">
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name="Subtle Reference"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="32" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" qformat="true" name="Intense Reference"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="33" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" qformat="true" name="Book Title"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="37" name="Bibliography"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="39" qformat="true" name="TOC Heading"> </w:LatentStyles> </xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 10]> <style> /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman","serif";} </style> <![endif]--> <p class="MsoNormal" style="font-weight: bold;">Not Far From Angel’s Landing</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-weight: bold;">
</p> <p class="MsoNormal"> </p> <p class="MsoNormal">Water a flowing jade</p> <p class="MsoNormal">Etched with light,</p> <p class="MsoNormal">The dimmest scratch</p> <p class="MsoNormal">Of gold on living glass</p> <p class="MsoNormal">Later sinking into a welcomed green oblivion,</p><p class="MsoNormal">
</p> <p class="MsoNormal"> </p> <p class="MsoNormal">Later contorting like obsidian </p> <p class="MsoNormal">Born anew to motion
</p> <p class="MsoNormal">Celestial as the secret of</p> <p class="MsoNormal">Sky slipping through this canyon</p> <p class="MsoNormal">To touch the faintest turbulence;</p> <p class="MsoNormal"> </p> <p class="MsoNormal">
</p><p class="MsoNormal">And the fall of white,</p> <p class="MsoNormal">From high, from megalithic red,</p> <p class="MsoNormal">From unknown trails that it has tunneled:</p> <p class="MsoNormal">A mist of flight,</p> <p class="MsoNormal">A burst of winter’s melted memory,</p> <p class="MsoNormal">Soon to be but the millionth streak</p> <p class="MsoNormal">Discoloring the rocky haven I long love.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"> </p> <p class="MsoNormal">
</p><p class="MsoNormal">A dream that has not ceased</p> <p class="MsoNormal">Is this ghost town come to life:</p> <p class="MsoNormal">Every streak undry,</p> <p class="MsoNormal">A cataract free falling,</p> <p class="MsoNormal">Fed full within a storm with a thousand joyous fellows
</p> <p class="MsoNormal">All translating slotted cliffs into</p> <p class="MsoNormal">A mystic burst of paradise—</p> <p class="MsoNormal"> </p> <p class="MsoNormal">
</p><p class="MsoNormal">Once that dream came true</p> <p class="MsoNormal">And I saw heaven hanging in the valley—</p> <p class="MsoNormal">Veiled not far from my precipice—</p> <p class="MsoNormal">A hover and a hiding and a hint of what I knew</p> <p class="MsoNormal">Could be my place most beautiful;</p> <p class="MsoNormal"> </p> <p class="MsoNormal">
</p><p class="MsoNormal">But now, while I see jade has changed,</p> <p class="MsoNormal">See unfolding ripples slowly surge like hope,</p> <p class="MsoNormal">See the scratches slipping by</p> <p class="MsoNormal">On sleek duned mercury--</p><p class="MsoNormal">such emerald and ebony:
</p><p class="MsoNormal">the river's ribboning and molten mirroring dreams' sheen for me--</p><p class="MsoNormal">I feel the same.</p><p class="MsoNormal"> </p><p class="MsoNormal"> </p><p class="MsoNormal">
</p><p class="MsoNormal"> </p> <p class="MsoNormal"> </p> <p class="MsoNormal"> </p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="font-weight: bold;"> </p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-weight: bold;"> </p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-weight: bold;">
</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-weight: bold;">Words</p> <p class="MsoNormal"> </p> <p class="MsoNormal"><i>
</i></p><p class="MsoNormal"><i>In Memory of Tom Riddle, Jr.</i></p><p class="MsoNormal"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">(and Steve)
</i></p> <p class="MsoNormal"> </p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-style: italic;">
</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-style: italic;">"You live in this"</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-style: italic;"> </span>--Shakespeare, <span style="font-style: italic;">Sonnet 55</span>
</p><p class="MsoNormal">
</p> <p class="MsoNormal">I pour myself in vials</p> <p class="MsoNormal">(the symbols you now see)
</p> <p class="MsoNormal">As if each were a horcrux—</p> <p class="MsoNormal">hmm...</p><p class="MsoNormal">
</p> <p class="MsoNormal">Maybe Voldemort</p><p class="MsoNormal">was just a poet</p><p class="MsoNormal">who hadn't heard of pens</p><p class="MsoNormal">And maybe I'm just a Dark Lord</p><p class="MsoNormal">who still remembers them (!)
</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="font-weight: bold;">
</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-weight: bold;">Just You</p> <p class="MsoNormal"> </p> <p class="MsoNormal">
</p><p class="MsoNormal">I think the thought of you has been</p> <p class="MsoNormal">Rewinding me to Eden:</p> <p class="MsoNormal">Before I said what beauty was,</p> <p class="MsoNormal">Where once I watched and knew.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"> </p> <p class="MsoNormal"> </p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="font-weight: bold;">
</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-weight: bold;">
</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-weight: bold;">Let There Be</p> <p class="MsoNormal"> </p> <p class="MsoNormal">
</p><p class="MsoNormal">From the wet moss’d rocks, a cool—</p> <p class="MsoNormal">Where the rock has gills of green;</p> <p class="MsoNormal">Where water scales it backward:</p> <p class="MsoNormal">A pulse that’s shimmering;</p> <p class="MsoNormal">Where tears fall barely staggered</p> <p class="MsoNormal">Into black trickling</p> <p class="MsoNormal">In which I saw six spanglings—</p> <p class="MsoNormal">Sparking like the sun</p> <p class="MsoNormal">At its first uneclipsing.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"> </p> <p class="MsoNormal"> </p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="font-weight: bold;">
</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-weight: bold;">
</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-weight: bold;">But Blessed Are Your Eyes</p> <p class="MsoNormal"> </p> <p class="MsoNormal">
</p><p class="MsoNormal">Mountains flicker in the foam,</p> <p class="MsoNormal">Gliding white on sculpted glass;</p> <p class="MsoNormal">Then veins shift on the sand:</p> <p class="MsoNormal">The shallows’ dance with light;</p> <p class="MsoNormal">And torturings, submerged things</p> <p class="MsoNormal">Which blaze the mountains more,</p> <p class="MsoNormal">Entirely undisturbing though </p> <p class="MsoNormal">The intricate, set shadow:
</p> <p class="MsoNormal">Clustered leaflike answerers </p> <p class="MsoNormal">to wind and sun alone—</p><p class="MsoNormal">And many things I've always seen</p><p class="MsoNormal">unattentively.
</p>
</ominous>Bentley Snowhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12276828854041057296noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-243203723024167546.post-69094978525149347442011-05-18T02:41:00.001-07:002011-05-18T04:18:16.284-07:00Tremendous TriflesThat's actually ripping off the title of a GK Chesterton collection of essays, but if "imitation is the sincerest form of flattery" then perhaps I've gone beyond it with outright theft. Love you, old boy.<br /><br />So I'm back blogging again after a year. What's up. Things are good. In Stratford-upon-Avon on a queen sized bed now as we speak. How merciful the Lord hath been--not a quote you can really whiz past very well, one that wants to dilate whatever moment you're in to make it more full, more inclusive of your past and future. Truly, he hath.<br /><br />So in summary I went to the hiking in the UK program in spring of 2009, Jerusalem in the winter semester (Jan-Apr) of 2010, and now back to the same UK program spring 2011, this time as a TA, but of course to continue writing and growing in my understanding. To examine my life further, to detect the divine fingerprints that have been left everywhere. Life is the scene of the greatest crime called love. It's a cloak and dagger affair, the ultimate Anonymous One being rather tough to catch: blessed are the pure in heart for they shall see him, or rather, those who look, because once they see they'll live.<br /><br />That reminds me of a quote I read at John Ruskin's mansion, Brantwood, nestled in a flowery forest in the Lake District near Beatrice Potter's (not even sure what her name is, sorry) home and across from Coniston Water. There's only one lake in the Lake District, incidentally, the rest being named "Mere" (a Norse word) or "Tarn" (no idea). That adds to the Middle Earth impression you can feel here. Ruskin's quote, anyway, was this:<br /><br />"The greatest thing a human soul ever does in this world is to see something, and tell what it saw in a plain way. Hundreds of people can talk for one who can think, but thousands can think for one who can see."<br /><br />Clearly, there is a difference between "getting it" and simply knowing things. Remember, in 1 Cor 13 Paul draws a distinction between "knowing all mysteries" and "knowing God," for to have all knowledge is not enough without charity, but to have the sort of knowledge that comes from having God as your acquaintance, who's simpler name is Love (1 John 4), that is "life eternal" (John 17:3).<br /><br />I want to say something that isn't about England. It's more about this--this business of eternal life. I am seeing something that I haven't seen for a long time. I don't have a pure enough heart to speak in a plain enough way, but this is the most important thing I know.<br /><br />And I wish I had a better segue, but I don't. No transition, but this is something worth the jolt.<br /><br />For years I have tried to save myself. I have worked as hard as I can--falling often (as everyone writing such a thing will claim, their inevitable disclaimer that they're "merely mortal"), but trying just enough more. I rarely had peace or hope. In Jerusalem, however, in the Garden of Gethsemane, of all places (how merciful the Lord hath been...), a professor said something that bothered me about the Atonement. He seemed to say that we couldn't know exactly how to get it into us, or something like that. I thought of D&C 45:5 (3-5), my favorite Atonement scriptures. "Wherefore, Father, spare these my brethren that believe on my name, that they may come unto me and have everlasting life." <br /><br />"Why does it only say 'those who believe'?" I wondered. Isn't that the imbalance some evangelist churches have between faith and works, the ones who run to the front of football stadiums and just say they believe, as Elder Holland once referred to in a talk? But there it is in our scriptures. "What's wrong with just saying I believe?"<br /><br />Ah. That time I caught the difference.<br /><br />There is a difference between just saying we believe and just believing. Is just believing really enough?<br /><br />I'm sorry this is turning sermonic, but it's the most important stuff I know--I'll give you random novelty stuff later, like how Captain Picard played Shylock the Jew in "The Merchant of Venice" two nights ago (amazing) (how merciful...)--but this is what gives me a hope that alters my whole mood.<br /><br />Walking along the canals of Stratford yesterday, towards Mary Arden (Billy Shakes' mother-in-law)'s farm, a few friends and I discussed this. 2 Ne. 31:20, I think it is--the great scripture about "Pressing forward with a perfect brightness of hope" and stuff like that. Well how are you supposed to hope like that when your hopes rest on an imperfect mortal (which is what we are when we are honest--and not)? The last line: "Relying wholly on the merits of him who is mighty to save." Wholly. Love that word.<br /><br />Lets talk for a moment about love. I used to think it was the mightiest power, the thing that conquers all--God's strength. Think about Ammon saying that power is granted unto him according to his desires which are in God (Alma 18:35 I think). "My strength is as the strength of ten because my heart is pure," said Sir Galahad (in Tennyson's poetry). I thought love was strength, but I was wrong--or at least simplistic.<br /><br />Lately I've noticed how the best people aren't known for their ability to do much but for their inability to do less. Think of the best missionaries in the Book of Mormon. Enos: "Wherefore I saw that I must go down to meet my maker, having been wrought upon by his Spirit that preach his word unto his people" (Enos 1:26). Alma, when he was old and his sons were going on missions: "And Alma himself could not rest, wherefore he also went with them." Could not (Alma 43:1). Ether preached from morning until night because of the Spirit which was in him (Ether 12:2-4 or something). Ammon and the sons of Mosiah "<span style="font-style: italic;">Could not bear</span> the thought that any human soul should suffer endless torment" (Mos 28:3-4). That's what love really is. It is a weakness--a holy helplessness--an inability to do less than your full power. Works are inevitable when you love. That's why faith without works is dead--if you really have faith, you will have been saved, or rather, been made into his image, which is love, been reborn.<br /><br />But you will never love if you try to perfect yourself. That I know. Loving is too hard to force OR fake, in the long run. Charity must last to be true--it never faileth. We can't forge that.<br /><br />When you don't have to work, because Christ has done it for you, when you don't have to worry about your salvation, because you believe it's yours already, you will have hope and peace and assurance, you will have been changed. When you have been changed by hope--the promise you have found through faith--you will love. THEN you will work, precisely because you don't have to.<br /><br />The price of getting to Heaven is not climbing as far as we can, but to stop resisting the truth. It is degrading to be carried, but there is no other way to reach the Kingdom. We must swallow our pride and be borne.<br /><br />I've probably said enough. It's incoherent way too much. I'm sorry. But I hope you get the gist of it. We will work when we don't have to, because that is what makes us want to. We don't have to when we have let him carry us, which requires two things: we must surrender the world, for he will take us beyond it, and we must surrender our pride, for we will not deserve the place to where we go. "Now I know that man is nothing, which thing I never had supposed" (Moses 1:10). To rely "wholly" on Christ is absolutely crucial. It is the Crux of Christianity, the very Cross. That is the whole of it. Believe--truly. (1 John 5 talks about how that is to overcome the world.)<br /><br />I just like seeing how when I'll let go I won't have to work--I will have to simply let myself go. Why struggle when we could let our natures be changed so the right thing will spring out of us by default? I know there are a lot of answers--I still have a few--but I know it feels better every time I let go of one more.<br /><br />*<br /><br />So on to the trip here in the UK.<br /><br />First of all, as I mentioned, it was unbelievable to have Patrick Stewart play Shylock in "The Merchant of Venice" two nights ago, here in Stratford, home of Billy Shakes (as Dan King calls him) himself. The most magical part by far was the classic speech everyone who knows the play clings to--the big food-for-thought thing about anti-semitism: "Hath not a Jew eyes, hath not a Jew ears? If you prick us do we not bleed? If you poison us do we not die?" (scrambled paraphrase--look it up) The moment really sharpened into focus the way we dehumanize others by artificial categories like sects and politics and religion and whatnot, when the most fundamental things--the things that make us what we too are--we share.<br /><br />In the morning I had haddock and poached eggs (haddock is the same fish used in "Fish n Chips:) for breakfast, bought three sweet books after lunch ("The Witches" by Roald Dahl for old times' sake, and "Boy" + "Going Solo" by him too which I've never read, then "Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close" which I'm pumped to read), then I saw the play. What a DAY.<br /><br /><br /><br />Yesterday I enjoyed eating some Irish mussels at "The Lame Duck" alongside "good friends," as Pat Madden called us, Lauren Ashley and Kaley and the Maddencitos (Pato and Adi) and Rachel and crap who else? 2 meals for 10 pounds--fantastic pub fare and prices before the play, "The City Madame," a good performance of a play I disliked for the way it tried to enforce a morality I didn't believe in (women give all due deference to your lords and masters, some men can never change--may all narrowmindedness be hanged; it was the spirit of it I truly choked on). Great moments though: the best one was probably a very inappropriate joke one of my favorite people on the program laughed uproariously at, all by himself. It was so funny. Noisy American.<br /><br /><br /><br /><br />ZANE!!! Gotta tell you this.<br /><br />So I was assigned to drive from Rowardennan--a youth hostel at the foot of Ben Lommond (which we hiked the next day) and the shore of Loch Lommond--back to Balmaha for groceries during class one day. It was terrifying. Narrow rustic roads sealed in by mossy stones in flaring green forests--distractingly beautiful, plus oncoming traffic made me have to squeeze in spots you wouldn't believe to get our van past the other cars. I suddenly realized I was singing "God Save the Queen" to myself.<br /><br />Why was that?<br /><br />AHA!<br /><br />Long ago in the days when we walked the halls of Cedar High, I remembered, Zane also launched a habit of us driving on the wrong side of the road every now and then, and singing "God Save the Queen" during it. And here I was! On the wrong side of the road! And my subconscious had clued my mind in with that song until the memory came out. Then I began belting out the song exceedingly Britishly, boldy, and proper, bellowing "God save our gracious queen / Long live our Noble queen / God save the queen!" It was glorious. Probably my favorite part of the day--better than Ben Lomond even.<br /><br />So that's the tremendous trifles idea--how random little things can truly be the wonders of our lives--an idea that presupposes that Wonder is the true substance of our lives. We never really find live through anything else.<br /><br />"If the stars should appear one night in a thousand years, how would men believe and adore, and preserve for many generations the remembrance of the city of God which had been shown."<br />--Emerson, <span style="font-style: italic;">Nature</span><br /><br />How hard is it to see the truth within things we always see because of "that tragedy with lies within the fact of frequency," as George Eliot says in <span style="font-style: italic;">Middlemarch</span>. The thing--seeing--beyond that fact of frequency "has not yet been wrought into us, and perhaps we could hardly bear much of it. If we had a keen vision of all ordinary human life it would be like seeing the grace grow or hearing the squirrel's heartbeat, and perhaps we should die of that roar which lies on the other side of silence."<br /><br />True genius can appreciate the ordinary. CS Lewis said "Power...does not come from novelty but from significance." Do you think God did not know that his prodigals would return? And yet does he not run when he sees them coming from "far off"? God has no more surprises, but he mas more joy than we can imagine. The shortsightedness of evil is that it looks to novelty. Novelty, however, will someday fail. Thus the world will lose its charm. But charity never faileth. It will always be beautiful. Perpetual wonder lies within it. Remember when we were kids and could watch our favorite movies again and again and again? Become thou as a little child. Rediscover that wonder. See eternal beauties so they need not be replaced with fresh novelties in the way of all the world's frantic spirit of obsession: fashion, media, even--I'm afraid to say--travel. If we are always looking for something new, we will always find something that will eventually be old. We need to look for something that predates new and outlasts old, something timeless, something true. We need to, as Ruskin says, see.<br /><br /><br />A moment to remember. I was inhaling Wysteria at Wordsworth's last home, Rydal Mount. Wysteria is my favorite flower in England. It is light purple and gentle and the smell is delicate yet fierce. The scent seems to match the color, to outdo it, actually, rather. It is a pity there are no words to convey smell--smell is like experience, like music or spirit. You simply have to hear or feel them. I was wondering about that while I stood on a small wall of flat slate (wondering also if I should do that) and while I pulled the flowering vine towards me. A sear of pure light, no bigger than a star, appeared through the dangling leaves and flowers. It was very piercing--some raindrop perfectly refracting the sunlight which had just come out. I didn't know what to make of it--wasn't sure I should try to make anything of it unless it came naturally--but it was a beautiful little moment, and I've been wondering about the random moments we remember, the moments where we are shocked into our senses, startled into awareness. I think it was George Eliot who also said that "Poetry can make us more aware of the substratum of our being, for our lives are mostly a constant evasion of ourselves." Perhaps all beauty is a shock. "Beauty is truth, truth beauty," said Keats. And truth can rock us every time.<br /><br /><br />One awesome little moment was sitting outside Robert the Bruce # something's hunting lodge on the other side of Loch Lommond (we'd been kicked out of our other hostel due to a miscommunication on booking). We'd just finished sacrament meeting on the grass outside the beautiful, massive manor (there were parapets, from which I saw a punk-bearded dude watch us now and then). Sometimes the wind would rustle through the towering trees and shake loose the blossoms from the flowering ones--a rain of fluttering white petals made for a beautiful moment or two in the meeting. I was pretty tired during the meeting though. Afterwards I was hot from being in the sun for an hour and a half--my ears had been sunburned from hiking Ben Lomond and they were cooking again from behind--but I was so tired I simply slumped down backwards after the closing prayer. What wonder were this!? As my back "mmm-ed" in sleepy relief as I rested it on the grass, I realized my face felt wonderful, whereas I'd expected to have the sunlight blasting redly through even my closed eyelids. But no. I wanted to look but didn't dare lest the sun would sear me even worsely should I open them up--it was waiting to pounce. I sat up and turned--so curious was I--and lo: a 12 foot tree stump with one mostly amputated branch reaching only a foot or two over. It hadn't been able to reach and shade me before, but when I laid down, it was just in reach to cover my face, or at least my ears and eyes, so I had a nap. There were no other trees within the well kept green field, just around the edges. :)<br /><br /><br /><br />One other VERY cool thing to me is how Wordsworth was friends with Thomas DeQuincey AND Sir Walter Scott--whom I love almost above all else (Arthur Hallam perhaps holding that spot, or at least vying, along with CS Lewis, as far as ideologists go). The whole lot of these famous people from the era were actually friends! I loved that. I loved that the world was small enough that all could be playing a prominent part in it--"all" being those whom I know well enough to love from it; and what I really mean is that most eras were too fragmented to have been defined by a community or two, and the Romantics, here, all knew one another, or at least much of one another. I longed to see Coleridge coming over Helvellyn (mtn) from Keswick to visit Grasmere, to chat at Dove Cottage with Wordsworth where they revolutionized poetry and Britain (and me) by reacting against a poetic style of merely wit and launched a successful crusade for a literature of feeling, of living, of reality. And adding to that DeQuincey who struggled with opium eating coming in to stay (and eventually buy the cottage) and Walter Scott the great idealist coming in to stay in a certain bedroom often, where I stood when I thought of this.<br />I just realized that I loved how they were friends. I loved <span style="font-style: italic;">them</span> because their ideas were moving, and while I read them I felt the spirit of communion, which I believe bespeaks their truth; and so I suppose I love them because when I enter in their hearts, or their art, I feel more at home, and then to imagine all of them together sharing that in waking reality I just long for it so badly. A noble people. Deeds to be done yet, daring as I do to hope to belong in some way to a group so noble they enterprised to topple an entrenched ideology of their time and establish one that privileged meaning, feeling, and truth.<br /><br /><br />Hiking between Malham and Earby--perhaps my favorite stretch of trail in England, sheepfolds and hills and Shirelike landscapes everywhere--I listened to some music from the LOTR musical. One of the most beautiful things you could do. After entering close to Malham we also passed a little nook in a river where the far bank jutted out towards us. Wild garlic was everywhere--spiky starburst blossoms with long aloe-vera-like leaves--and then an old bench appeared with a wooden fence behind it. Just a narrow little place for sitting. A rustic gate swiveled barely on its hinges a few feet further on with a garden behind it, through which one could apparently walk to get to this little sitting spot beside the river and under the trees which overcast everything.<br /><br /><br />Lastly lately I've been thinking about how following God's will and following my happiness are really the same thing. It's all simply about the truth. God is the truth, but so am I. He is also his hopes for my happiness (love), which are relative to who I truly am. That doesn't excuse sin, just explain the way there is so much independence and latitude that he allows for me to choose things in my life (who to marry, which ice cream to buy, etc.): whatever I want. Do good things--the specifics are up to you. Whatever makes you happy. As Stevenson (I'll mangle it sorta) said: "There is no duty we so much underrate as that of being happy."<br /><br />God save the Queen.<br /><br />Oh--PS--Zane, I was thinking about driving on the right side of the road, now that I am here:<br />"And the home, of the, BRAVE!"<br /><br />Love,<br /><br />BentleyBentley Snowhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12276828854041057296noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-243203723024167546.post-36186081212332951362010-03-12T04:11:00.001-08:002010-03-12T04:18:51.551-08:00So...I got into grad school! My mom just forwarded me the acceptance letter from BYU's new MFA program! I'll probably end up getting to teach a freshman English class, besides studying exactly what I have realized I love most in school--personal essays (among other types of creative writing). I love the fact that I'm headed towards what I love; I guess it's cool to have found what I would want to do whether I got any credit for it or not, and then to have the chance to do it for credit and to progress towards a worthwhile job through which I could contribute something I believe is meaningful to the world.<br /><br />Just wanted to letcha know :).Bentley Snowhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12276828854041057296noreply@blogger.com12tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-243203723024167546.post-74871461047329190022010-03-09T05:49:00.000-08:002010-03-09T05:52:58.113-08:00mmm<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjpxcmJepdKAQ_77DeCdgru5Rmjd7h7R1bSMY61zWsY4FxnoWgqnXWhUaTeGlq0neFOXFbSvf6M0WMts7dgJTKvw2fDK8M7GahXV6ruKYT9xOMhPHy2evqsv8q3uweaNmviNlZfRpw1SW0/s1600-h/P1000773+-+Heidi+Hatch.JPG"><img style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjpxcmJepdKAQ_77DeCdgru5Rmjd7h7R1bSMY61zWsY4FxnoWgqnXWhUaTeGlq0neFOXFbSvf6M0WMts7dgJTKvw2fDK8M7GahXV6ruKYT9xOMhPHy2evqsv8q3uweaNmviNlZfRpw1SW0/s320/P1000773+-+Heidi+Hatch.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5446631500405832194" border="0" /></a><br />Under the center we all write our names. Sometime I'll have to tell you about how we started the Mustache Militia here, and how I am sure that I finally have the final ingredient needed to convince Heidi Hatch to kiss me. Ahh yeeah.<br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhFVCnwrcqvMZgDhLDXN1qHeKbhZjbVAAlvZ4LSWJOAOOSO____UBiOQqT3cywN8cTg4y6zxHaQ6wAAKhaQyBAXPb9TrFhKe6SRbcjrqnw6wLl8gXIpGU5mb8qb34mxyMfMTIh8HtXyZLw/s1600-h/P1000632+-+lachish+shall+not+fall+again+%28nor+shall+I+ever+get+to+the+bus+on+time%29.JPG"><img style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhFVCnwrcqvMZgDhLDXN1qHeKbhZjbVAAlvZ4LSWJOAOOSO____UBiOQqT3cywN8cTg4y6zxHaQ6wAAKhaQyBAXPb9TrFhKe6SRbcjrqnw6wLl8gXIpGU5mb8qb34mxyMfMTIh8HtXyZLw/s320/P1000632+-+lachish+shall+not+fall+again+%28nor+shall+I+ever+get+to+the+bus+on+time%29.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5446631492996945922" border="0" /></a><br />Lachish shall not fall again.<br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgjK1-UnvDnuv30y5UL2H6Whgip4LHt6Bne8MJ9PjrYWuqFzJIkN537uwYH1hqRkLlPiVHrbN7K4Uhqi3kQ54VBG65aK2bwlK90N46FkbjcEERL22qYJS6KnHR_ABcqAb_oDxQOz9zkKu8/s1600-h/P1000627+yo+soy+rambo.JPG"><img style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 240px; height: 320px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgjK1-UnvDnuv30y5UL2H6Whgip4LHt6Bne8MJ9PjrYWuqFzJIkN537uwYH1hqRkLlPiVHrbN7K4Uhqi3kQ54VBG65aK2bwlK90N46FkbjcEERL22qYJS6KnHR_ABcqAb_oDxQOz9zkKu8/s320/P1000627+yo+soy+rambo.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5446631483884885890" border="0" /></a>Yo soy Rambo.Bentley Snowhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12276828854041057296noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-243203723024167546.post-39677995672925133752010-03-09T05:39:00.000-08:002010-03-09T05:49:25.112-08:00Un poquito masThis wasn't like Moria; Moria was like this. Now I know why it was supposed to be impressive. Welcome to the Karnak Temple, folks.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiDtapQp6iawBY4U-bhleTV1Fmcnf3KqR4cvwN7GhjFeqrs6m2EsPD2f31Ko-mdDE3eXaqW9h8WNSv2vrUzNG0TnsvWtZ6vF0nrgNfrlURI8JB8shfUefVva9tUHseMFjVYkwWKgljG47g/s1600-h/P1000538+moria.JPG"><img style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 240px; height: 320px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiDtapQp6iawBY4U-bhleTV1Fmcnf3KqR4cvwN7GhjFeqrs6m2EsPD2f31Ko-mdDE3eXaqW9h8WNSv2vrUzNG0TnsvWtZ6vF0nrgNfrlURI8JB8shfUefVva9tUHseMFjVYkwWKgljG47g/s320/P1000538+moria.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5446630228253014866" border="0" /></a><br /><br />For all you Dragon Ball Z fans: Ka-me-ha-me...<br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhKA0PPv4c0_w3uOIKhe67cgbNpHtR02rKwmRHkYMonFhjpzm8wJL2W7GzWvgtvFJhdjZfzdGE98-YLbF4t3yEIg3JMw5cZd2U1Mir_Eau3sxylXu-Rp_ogunZBhKvsfLCnYHIHC2UtYj4/s1600-h/P1000539+dragon+ball+Z+fans.JPG"><img style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhKA0PPv4c0_w3uOIKhe67cgbNpHtR02rKwmRHkYMonFhjpzm8wJL2W7GzWvgtvFJhdjZfzdGE98-YLbF4t3yEIg3JMw5cZd2U1Mir_Eau3sxylXu-Rp_ogunZBhKvsfLCnYHIHC2UtYj4/s320/P1000539+dragon+ball+Z+fans.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5446630233886624194" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiEigRmn147PNlp7S7GedIrC_d2J5E5e6HHZ82HQNPr3Vy9EalNBXRtU48uWzO0gJzm8l6zgY9NjWCkEQSP2e_DQkyN3FTC3V12nb7Q-RNNkHsKTQVpJWH2TbmXZybZjypPhhlDDHo-JBg/s1600-h/P1000572+along+the+nile.JPG"><img style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiEigRmn147PNlp7S7GedIrC_d2J5E5e6HHZ82HQNPr3Vy9EalNBXRtU48uWzO0gJzm8l6zgY9NjWCkEQSP2e_DQkyN3FTC3V12nb7Q-RNNkHsKTQVpJWH2TbmXZybZjypPhhlDDHo-JBg/s320/P1000572+along+the+nile.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5446630241962983090" border="0" /></a>Moroni 10:3 "...Remember how merciful the Lord hath been..."Bentley Snowhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12276828854041057296noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-243203723024167546.post-36116782419577771392010-03-09T05:14:00.000-08:002010-03-09T05:39:51.465-08:00y mas - EgyptHere's to you, Communism. A fine meal at the Kibbutz. Felt like I was in <span style="font-style: italic;">The Giver</span>. <span style="font-style: italic;"><span style="font-style: italic;">The Giver </span></span><span>+ </span><span style="font-style: italic;">great</span> ice cream.<br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh-kQzFJfQDcS7d__MK8_hHxollHbKp9MuZwt-mxFpbe_NxZs8hKcgpO7lSEOkRgA8NfLT_BH24qun1Iq2nfi8m43TI2C6UrqcR1Mc2UaVef7m9U0rBhR2BaaKtp2lgDTZbaUJSo2vwEog/s1600-h/P1000318+-+here%27s+to+you,+communism.JPG"><img style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh-kQzFJfQDcS7d__MK8_hHxollHbKp9MuZwt-mxFpbe_NxZs8hKcgpO7lSEOkRgA8NfLT_BH24qun1Iq2nfi8m43TI2C6UrqcR1Mc2UaVef7m9U0rBhR2BaaKtp2lgDTZbaUJSo2vwEog/s320/P1000318+-+here%27s+to+you,+communism.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5446625665501903922" border="0" /></a><br />Hatshepsut's funerary temple. She was a psycho-pharaoh. At the top of the mtn. you can see a natural pyramid shape. On the other side of it to the right is another valley system sort of thing--The Valley of the Kings. That was probably the coolest thing ever, except we couldn't bring cameras in there. It was epic. EPIC.<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg1WrUV3xDuu6cwd6aD1hpp1saDk9P0EE47th_ZPfbSwO758JG99ihuoB6_kPrNOYiVB-OexKyfuqHh2IfpMUpbBi0ism2eTkpFfIFOfAonZmxRCrllF2Vj4H3s3diS77n3T8uNW686XgE/s1600-h/P1000436+hatshepsuts.JPG"><img style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg1WrUV3xDuu6cwd6aD1hpp1saDk9P0EE47th_ZPfbSwO758JG99ihuoB6_kPrNOYiVB-OexKyfuqHh2IfpMUpbBi0ism2eTkpFfIFOfAonZmxRCrllF2Vj4H3s3diS77n3T8uNW686XgE/s320/P1000436+hatshepsuts.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5446625683445726834" border="0" /></a>Pyramids. Gotta put 'em up there.<br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj5MQNhwhP32BZQmnn8_wJRq3aNWSCT4U1NiisjJ_DiaSsxDOBKQa89C47ErwyhdohxQ7gAxCloy3mS8ZrODQfq9RNCJC4C6ezqeaclh1ODy6s8tI-29zoZornxgRE6nT7Sb4k_4SCsPMA/s1600-h/P1000334+pyramid+shot.JPG"><img style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj5MQNhwhP32BZQmnn8_wJRq3aNWSCT4U1NiisjJ_DiaSsxDOBKQa89C47ErwyhdohxQ7gAxCloy3mS8ZrODQfq9RNCJC4C6ezqeaclh1ODy6s8tI-29zoZornxgRE6nT7Sb4k_4SCsPMA/s320/P1000334+pyramid+shot.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5446625674148367938" border="0" /></a><br /><br />Felucah ride on the Nile. Way chill. I leaned off the masthead like Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet would have done but then got reprimanded.<br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhgjlTie9x5wWN1bGUCGvqapNeLdkCYijAqJ1E_dgfP_2OAgaBmzqWuXf6OIcmdqu63WQbMRpDySYk-p1bTt56LoNq8ZGOA9x5_Qtyf1uc5wtzlSTMmTRHthzzpNIe5k32lE5UKuDHH-v8/s1600-h/P1000478+feluca+ride.JPG"><img style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhgjlTie9x5wWN1bGUCGvqapNeLdkCYijAqJ1E_dgfP_2OAgaBmzqWuXf6OIcmdqu63WQbMRpDySYk-p1bTt56LoNq8ZGOA9x5_Qtyf1uc5wtzlSTMmTRHthzzpNIe5k32lE5UKuDHH-v8/s320/P1000478+feluca+ride.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5446627039505864098" border="0" /></a><br />Don't eat the fruit they say. It'll give you dysentery (or at least diarrhea--"Pharaoh's Revenge"/"the Cairo quick-step") they say. Pah. <br /><br />I live on the Nile; I get whatever I wish--<span style="font-style: italic;">I'm</span> Pharaoh. Get it? <br /><br />But the real Pharaoh was only biding his time. He later struck at 3 am--on Sinai. Course, the food was worth it. DELICIOUS. This is the view of the Nile we had from the Sheraton. INSANE, man. Egypt alone was worth $10,000. That is not a joke. No. Oh no.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh6aJRI5DXQoEloQdSIQkSbrQXgKe4iWJ6BUASS6sctkD3YmUqTUAKSA2fdObo1A64UStX138Q0APGahE16CtFxvpzp0J0LfMFvNQjPQAZMXD3zwSdXHZ5lwxec3pEpwaRyfj8yPEE2hgQ/s1600-h/P1000477+don%27t+eat+the+fruit+they+say.JPG"><img style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh6aJRI5DXQoEloQdSIQkSbrQXgKe4iWJ6BUASS6sctkD3YmUqTUAKSA2fdObo1A64UStX138Q0APGahE16CtFxvpzp0J0LfMFvNQjPQAZMXD3zwSdXHZ5lwxec3pEpwaRyfj8yPEE2hgQ/s320/P1000477+don%27t+eat+the+fruit+they+say.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5446627034962807378" border="0" /></a><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjgoTg3oVySYcUh-rKu9lAawX1rCpaf5ADN591K174gdtTFSYzDUDju4tH03XfC1QL63nJ3vawwv9r2SeNHRMT9sm9SsmiCYGsRDnpFXRLAMymx4T68Z1RF429mYFzwhGkT_WczSJVCGGU/s1600-h/P1000474+guys+in+front+of+sheraton.JPG"><img style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjgoTg3oVySYcUh-rKu9lAawX1rCpaf5ADN591K174gdtTFSYzDUDju4tH03XfC1QL63nJ3vawwv9r2SeNHRMT9sm9SsmiCYGsRDnpFXRLAMymx4T68Z1RF429mYFzwhGkT_WczSJVCGGU/s320/P1000474+guys+in+front+of+sheraton.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5446627031405758338" border="0" /></a>This is what me and my homeys do on Saturday afternoons.Bentley Snowhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12276828854041057296noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-243203723024167546.post-74630093985074714762010-03-09T05:08:00.000-08:002010-03-09T05:14:53.430-08:00Und mehr<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiGT4lRV3Ec6__3NheTXdlkX9NtOjNuEW3TZrZo4l0XIdoqaNXyRGaYWhHLWIsIz0GN15l0h6srRsNUgBLIxqWHW3456Xc4oc__mE6bqkt6qPXN2Y88Tn77y9qCV0fnCYAX3Zd9gUziHD4/s1600-h/Dan's+pictures+1-18-10+223++bangarang+dan+and+I.JPG"><img style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiGT4lRV3Ec6__3NheTXdlkX9NtOjNuEW3TZrZo4l0XIdoqaNXyRGaYWhHLWIsIz0GN15l0h6srRsNUgBLIxqWHW3456Xc4oc__mE6bqkt6qPXN2Y88Tn77y9qCV0fnCYAX3Zd9gUziHD4/s320/Dan's+pictures+1-18-10+223++bangarang+dan+and+I.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5446621052061613394" border="0" /></a>I just thought I'd better post this one too--just found it in Dan's photos he lent me--because it is mighty in formidability and hallowed in memory.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEie6_35RNQGIjvVEdUrWjrXuT-EP9rAdI79sMZizQWzrd3ikhze9VONSgGm9hZw78D1Cnj7D8NgJTCmbxi0Vd_xQVIFx_qdoh3XQJ2wCmrLDnMgkFMXaElZvQJkNCf_DA2J6PcdWRaxBGk/s1600-h/Dan's+pictures+1-18-10+165+jones,+king,+amjad,+diana,+jon+wiesty+boys.JPG"><img style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 240px; height: 320px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEie6_35RNQGIjvVEdUrWjrXuT-EP9rAdI79sMZizQWzrd3ikhze9VONSgGm9hZw78D1Cnj7D8NgJTCmbxi0Vd_xQVIFx_qdoh3XQJ2wCmrLDnMgkFMXaElZvQJkNCf_DA2J6PcdWRaxBGk/s320/Dan's+pictures+1-18-10+165+jones,+king,+amjad,+diana,+jon+wiesty+boys.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5446621048874768258" border="0" /></a>Dome of the rock with Dan Jones, Amjad--whom I mentioned in an early post--Dan King, and John Wiest.<br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiiBLNAxuqBeih-rjdN58D-prNwtfO9GXvnMuhKTL7VNkTkkWGe5VJSycUnZJlDx4SCThwOQrwhaIOjLiYJF9L9fOcMn1X6TebyVjGIVvjPmEF2clUYdkQ7kHW8X8Dhg8R5QWwF5qOkakE/s1600-h/Dan's+pictures+1-18-10+098.JPG"><img style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 240px; height: 320px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiiBLNAxuqBeih-rjdN58D-prNwtfO9GXvnMuhKTL7VNkTkkWGe5VJSycUnZJlDx4SCThwOQrwhaIOjLiYJF9L9fOcMn1X6TebyVjGIVvjPmEF2clUYdkQ7kHW8X8Dhg8R5QWwF5qOkakE/s320/Dan's+pictures+1-18-10+098.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5446621045554449714" border="0" /></a>This is a view from the battlements over Damascus Gate (the main, north entrance to the Old City; the battlements were built by Suleyman the Magnificent in 1500 something). It looks down onto the classic market you first start walking into. I figured every student who's ever been there would love to see it. Go ahead, find great filafels on the right; a little further, and it forks: more market stuff on left, Shabban's etc. on the right (and gummies!).Bentley Snowhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12276828854041057296noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-243203723024167546.post-69808901241002972112010-03-09T05:00:00.001-08:002010-03-09T05:08:55.008-08:00More photos<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEinnPj6LnnTlq8qS7FYrIeqsWCAO_mlGZbJT1CoMe_86h_bSJSLiu0w-BL1es2q-M1k1Tso6286sgKFAN8KeUdYr81cGy-2nttzRzFtoF9opwuVvrwf9WD8GlTZrKx2X1Afu5IT7wBb7So/s1600-h/P1000211+with+elias.JPG"><img style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEinnPj6LnnTlq8qS7FYrIeqsWCAO_mlGZbJT1CoMe_86h_bSJSLiu0w-BL1es2q-M1k1Tso6286sgKFAN8KeUdYr81cGy-2nttzRzFtoF9opwuVvrwf9WD8GlTZrKx2X1Afu5IT7wBb7So/s320/P1000211+with+elias.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5446619567160122754" border="0" /></a><br />Meet Elias. Jovial. Spanish speaking. 92 yrs old. Lives around the corner. Lived through the Holocaust.<br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj3eqbe7gEm6hyl0FvPswsJWbm0T6lq81RTT7uGyXT0opDO0-8FzOJPsDmLAi67759s2QSBcCK61NiRrELDzLweEsKyOEL9-VtyI2hRjAhFZXgqvofG4TSG7c1K9CkNM6QcWbr_QuHutmE/s1600-h/P1000162+Lord+of+the+Flies+in+Kidron.JPG"><img style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj3eqbe7gEm6hyl0FvPswsJWbm0T6lq81RTT7uGyXT0opDO0-8FzOJPsDmLAi67759s2QSBcCK61NiRrELDzLweEsKyOEL9-VtyI2hRjAhFZXgqvofG4TSG7c1K9CkNM6QcWbr_QuHutmE/s320/P1000162+Lord+of+the+Flies+in+Kidron.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5446619560574733282" border="0" /></a>Lord of the Flies in the Kidron Valley. Potatoes and onions smoked at least partially on a trashfire.<br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiQujg9oEKe-YBU4lCf08U-8Dzdo2aPget61fDNCOuO0sUMn0_KkINksEfUE-5Y8_YNJV6HThMsjIz19THaYNmqIrnF8jk9AngPbohscqwE-KKIVAhTwUr-RYcAe38ZxS-vABAN4BtoXjk/s1600-h/P1000220+gonna+knock+these+walls+down+again.JPG"><img style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiQujg9oEKe-YBU4lCf08U-8Dzdo2aPget61fDNCOuO0sUMn0_KkINksEfUE-5Y8_YNJV6HThMsjIz19THaYNmqIrnF8jk9AngPbohscqwE-KKIVAhTwUr-RYcAe38ZxS-vABAN4BtoXjk/s320/P1000220+gonna+knock+these+walls+down+again.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5446619558334615906" border="0" /></a>Gonna blow these walls down baby. Lowest city on earth: Jericho. It rains once a year there. It started raining about five minutes after we took this picture. What are the odds. Then I biffed trying to bring the biggest rock I could possibly carry to the pavilion in the background for an object lesson. Hahaha.Bentley Snowhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12276828854041057296noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-243203723024167546.post-50243417647790218302010-03-09T04:37:00.000-08:002010-03-09T05:00:34.949-08:00Gallery of Long Awaited Photos<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjF2oiOdhF4T4R1EgLvN1-yi7bsJH9i4JZek1nafvQyPE6C20YdNz4Yxod3XsHDnelPhmKKgtRjTTnUfN5IU_5lGWUNgecrqEvY80uKXrMvOgI43i6PSKAKgfriFkjtlNbzIpqQolmL1Ak/s1600-h/P1000047+southern+utah+boys+at+Nabi+Samwil.JPG"><img style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjF2oiOdhF4T4R1EgLvN1-yi7bsJH9i4JZek1nafvQyPE6C20YdNz4Yxod3XsHDnelPhmKKgtRjTTnUfN5IU_5lGWUNgecrqEvY80uKXrMvOgI43i6PSKAKgfriFkjtlNbzIpqQolmL1Ak/s320/P1000047+southern+utah+boys+at+Nabi+Samwil.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5446615574065865234" border="0" /></a>Southern Utah boys at Nabi Samwil (Jordan Mulford and I)<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiiVw5bfz-xD3TDVZJO8urEp2j-X2lQe3P4muV4y5OrgYE4667QrK2-lLTlWTcHFcumajGfnoRyo6vAUj5rxAZSO9abr5taLcLLIRXXF89RMJM60Kwkw4SS9nKUi14SdysZRP4AyV4Ckd4/s1600-h/P1000089+Gethsemane.JPG"><img style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiiVw5bfz-xD3TDVZJO8urEp2j-X2lQe3P4muV4y5OrgYE4667QrK2-lLTlWTcHFcumajGfnoRyo6vAUj5rxAZSO9abr5taLcLLIRXXF89RMJM60Kwkw4SS9nKUi14SdysZRP4AyV4Ckd4/s320/P1000089+Gethsemane.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5446617475299792146" border="0" /></a>Gethsemane. There's a little cross in the center of the picture if you look close.<br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi_kNITkRtHswho2iqGl99vK44HRNYcdOUHoRFEAywr7ENmxRmrpWYM2prg261razIYh_lC9xuFKqDOZ4p4fFjDogmlNVwG3Z3TO270nSNQnmE5T9w7qYD-U2iTlWNUrB98Wn4wYgA-89Y/s1600-h/P1000208+sagging+wall+of+outer+city.JPG"><img style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi_kNITkRtHswho2iqGl99vK44HRNYcdOUHoRFEAywr7ENmxRmrpWYM2prg261razIYh_lC9xuFKqDOZ4p4fFjDogmlNVwG3Z3TO270nSNQnmE5T9w7qYD-U2iTlWNUrB98Wn4wYgA-89Y/s320/P1000208+sagging+wall+of+outer+city.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5446617469208551778" border="0" /></a>My favorite view of Jerusalem, for some reason, or at least the part that ... yeah, I think it is my favorite--rivaled only by Dome of the Rock.<br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhuHvUm4IAilkO-uo5jS0eZhG6quFOLrb2KqRgYLfOqRpb9OlXvDHYVZh0FhlwfK6odm2osVin9sJxXj-9jToW9U9yRvmwqvWv17SAFqekZoThThQiaK9y8UooitNKBjUxJTUm-ykYwU4I/s1600-h/P1000067+camelslobber.JPG"><img style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhuHvUm4IAilkO-uo5jS0eZhG6quFOLrb2KqRgYLfOqRpb9OlXvDHYVZh0FhlwfK6odm2osVin9sJxXj-9jToW9U9yRvmwqvWv17SAFqekZoThThQiaK9y8UooitNKBjUxJTUm-ykYwU4I/s320/P1000067+camelslobber.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5446616021923664930" border="0" /></a>Colgate.<br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgvvaNK3klzgqOJ4CvxWHlpPeRw_Gg76prvRtUjP4h7u2U1r4dx16G0Y4pFqIytUmVguJ1lV2ZnRGelx2Vuayvc2tKAhlXNfG9LUVuLG7FsBFDtXfDJqn5mWDbo5bgYmf4yyJEx-viPmXc/s1600-h/P1000057.JPG"><img style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 240px; height: 320px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgvvaNK3klzgqOJ4CvxWHlpPeRw_Gg76prvRtUjP4h7u2U1r4dx16G0Y4pFqIytUmVguJ1lV2ZnRGelx2Vuayvc2tKAhlXNfG9LUVuLG7FsBFDtXfDJqn5mWDbo5bgYmf4yyJEx-viPmXc/s320/P1000057.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5446616013010582338" border="0" /></a>Dan King and I, looking jemele.<br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjF2oiOdhF4T4R1EgLvN1-yi7bsJH9i4JZek1nafvQyPE6C20YdNz4Yxod3XsHDnelPhmKKgtRjTTnUfN5IU_5lGWUNgecrqEvY80uKXrMvOgI43i6PSKAKgfriFkjtlNbzIpqQolmL1Ak/s1600-h/P1000047+southern+utah+boys+at+Nabi+Samwil.JPG"><br /></a>Bentley Snowhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12276828854041057296noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-243203723024167546.post-82627287060146259302010-02-13T09:10:00.000-08:002010-02-13T10:00:18.252-08:00Living Scriptures Presents: David vs. Goliath<p>In the valley of Elah, none dared face the giant...none but one.</p><p><iframe allowfullscreen='allowfullscreen' webkitallowfullscreen='webkitallowfullscreen' mozallowfullscreen='mozallowfullscreen' width='320' height='266' src='https://www.blogger.com/video.g?token=AD6v5dyfK1YqlrysCRWMMMFldEmRVmIJe5xQCpDmwRDKzS1JqlvFmrUafh_GkPmNDxohUSm7QyOa13DrlMaRYUyUxQ' class='b-hbp-video b-uploaded' frameborder='0'></iframe></p>Bentley Snowhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12276828854041057296noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-243203723024167546.post-77368853001610769302010-02-07T10:38:00.000-08:002010-02-07T10:46:05.071-08:00A Lively Tale of Spitting in Darwin's face in the name of Admittance to Grad SchoolFirst of all, I don't know what I clicked on to accidentally become a follower of myself (you may have noticed that). Second of all, I don't know what to click on to stop it, so I guess that's going to stay.<br /><br />Third of all, here is the writing sample I submitted with my grad school application to BYU's MFA in creative writing program. Just in case anyone's interested. Not sure when I hear back.<br /><br />Cheers,<br />Bentley<br /><br /><p style="LINE-HEIGHT: 200%; MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes"></span>“On Nothing”</span></p><p style="LINE-HEIGHT: 200%; MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" class="MsoNormal"><?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" /><o:p><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;"></span></o:p></p><p style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" class="MsoBodyTextIndent"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;">You’d never believe how good it felt to jaywalk across 8 lanes of rapid Parisian traffic, the ones that surround the colossal Arc de Triomphe.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>And it wasn’t a fluke either: my co-jaywalking life-buddy Justin felt just the same way.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Describing the jaunt is pretty easy: explaining why we loved it is a horse of an entirely different color.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Not that I ever understood what that really means.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span></span></p><p style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" class="MsoBodyTextIndent"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;">So, like a lot of people live in Paris.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Like 11,769,433.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Lots of these people have cars.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Lots of these cars drive along the Seine River, down Le Champs-Élysées—that’s main street, if you live in Paris.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>And as it turns out, Le Champs-Élysées leads right to a monumental Arc, or rather to, on this occasion, “us.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span></span></p><p style="LINE-HEIGHT: 200%; TEXT-INDENT: 0.5in; MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;">And by the way, technically I suppose we were jaysprinting-for-our-lives, my man Justin and I.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>We’d plunged in during a brief gap of traffic, which, for being undoubtedly Providential, gave sort of stingy odds on survival.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>I mean, it’s not like the Red Sea was bursting out and engulfing odd Israelites here and there, back when Moses and Aaron were crossing it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>The Black Sea me and “J” were walking across 229.65 feet of unlaned chaotic speed.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>We were only thirty feet into it when a few dozen Egyptians (who looked more than a little French) caught up to us and tried to PWN us before we reached the Promised Land.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>A few swung by, and orbited safely behind us, but a new herd of chariots was coming counterclockwise in the distance, and I wasn’t sure if we’d win our race or not.</span></p><p style="LINE-HEIGHT: 200%; TEXT-INDENT: 0.5in; MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;">Now I don’t want to bore you if you already know what this sort of thing is like, because you’ve navigated lots of asteroid fields or something.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>And of course, if you’ve ever cast yourself across a lifesize, rushing Russian roulette wheel, and plinked along for dear life while a best friend plunked for his, this description really isn’t necessary either.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>But if you haven’t, let me tell you what it was like—and this thought almost stopped me dead in my tracks, there on Le Champs-Élysées: “This is like living the last level of ‘Frogger.’”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span></span></p><p style="LINE-HEIGHT: 200%; TEXT-INDENT: 0.5in; MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;">Step.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Step.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Step.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>The thought just kept thudding into my head, like a frog into a semi.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>“Well, probably anyways.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>I guess I’ve really never seen the last level,” then I started laughing helplessly, “because I always died on level five or so in the middle of Trig in high school.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>It was a beautiful irony, so even though it threatened my life, I gave into it and laughed, ironically.</span></p><p style="LINE-HEIGHT: 200%; TEXT-INDENT: 0.5in; MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;">Despite this deliberate frog-duel with Darwin, I had some sort of belief that Justin and I would survive.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Maybe it was irrational—a self-nominated candidate for natural selection, thinking he’d survive—but that is what I thought.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>The scariest moment was probably seeing a rush of cars cutting off our retreat, and another blocking our progress ahead.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>I experienced a thought: “This is dangerous.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Then my survival instincts kicked in—panic became adrenaline, adrenaline became speed and mental clarity.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>And hindsight.</span></p><p style="LINE-HEIGHT: 200%; TEXT-INDENT: 0.5in; MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;">I was eyeing the formation of the next wave for gaps to run in when I saw a huge contingent detour east down Le Champs-Élysées, before they reached us on the north side of the Arc.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Suddenly (I know the word’s overused, but it’s still the greatest “adverb of revelation”) the ridiculous possibility of making it seemed probable.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>A sensation of glory and elation mixed with a word much stronger than relief, one probably too perfect to exist.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>What it means though is a feeling much, much stronger than relief, the one that comes with the release of desperation, like the license to totally collapse.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>I had all I wanted, padding down the homestretch.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>We were actually out of breath at this point because the 229 foot jaystroll was further than it had looked, so we gasped our laughs and cried with glee and met eyes and definitely agreed: “We are idiots.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>It was really funny.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span></span></p><p style="LINE-HEIGHT: 200%; TEXT-INDENT: 0.5in; MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;">Maybe you just had to be there.</span></p><p style="LINE-HEIGHT: 200%; TEXT-INDENT: 0.5in; MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;">The last danger came as Justin slowed <i>waaay</i> down because he was laughing so hard right then.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Three or four or five cars were approaching along the two inner “lanes,” and I feared the gene pool might just get wiser after all, since Justin was far too close to them and moving slow and—<i>honestly</i>, dude—not even watching just shaking his head while he laughed, so that just made me start laughing too.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>It was like a tickle fight with the Grim Reaper.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>And I didn’t know he was ticklish, ‘cause somehow, we won.</span></p><p style="LINE-HEIGHT: 200%; TEXT-INDENT: 0.5in; MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;">Those last few steps across the asphalt I wanted to hold my arms up like an Olympic sprinter in first.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Maybe I did.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>All I remember was the feeling.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span><i>Nike!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Victory!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span></i>It was glory, and it was worth it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Justin was still closing and wiping his eyes.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>If we’d been offered all of the world right then, we’d have refused and just kept what we had.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>That was all we wanted.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>That was a surprise for a demanding Me.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>But somehow, I’d scattered my greed and my “needs” along the way, and felt nothing but lucky to be there alive.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Which is exactly what I was.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>And maybe no more than usual either—it was just more obvious.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>But if obvious is what it takes, I’ll risk my life every day.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>I hope you’re not thinking, “Don’t push your luck, kid,” but if you are, you should try feeling lucky.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span></span></p><p style="LINE-HEIGHT: 200%; TEXT-INDENT: 0.5in; MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" class="MsoNormal"><o:p><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;"></span></o:p></p><p style="LINE-HEIGHT: 200%; TEXT-INDENT: 0.5in; MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" class="MsoNormal"><o:p><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;"></span></o:p></p><p style="LINE-HEIGHT: 200%; TEXT-INDENT: 0.5in; MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" class="MsoNormal"><o:p><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;"></span></o:p></p><p style="LINE-HEIGHT: 200%; TEXT-INDENT: 0.5in; MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;">*</span></p><p style="LINE-HEIGHT: 200%; TEXT-INDENT: 0.5in; MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;">Justin and I had spent the whole morning looking everywhere for sewers.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>How many people have seen the sewers of Paris?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Better yet, how many have seen the sewers instead of the Eiffel Tower?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>I wish I could say we did, but we never found the sewers.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>We foreswore every other pursuit for their sake, and failed the entire day.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>We also failed to fail at everything else, too, by accidentally sighting ol’ E. T. off in the distance.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Admittedly, I was glad to have glimpsed it—not that I’d lost sight of our quest.</span></p><p style="LINE-HEIGHT: 200%; TEXT-INDENT: 0.5in; MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;">We were questing for the sewers because it struck Justin as hilarious that anyone would go to one of the most beautiful cities on earth and look for its sewers.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>I am dead serious.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>That is why.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Because you people would be appalled.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>And I was too, at first.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>As a disciple of the liberal arts, with no certain chance of returning to their great Temple, Paris, sacrificing the Eiffel Tower and Notre Dame and the Arc de Triomph and <i>especially</i>—what I had wanted to see most of all—the Louvre, sounded like heresy, but the idea sort of grew on me, you know?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>And I supposed since <i>Les Miserables </i>was my favorite book, and we’d heard there was a tour to show where Jean Valjean “would have been,” that I’d at least get that out of it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span></span></p><p style="LINE-HEIGHT: 200%; TEXT-INDENT: 0.5in; MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;">It was like cultural masochism.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Like a syndrome, Justin’s transcendent nonchalance, and it was infectious.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>At first, we just planned to dump the touristic rites of Parisian passage until we found the sewers (and even then, we never planned to use maps or plans after), but the suspension felt so good that we decided to make it permanent.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>We would seek nothing, and only gratefully accept everything.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Worst case, if we got hosed, we would laugh.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Soon, we only wanted to miss more.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Even water and bathrooms.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>“Pain is good.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Extreme pain is extremely good”—I finally got those silly Navy Seals.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>They’re just preaching a sort of negative self-definition.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>A man’s greatness is negatively correlated with his needs: he is only as great as he is independent.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>So every loss proved who we were, and that we were enough.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>So we chose not to need.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>We chose, then we felt free.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span></span></p><p style="LINE-HEIGHT: 200%; TEXT-INDENT: 0.5in; MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;">So even finding the Arc de Triomphe, you see—let alone getting across to it—only happened by accident.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Sure it turned out to be on main street, out there in total plain sight—but we hadn’t known that.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>We’d only known we could go on without it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span></span></p><p style="LINE-HEIGHT: 200%; TEXT-INDENT: 0.5in; MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;">We went wandering first among black lanterned tridents, gothically ornate poles posted like sentries along Le Champs-Élysées; they guarded bridges like the Pont Neuf, which I’d seen long ago in a Renoir painting and pocketed as a permanent dreamshard, one I’d seek until I found.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>That’s what I’m about, and that’s the sort of stuff that hit me there in Paris: I never guessed I’d breathe the living spirit of the French Revolution, but I never guessed it was still living in Paris.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>And I don’t mean its terror, the dark side of it, either, but the idealism of the time: the Scarlet Pimpernels who saved the innocent; the spiritual nobles who fought for those with less; the exaltation of the still soul stirring cry, <i>Libert</i>é<i>! Egalit</i>é<i>! Fraternit</i>é<i>!</i><span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span></span></p><p style="LINE-HEIGHT: 200%; TEXT-INDENT: 0.5in; MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;">I once read a letter from that period by a young woman.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>She recorded a young French noble’s plea that inheritance laws be altered so his failing father could die in peace, knowing all his sons had been cared for, instead of just the oldest.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>This noble was the oldest.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>“What others may think of this young man I cannot say,” said the girl, “but as for myself I am violently in love with him.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Bangarang, I say, and hope to be nobler myself.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span></span></p><p style="LINE-HEIGHT: 200%; TEXT-INDENT: 0.5in; MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;">Maybe there was a touch of nobility in the patent stupidity of Justin and I.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>We were going without, trying to forsake everything, to stand by ourselves.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>The young noble gave up money and status for ideals; we gave up E.T. and Moulin Rouge and the Louvre for ours—everything, that is, except the sewers.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>But they were just our symbol for nothing.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>What could symbolize nothing better than a sewer?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Nothing.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Fortunately, that’s what we found.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span></span></p><p style="LINE-HEIGHT: 200%; TEXT-INDENT: 0.5in; MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;">*</span></p><p style="LINE-HEIGHT: 200%; TEXT-INDENT: 0.5in; MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" class="MsoNormal"><o:p><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;"></span></o:p></p><p style="LINE-HEIGHT: 200%; TEXT-INDENT: 0.5in; MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" class="MsoNormal"><o:p><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;"></span></o:p></p><p style="LINE-HEIGHT: 200%; TEXT-INDENT: 0.5in; MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" class="MsoNormal"><o:p><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;"></span></o:p></p><p style="LINE-HEIGHT: 200%; TEXT-INDENT: 0.5in; MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;">Justin’s not much for religion lately.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>We’ve always been best friends, but I think it’s even more important to be a good one now.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>I wanted nothing in Paris more than the Louvre, but I wouldn’t have even been there if it hadn’t been for him—I was there to be and be with a good friend.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>So who was I to object when in beatific splendour the sewer quest appeared yonder in the heavens, and Justin obviously hankered on the pious crusade to go?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>As if France should trump camaraderie.</span></p><p style="LINE-HEIGHT: 200%; TEXT-INDENT: 0.5in; MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;">Well, so that was cool, but of course the sewer quest failed.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Not to fear!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>All was not in vain.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Justin was quite content with total failure and was beaming like a sunned peach pie, and I found the French Revolution, like I said before—at least its elevating spirit.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span></span></p><p style="LINE-HEIGHT: 200%; TEXT-INDENT: 0.5in; MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;">It hissed out of the stately portals facing the cobblestony Champs-Élysées; their columns and Neoclassical façades were endless.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>The same spirit poured from the lips of heroes, monuments of the old France, guardians immortalized in stone and glory—even Thomas Jefferson was there.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>The true France embraced all who’d fight for freedom.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Every detail of the scenery seemed to bring me deeper into the vision.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>It was everywhere and everything.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span></span></p><p style="LINE-HEIGHT: 200%; TEXT-INDENT: 0.5in; MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes"></span>It was the wind that whipped about the tricolor: red, white, and blue broad vertical stripes streamed proudly over the Seine; it was the memory of that hero Enjolras, an idealist to the end, wrapped in those colors on the barricades, back during <i>Les Miserables</i> in London; it was the dreamshard that I’d finally found.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>It was the true spirit of France, and it was alive, and while we felt it we were.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span></span></p><p style="LINE-HEIGHT: 200%; TEXT-INDENT: 0.5in; MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;">For Justin’s sake and with his help, I had hoped for nothing; but then I found all this.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>It was as if life had slapped and told me, “<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal">This </i>is how you dream.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>And during these kaleidoscopic visions of enduring, classic glory, revolving refractions of Le Champs-Élysées, we looked down the miles ahead, and somehow saw some more: an arch—could it be?—Napoleon’s, over his twin triumphant towers.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>That feeling: it’s something far too rare.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>It’s the joy known exclusively to those who’ve had their very brightest hopes fail, like candles do in daylight.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span></span></p><p style="LINE-HEIGHT: 200%; TEXT-INDENT: 0.5in; MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;">*</span></p><p style="LINE-HEIGHT: 200%; TEXT-INDENT: 0.5in; MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" class="MsoNormal"><o:p><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;"></span></o:p></p><p style="LINE-HEIGHT: 200%; TEXT-INDENT: 0.5in; MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" class="MsoNormal"><o:p><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;"></span></o:p></p><p style="LINE-HEIGHT: 200%; TEXT-INDENT: 0.5in; MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" class="MsoNormal"><o:p><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;"></span></o:p></p><p style="LINE-HEIGHT: 200%; TEXT-INDENT: 0.5in; MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;">I wasn’t typically like that—free to find nothing as enough.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>I typically dream perfect dreams and then insist that life measure up, and in my demanding I become the slave to myself.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>I’m trying to see the quality of the sewer quest, my most liberating dream of late.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span></span></p><p style="LINE-HEIGHT: 200%; TEXT-INDENT: 0.5in; MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;">In order to verify I’ve “lived” my burdensome dreams, I rely on checklists: as a tourist in London pre-Paris I depended heavily on these to reassure me I’d enjoyed myself.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Had I been to the National Museum?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Had I seen the remnants of the smuggled Parthenon?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Had I brushed the daub, wattle, and thatch of the new Globe Theatre, with my reverently quivering fingers?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Had I got myself into Parliament like a spiritual corset, and been gratefully asphyxiated by its smotheringly formal air?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Check, check, check.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>I could say I had.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Therefore, I had enjoyed London.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>How could I not have? Yes, I had enjoyed London, because how could I not have?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>But somehow not missing felt like much less than finding.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span></span></p><p style="LINE-HEIGHT: 200%; TEXT-INDENT: 0.5in; MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;">Maybe that’s why so much of what I did didn’t matter to me.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>But that didn’t make sense, because they should have.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>I was supposed to do them because they were supposed to be good.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Maybe I shouldn’t have tried to plagiarize other people’s lives, the way I just plagiarized that phrase of my friend’s.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span></span></p><p style="LINE-HEIGHT: 200%; TEXT-INDENT: 0.5in; MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;">I probably would have followed my own taste, my feelings, myself, but another alien, artificial feeling—composed of scholarly duty and touristic expectations and Heaven knows what else—kept me from feeling free to.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>It happened all through my study abroad in England.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span></span></p><p style="LINE-HEIGHT: 200%; TEXT-INDENT: 0.5in; MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;">Wordsworth’s home, Rydal Mount, was a boring place, other than his garden.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Not so the nearby stone and ancient chapel, and its medieval crenellations, which encased me in a reverie.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>The point of crossing Coniston Water was of course to visit Ruskin’s mansion and his gardens, so why were the two jovial ferrymen the best part of my week?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Chaucer was supposed to be the greater author, but it was reading the intimate essays of my friends that flooded me with feelings.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>But these feelings didn’t make sense.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Why should my friend’s words mean more to me than a master’s?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>I thought I was listening to reason when I prioritized what was “supposed to be” important.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Weren’t these things on the checklist and hadn’t they good reason?</span></p><p style="LINE-HEIGHT: 200%; TEXT-INDENT: 0.5in; MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;">I was stunned to learn in France that I should have gone to war with these voices, the tyrannizing dreams.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>I should have fought for freedom.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>And in France I saw I could have won the war, because I did without.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>I finally saw when Justin showed me.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>I could do without.</span></p><p style="LINE-HEIGHT: 200%; TEXT-INDENT: 0.5in; MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;">*</span></p><p style="LINE-HEIGHT: 200%; MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" class="MsoNormal"><o:p><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;"></span></o:p></p><p style="LINE-HEIGHT: 200%; MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" class="MsoNormal"><o:p><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;"></span></o:p></p><p style="LINE-HEIGHT: 200%; MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" class="MsoNormal"><o:p><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;"></span></o:p></p><p style="LINE-HEIGHT: 200%; TEXT-INDENT: 0.5in; MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;">By the time we’d exited the isle of our boy ‘Leon (as in, Napo-), I was wholly in the groove with Justin and his program.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>We’d wandered past Notre Dame Cathedral, which was near our one star hotel and its unforgettably buttery bread, near scalding breakfast cocoa and jam and hazelnut spread; then wandered among artisans and street vendors backlit by the sunny rippling Seine; then jay-conquered Napoleon’s Arc in our own triumphant fashion; and were now headed we knew not where, ready to love Paris however it came to greet us.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>That we had no checklist, directions, or even destination—that much was certain—but what we did have, that I do not know.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>I am still trying to articulate just what Justin’s—and then our—program was.</span></p><p style="LINE-HEIGHT: 200%; TEXT-INDENT: 0.5in; MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;">The best I can say is that Justin’s joy was independent of other things; in fact, it was probably in being independent of other things.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>The external world was nothing but something to transcend.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>We almost hoped for a backhand from fate, because we wanted the chance to not flinch.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Maybe that’s why we kept tempting it, almost trying to ruin our day into glory.</span></p><p style="LINE-HEIGHT: 200%; TEXT-INDENT: 0.5in; MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;">*</span></p><p style="LINE-HEIGHT: 200%; TEXT-INDENT: 0.5in; MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" class="MsoNormal"><o:p><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;"></span></o:p></p><p style="LINE-HEIGHT: 200%; TEXT-INDENT: 0.5in; MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" class="MsoNormal"><o:p><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;"></span></o:p></p><p style="LINE-HEIGHT: 200%; TEXT-INDENT: 0.5in; MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" class="MsoNormal"><o:p><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;"></span></o:p></p><p style="LINE-HEIGHT: 200%; TEXT-INDENT: 0.5in; MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;">By the way, the kindly French policewomen cleared up a very confusing matter that spared us the trouble of beating “Frogger” twice.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Longsuffering smiles and fingers pointing to a tunnel illuminated everything: I’d been so mystified by those women pushing strollers on the memorial island orbited by 8 lanes of asphalt: “They must just run really fast,” I had thought.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>“Like, <i>really</i>.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>We looked as sheepish and apologetic as we could, but frankly, we preferred our way.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>I think they thought we thought that, because we kept laughing.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>So contritely.</span></p><p style="LINE-HEIGHT: 200%; TEXT-INDENT: 0.5in; MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;">I think that was the moment I really stepped onboard with Justin.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>I was not so keen to take the fun way over the first time, but as we looked back across the asphalt, I realized I wanted something.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>I wanted to run back across.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Unfortunately laughing stupidly and nudging my friend and facing the roaring roundabout again was a little conspicuous.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>If not the cops might not have floated over and given us the eye—it’s as clear in French as English—which invited us to consider using the tunnel, which we did, neither of us wanting to.</span></p><p style="LINE-HEIGHT: 200%; TEXT-INDENT: 0.5in; MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;">*</span></p><p style="LINE-HEIGHT: 200%; MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" class="MsoNormal"><o:p><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;"></span></o:p></p><p style="LINE-HEIGHT: 200%; MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" class="MsoNormal"><o:p><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;"></span></o:p></p><p style="LINE-HEIGHT: 200%; MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" class="MsoNormal"><o:p><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;"></span></o:p></p><p style="LINE-HEIGHT: 200%; TEXT-INDENT: 0.5in; MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;">We exulted in our freedom, wandering no less happily than haphazardly past a museum under construction; sharpish businessmen swooping like a biker gang, except they were on balancing scooters; an impressive public square—a seeming sanctuary of the Enlightenment in its architecture, with countless ordered windows gazing from several floors towards the center; an intricate, sculpted pillar in the center of the classical square—a story winding up it like a procession of Egyptian hieroglyphs (I thought I’d heard of it in Humanities 201, that it was inspired by Trajan’s column in Rome, etc. and so forth, but truly didn’t know); and displays of all the <i>avant garde</i> in fashion, which Justin definitely would have whimsically purchased had the stores not all been closed—neon green sweaters under blue suit jackets.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>This was tourism.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span></span></p><p style="LINE-HEIGHT: 200%; TEXT-INDENT: 0.5in; MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;">And it’s not that I didn’t love London, but it didn’t feel the same.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>With such a unique chance, standing in the heart of my literary homeland, I came to feel I had to have it all, then I expected it, and then I got just a little less.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>But the problem was I was in the negative, and the gap between the “it” I didn’t get and what I finally got was my total sum of dissatisfaction: the surplus good I hadn’t expected in Paris summed up my gratification.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>My sights had been low, that is to say, no higher than “number 2,” to children, or than “feces,” to the scientist.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>And yes, I can say in the midst of Paris’s glory I had hoped for nothing more.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>I wanted diddily squat.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>And once I set life up to exceed all my expectations, it tipped its hat, “<i>Monsieur</i>,” and cordially obliged.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span></span></p><p style="LINE-HEIGHT: 200%; TEXT-INDENT: 0.5in; MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" class="MsoNormal"><o:p><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;"></span></o:p></p><p style="LINE-HEIGHT: 200%; TEXT-INDENT: 0.5in; MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" class="MsoNormal"><o:p><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;"></span></o:p></p><p style="LINE-HEIGHT: 200%; MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" class="MsoNormal"><o:p><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;"></span></o:p></p><p style="LINE-HEIGHT: 200%; TEXT-INDENT: 0.5in; MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;">*</span></p><p style="LINE-HEIGHT: 200%; TEXT-INDENT: 0.5in; MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;">Anything is everything when nothing is expected.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Imagine nothing.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Now imagine that it’s gone.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Everything is a black void, but the void is not absence, because there is no such thing as presence to be missing.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>There is simply nothing; it stretches on as far as the forever that there never was.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>What is the worth to that world of a single, searing candle?</span></p><p style="LINE-HEIGHT: 200%; TEXT-INDENT: 0.5in; MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;">I think I am blind to everything beneath my expectations. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes"></span>Anything less than them is nothing, nothing more than dues.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Maybe London wasn’t dark because it lacked candles, because it didn’t, but because I expected chandeliers.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>I need to need less or I’ll always feel entitled, but how can I do that?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>All I know is that somehow in Paris I felt different—and I know there wasn’t more light, just more courage in the darkness.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span></span></p><p style="LINE-HEIGHT: 200%; TEXT-INDENT: 0.5in; MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;">I faced the darkness for this first time in a long time because Justin did.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Could I go without?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Could I handle nothing?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>I opened up my eyes and discovered that my existential abyss wasn’t as empty as I thought.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Maybe I had enough inside me to handle nothing after all.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>That was the glory of it all.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>And then, clinging to that revelation, my friend and I saw the Arc.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>It was adorned by many figures.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>The first and highest was a fearless, flying angel—she must have been the spirit of old France.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Her eyes were fire and her sword shot forward; her waxy voice sent out the call for other men to follow.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Statues beneath her did.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>The megalith towered and shone, by the unknown soldier’s everlasting flame.</span></p><p style="LINE-HEIGHT: 200%; TEXT-INDENT: 0.5in; MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;">*</span></p><p style="LINE-HEIGHT: 200%; TEXT-INDENT: 0.5in; MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" class="MsoNormal"><o:p><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;"></span></o:p></p><p style="LINE-HEIGHT: 200%; TEXT-INDENT: 0.5in; MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" class="MsoNormal"><o:p><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;"></span></o:p></p><p style="LINE-HEIGHT: 200%; MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" class="MsoNormal"><o:p><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;"></span></o:p></p><p style="LINE-HEIGHT: 200%; TEXT-INDENT: 0.5in; MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;">We came to a park after the Arc and the great square and the balancing scooters.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>It was beneath the street, like a gargantuan sunken living room, as wide as several city blocks.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Just the wall of trees surrounding it made for walking trails and picnic spots.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>We descended through them on white steps, then started at the sprawling circumference of a peaceful, almost stationary pool; its gelatinous water slowly reflected disturbances like a fiery, mellow mirror.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>It was crowned by a fountain-like pedestal in its center.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>It felt like we’d found the fountain of France, the spring of that deep culture’s essence.</span></p><p style="LINE-HEIGHT: 200%; TEXT-INDENT: 0.5in; MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;">Not uncomfortable wiry chairs were scattered around the contained lake, occupied by ordinary citizens who lounged mingling cigarette smoke with communal ruminations on art and life and deep stuff.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Scruffy faces and classy clothes worn with abandon bespoke the philosophical preoccupations of the three or four late twenty-something dudes.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Cool.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>They didn’t look too appreciative of our unappreciation of life’s tragedy.</span></p><p style="LINE-HEIGHT: 200%; TEXT-INDENT: 0.5in; MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;">At least a dozen pillars, capped by vivacious statues, composed a large concentric ring around flat stones which in turn surrounded the pool.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>The statues alluded to Greek and Roman myths, and I did my best to recall and recount them for Justin, he being a wealthy computer networker and not a liberal arts student who was just let inside his personal Elysium (incidentally Le Champs-<i>Élysées</i> refers to the ancient western heaven).</span></p><p style="LINE-HEIGHT: 200%; TEXT-INDENT: 0.5in; MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;">What I’m trying to depict are a mere half of the things we referred to at once as the intensity of our elation melted words into inefficacy, compelling us to summon the forceful diction of sign language, by which we indicated, or rather, painfully slap-shouted, through that venerable American tradition and token—that is to say, the high five—a single, enthusiastic word: “Jackpot.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span></span></p><p style="LINE-HEIGHT: 200%; TEXT-INDENT: 0.5in; MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;">For so it was.</span></p><p style="LINE-HEIGHT: 200%; TEXT-INDENT: 0.5in; MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;">*</span></p><p style="LINE-HEIGHT: 200%; MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" class="MsoNormal"><o:p><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;"></span></o:p></p><p style="LINE-HEIGHT: 200%; MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" class="MsoNormal"><o:p><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;"></span></o:p></p><p style="LINE-HEIGHT: 200%; MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" class="MsoNormal"><o:p><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;"></span></o:p></p><p style="LINE-HEIGHT: 200%; TEXT-INDENT: 0.5in; MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;">We second-hand smoked the angst of the twenty-somethings.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>We took pictures of the statues.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Then we saw that from one direction, looking across the pool, our old friend, the Arc de Triomphe, was a mile or two in the distance, down a gallery of trees which chivalrously proffered protection the entire journey down.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>The anticipation necessary to plan such an achievement staggered me.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>This was a culture of taste.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Birds bathed on the fountain of France and on the dying sun’s reflection; clouds were piercing the golden orb and its purple-orange gore was falling on the forest; it hovered almost perfectly above the glowing Arc at the far end of the gallery.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Almost like candlefire.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Except it was about a candle to the left—almost infuriatingly close.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>I sort of tried to look at it sideways as if that would help.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>No.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>But there was something hilarious about the irony of it being that close to serendipitous perfection and then failing so unbearably.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>I showed it to Justin and we laughed.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>“Heck!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>I mean, seriously, we’ve had <i>everything</i> go our way”—or nothing, anyways—so it was so easy to gracefully handle this one.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>“It’s totally close enough!”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span></span></p><p style="LINE-HEIGHT: 200%; TEXT-INDENT: 0.5in; MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;">I never thought you could exceed perfection, but maybe that’s what that moment did.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>It felt like perfection was what we’d already found, and everything else was just a bonus.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Life was just a bonus.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>I had a wonderful revelation: in the mode I was, my <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal">initial</i> thought hadn’t been how far away the sun was from perfection, but how much closer than it had to be.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Like I had said, everything had gone “our way,” but maybe that was just because our way was nothing.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>About then I remembered E.T.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>He must have been moping somewhere beyond the trees, utterly transcended, his absence a reminder of just who he’d been transcended by.</span></p><p style="LINE-HEIGHT: 200%; TEXT-INDENT: 0.5in; MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;">Somehow though our success’s secret was wanting nothing, what I wanted most was to want nothing more; meaning, I wanted to know how I could do it all again.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes"></span></span></p><p style="LINE-HEIGHT: 200%; TEXT-INDENT: 0.5in; MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;">I think the way it works is joy is a formula; life is a fraction.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>It numerates my circumstances, and I denominate my demands.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>I want “more” like anyone, I believe, but too often I forget that the quotient is the point and focus on the numerator.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>“If only life would give me more.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>I’m no whiz at math, but I know that life could give me tenfold what I have now and the total would still only be a number.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span></span></p><p style="LINE-HEIGHT: 200%; TEXT-INDENT: 0.5in; MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;">But what quotient will I find when I transcend the earth, and stand upon it free, a whole number over zero?</span></p><p style="LINE-HEIGHT: 200%; TEXT-INDENT: 0.5in; MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;">What will I feel then?</span></p><p style="LINE-HEIGHT: 200%; TEXT-INDENT: 0.5in; MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;">*</span></p><p style="LINE-HEIGHT: 200%; MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" class="MsoNormal"><o:p><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;"></span></o:p></p><p style="LINE-HEIGHT: 200%; MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" class="MsoNormal"><o:p><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;"></span></o:p></p><p style="LINE-HEIGHT: 200%; MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" class="MsoNormal"><o:p><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;"></span></o:p></p><p style="LINE-HEIGHT: 200%; TEXT-INDENT: 0.5in; MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;">Joy jerked us about like a taze charge: we visited and revisited half the statues.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Honestly, despite all the time I’ve thought, I don’t know why we were so thrilled, I just know we were; we just were.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>None of the details were right, but this was the dream I’d had for Europe.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>The dream was feeling how I felt.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>This was what the checklist would supposedly produce; of course, now I wasn’t even checking it.</span></p><p style="LINE-HEIGHT: 200%; TEXT-INDENT: 0.5in; MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;">Half our pictures that day were of our garden: pictures of the statues; of the guys smoking and forlornly philosophizing (whom we cleverly captured by posing near them as if they were, by strange coincidence, there, and we just loved the pool—a trick pioneered on mullet-hunts); of the Arc at the end of the forested gallery; of the single, searing sunset still flickering above it.</span></p><p style="LINE-HEIGHT: 200%; TEXT-INDENT: 0.5in; MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;">And then it was time to go.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>It was dark—just past ten.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>We looked at a model of the park on the far side of the garden, up out of the sunken living room again, and turned to scan the field of our triumph for the final time, such fine and impressive work.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>There were jaw-bustingly big grins, and lots of hearty American shoulder slapping.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Also there was a psychotic statue called “Cain and His Sons” which scared me in a way that Darwin never could.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>But even that was fine.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Nothing could have not been.</span></p><p style="LINE-HEIGHT: 200%; TEXT-INDENT: 0.5in; MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;">So we couldn’t leave.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>We ran back down for one more picture, wanting to baste in our blessedness just a little longer.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>We walked directly away from the Arc this time—East—up strong white steps that were as broad as the pool.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>As we ascended, a large building materialized, its classic architecture as beautiful as the public square we’d found earlier, but more regal and overwhelming.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>I had no idea what it was: it looked like a small scale Versailles; its four-floor palatial wings gradually flanked us like pincers.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span></span></p><p style="LINE-HEIGHT: 200%; TEXT-INDENT: 0.5in; MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;">Our approach was inevitable: we couldn’t resist adventure at this point, though exhausted from hours and miles of travel, mostly walking.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Justin had even done it in dress shoes and his ridiculous suit—Italian, with reflective pinstripes (“I got it as a joke, then lost all my luggage on a train,” he laughed).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Getting hosed is the best.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span></span></p><p style="LINE-HEIGHT: 200%; TEXT-INDENT: 0.5in; MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;">We would have had no clue what the palace was had I not read <i>The Da Vinci Code.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span></i>Thank heavens for the classics.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>An unusual shape appeared which I only remembered from the book because it seemed so weird to me then.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Seeing it in the flesh stopped me like a slap.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>“No,” I thought, “No way.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Could this really be?”</span></p><p style="LINE-HEIGHT: 200%; TEXT-INDENT: 0.5in; MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;">After wandering with total abandon through the fifth largest city in Europe, like disoriented six-year-olds swinging at piñatas, somehow we’d connected.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>I just couldn’t believe it, and burst out laughing.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Justin chuckled, almost a bit impatiently, until he finally got me to tell him why.</span></p><p style="LINE-HEIGHT: 200%; TEXT-INDENT: 0.5in; MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;">We’d been celebrating for an hour and a half, fifty meters from El Dorado, because we’d found silver dollars in its parking lot.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>And despite that, we still could have made it in—fifteen minutes earlier.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>We <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal">definitely </i>could have made it in if we’d realized the party wasn’t in our park, because our park and gallery were just miles of cultivated royal carpet—they were just the entranceway.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>But life was great as martyrs, because we lived for irony.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span></span></p><p style="LINE-HEIGHT: 200%; TEXT-INDENT: 0.5in; MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;">The weird object was a pyramid.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>The building was the Louvre.</span></p>Bentley Snowhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12276828854041057296noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-243203723024167546.post-69232816892435651302010-01-18T05:56:00.000-08:002010-01-18T05:58:53.478-08:00Long for the following reasons: a visit to Gethsemane, and the Garden Tomb, and Mark's House, and getting to know a Holocaust survivor<p style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 10pt" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:Calibri;">*Hey, this was going to be a letter to my mom but I thought I'd let it turn into a mass email (the thought occurred halfway through, perhaps?), and journal and whatever.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Well, this is more just tale relating style.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Maybe I should blog more this way.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>I'll put this on my blog too.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Anyway, here it is, if you've ever wondered what it was like to wander around Jerusalem.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>And sorry Mom, that this started personal and then I meant to tell you about it and had it change and never got around to making it personal again at the end--I'll just tell you soon.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Bent</span></p><p style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 10pt" class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes"><span style="font-family:Calibri;"></span></span> </p><p style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 10pt" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:Calibri;">Mom,</span></p><p style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 10pt" class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes"><span style="font-family:Calibri;"></span></span> </p><p style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 10pt" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:Calibri;">Thank you for the email and update :).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>I wanted to write you a big response so I didn't write right after I read it, but now I think I gotta just reply as well as I can.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span></span></p><p style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 10pt" class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes"><span style="font-family:Calibri;"></span></span> </p><p style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 10pt" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:Calibri;">Yesterday was wild/awesome.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Sunday is our free day, which is really, really weird.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>It's weird when Church hits you right after you are in school (as in no day between routine work/school and church), and it might be even weirder on Sunday when you're lost, running on the rooftops like Aladdin trying to get back before sundown because East Jerusalem is dangerous--which is what we did yesterday.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>The Kidron Valley (spelling?), is on the east side of the old city of Jerusalem; the Jerusalem Center is on the Mount of Olives (or Mount Scopus, if you're Jewish--or talking to a Jew :).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Gethsemane is within walking distance of the Center.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>It's about a mile to the south, just south of the Orson Hyde Memorial Garden (or whatever it's called: he was the Apostle who dedicated the Holy Land for the preaching of the Gospel in the 1800s).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>The caretaker at Gethsemane lets Mormons in a private part of the garden--the main part is fenced off and commercialized--because the students before us were so stellar.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>We had a neat chance to meditate in there for awhile on last Thursday or so.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>We read in the Gospels about the Atonement, then 3 Ne. 11.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>It was cool to feel not just the sense of a deep price being paid but the reward coming which had made it all worth it--it was cool to get out of that slump that most of Christianity seems to still be in, all those pictures of "The Passion" etc. that are so disgustingly painful and dreary.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Afterwards we sang a few hymns and it was wonderful.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>"Alive"--that's about the coolest word I can think to describe a church, and it's cool that that's the most prominent feature of ours--well, "true and living," but maybe those are the same thing.</span></p><p style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 10pt" class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes"><span style="font-family:Calibri;"></span></span> </p><p style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 10pt" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:Calibri;">We also went to the Garden Tomb--on Sabbath (Saturday).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>There were some hilarious and irresistibly winning old British men running tours there.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>So cheerful--and they'd (at least our guide, whose name was Roy) testify all the time.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>"But the tomb is empty now--Amen!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Right?"<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Then he told some joke about how Joseph of Arimathea's wife was upset with him for giving away the tomb and he said, "Don't worry darling, it's just for a couple days!"<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>We laughed, then he answered, "It wouldn't be funny if it hadn't been."<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Hahaha.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Later I overheard another guide talking about how he still used feet and miles etc.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>(He was pretty old.)<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>"If the Lord would have wanted me to use the metric system, he'd have had ten disciples!"<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>They were quite a hoot--over and over and over.</span></p><p style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 10pt" class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes"><span style="font-family:Calibri;"></span></span> </p><p style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 10pt" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:Calibri;">It turns out scholars believe the Church of the Holy Sepulchre to be the real resting place of Jesus during those three days after his crucifixion, but all the videos we use are of the Garden Tomb, which is still a possibility, because it's so much more beautiful.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>I think I actually heard once about President Hinckley or someone saying, "It was here," but that might have been on where he was born.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Not sure.</span></p><p style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 10pt" class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes"><span style="font-family:Calibri;"></span></span> </p><p style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 10pt" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:Calibri;">Regardless the coolest part was actually singing hymns after.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>I'm not sure why it was so cool--several reasons, I guess.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>It was cool to be singing there, but I think the coolest part was being there and realizing that it was the singing, it was the hymns, that really made the experience--those things that I've been doing all my life, they're the things that really bring the power.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>It doesn't matter where he died; it doesn't matter where I am--where he died or not--it just matters if he has my heart with him or not.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>We just sat there and sang--for about 40 minutes.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Hymn after hymn after hymn.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>He is Risen.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>I Believe in Christ.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>I Know that My Redeemer Lives.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>In Humility Our Savior (mine).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Nearer My God to Thee.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Be Still My Soul.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Other tour groups just stopped to listen.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>I really felt like we were teaching, even though technically we're not supposed to, and technically we weren't.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>But maybe the letter of the law isn't the most important way to reach a people anyway.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>If the Spirit of the Gospel is the most important thing to follow, maybe it's also the most important thing to convey or to share.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>I feel like all who heard that will know there is a people out there who worships God in sincerity, who believes he lives, who are happy.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>I do not know that I am worthy to be one of the few people who gets this experience, but I knew I was supposed to come and am doing my best to experience it all in gratitude and awareness.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>I wish, like Elder Holland, that everyone could come here.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>I'm glad, as I said earlier, that not everyone needs to to find the best part of the Gospel, to know the truth, to feel alive.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>I noticed a man sitting on the bench as we were singing.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>He stayed the entire time, just watching us.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>I felt sort of like a beacon, right then.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>This guy is seeing something that maybe he's never seen before.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Maybe he's been wondering what more he could find.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>I certainly felt like I was living life right then.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>It's like Ulysses says in my favorite poem of all time (Ulysses, by Tennyson): "As though to breathe were life!"<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>We were doing more than breathing.</span></p><p style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 10pt" class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes"><span style="font-family:Calibri;"></span></span> </p><p style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 10pt" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:Calibri;">And the gardens were just beautiful anyways--I would have loved it even if it hadn't been in the Holy City.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>I never suspected there would be so much green growth here.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Turns out, winter is the rainy season here, so we scored the most beautiful time of year.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>That's something that really matters to me; I don't know why, I just really feel elevated when there is a lot of natural, flourishing life around me.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Maybe that's why I love England so much.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>It just feels right.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Anyway, it was really nice to find some of that here.</span></p><p style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 10pt" class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes"><span style="font-family:Calibri;"></span></span> </p><p style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 10pt" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:Calibri;">It was green in the Kidron Valley, which Jesus crossed on his way over to Gethsemane.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>I plucked a twig to bring home.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>The part that's cool is that seeing that these sites exist shakes you up at the scriptures--"Wait, the Kidron Valley is real.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>So the stuff the Bible says happened here..."<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>The Bible ceases to be abstract, it ceases to be theoretical, or fictional.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>The places become real, so the events, tethered to that reality, become more real themselves.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>They're not just stories; they're History.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>They happened.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Man that's cool.</span></p><p style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 10pt" class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes"><span style="font-family:Calibri;"></span></span> </p><p style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 10pt" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:Calibri;">A Holocaust survivor came and hung out with us last night.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Rather, he spoke to us for an hour--he's 92--then couldn't tear himself away to go to his world-class piano concert, "because he loves people," as his caretaker said to us.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>We weren't just holding him hostage--he held us.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>He was a darling old guy with windy white hair and a nose that drooped a little when he smiled, which was usually.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>He told us his story for an hour, then said he wanted to keep talking with us after if we had more questions, and would just go to the concert late.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>It came and went.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>All he wanted, he said, was for everyone to believe in God.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>"I don't care what you call him, just believe in him," essentially.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>It was amazing to me.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>He had been to both Auschwitz and Dochau.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>I have been to Dochau.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>It all flashed back through my head like a very morbid nightmare.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>This guy, Elias, the loving, merciful, energetic jokester had been there--he had been there when it was Dochau.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>It was a moment of horrible truth when he first told us he'd been sent there (to Auschwitz first): he said it, then he reached for his sleeve.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>I knew what it was.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>I just thought, "No.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>No that can't be real."<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>But it came--the deepest, darkest scar you've ever seen: it was green.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>"B 1259."<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>That's who he had been.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>"I just want people to know what happened," he repeatedly said.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>"They have to know or they won't learn."<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>He was an amazing man.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Apparently he'd always been able to forgive the Germans--as his friend, Brother Allen, our doctor, told us--even when he was in the camps.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>We looked to him for an explanation and he just said, "I love people.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>And it happened, there was nothing I could do about it, so I moved on."<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>It was pretty wild.</span></p><p style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 10pt" class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes"><span style="font-family:Calibri;"></span></span> </p><p style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 10pt" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:Calibri;">It was wild to see the other side.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>It was wild because I've seen so many instances of Israeli (seeming) unkindness here in the Holy Land.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>"Settlers" will move into Muslim neighborhoods, essentially just because they can, to slowly and unviolently push their boundaries further--it's essentially the war being continued covertly.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>And it's not like the Muslims were the ones to kick out the Jews in the first place, either--we didn't take Israel from the aggressors and give it "back" to the Jews; we took it from another innocent people and gave it to an earlier (innocent) one.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>There are too many good men on too many sides.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Things are black and white, but there are three dimensions.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>One side of Judaism is greedy; another never for a moment didn't forgive the Nazis.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>One side of the Muslims here is violent; another is warm, humble, and hospitable, and watching what is their homeland (and Holy Land) too, now, slowly being stolen while talks of reconciliation are dragged out.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>What would I do if everyone I loved and everything I held sacred was being threatened, being slowly being stolen away, blatantly, in a "legal" way that was, at least in terms of the spirit of the law, infuriating--and I was helpless to counter it through legal ways?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>I don't know.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>I guess I'm just saying I can see much better where they're coming from.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>If only they could work together: but it's just like in Gandhi where the Muslims and the Hindus couldn't trust each other: sad.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>And hard.</span></p><p style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 10pt" class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes"><span style="font-family:Calibri;"></span></span> </p><p style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 10pt" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:Calibri;">Ok, well I've turned that into a rambling soap box for far long enough.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>What I also and actually originally wanted to say was this: we met a tribe of 7-year-olds playing in the Kidron Valley north of the Silwan Village on the East and City of David on the West (both of which are very, very Muslim, and have been for many, many years--kind of a surprise, to think of the City of David like that, huh?).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>There was a ridge about 1/3 of the way up the green valley's slopes.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>We had just passed (Dan King, Alyson Shamrell, and I) Absalom's Pillar, and finished reading his father, David's lament over him: "O Absalom, Absalom, my son, my son.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Would that I had died for thee, O Absalom, my son, my son."<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Powerful.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>I always wondered about that.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>I just don't know if I can see a murderer-never-to-see-the-highest-Heaven ever feeling like that.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Maybe he's not as lost as we think.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Maybe he is, but I hope he isn't.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>I really hope he isn't.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>We saw his tomb later that day too, and read 1 Sam 17:45 (paraphrased): "And David said unto the Philistine, 'Thou comest to me with a sword, and with a shield, and with a spear, but I come to you in the name of the Lord of Hosts, the God of the armies of Israel whom thou hast defied.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>This day with the Lord deliver you into my hands...and David hasted to meet the Philistine..."<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>So cool.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>It was a holy site, the sign said.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Jews were praying there and touching posts with scriptures on them as they left, and wearing phylacteries (I can't recall if those are the things on their foreheads or wound around their arms--either way I saw both).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span></span></p><p style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 10pt" class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes"><span style="font-family:Calibri;"></span></span> </p><p style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 10pt" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:Calibri;">Ok, anyway, the Lord of the Flies crew there in the Kidron.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>It looked like they were committing arson.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Turned out they were roasting potatoes and sweet onions on a fire that may have been somewhat or muchwhat started and sustained by burning trash.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>They called us down and we went to hang out, even though we're not supposed to have any real contact with kids now because of H1N1 going around (hideous--I was so excited for meeting kids on the street and hanging out with them, talking to them in Arabic, playing soccer, etc.).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>We decided to make it really, really quick, and avoid contact.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>First thing that happened was they swarmed around us all excited and their leader offered us a mostly peeled onion.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Here, there are several layers left, tall white American "Onion boys" (or whatever Donkey calls Shrek).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>I couldn't believe how nice it was of them.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>We tried to take a picture with them and one kid jumped up yelling, "No NO NO" for a reason we couldn't at all tell why.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>"Shekel!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Shekel!" they started chanting.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Oh.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Yeah.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Now it makes sense.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>So we gave them one (hardly anything, but two of us really didn't have anything), but when we tried again they still shout-protested "No!" or at least their main PR guy did.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>So, out of respect for the rural lifestyle of the indigenous (7 yr old) Kidron people, we decided not to take pictures, in order to preserve their natural, unexposed state.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>We laughed and thanked them then left.</span></p><p style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 10pt" class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes"><span style="font-family:Calibri;"></span></span> </p><p style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 10pt" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:Calibri;">We also stumbled onto Mark's house, just within the Old City's wall, on the south side of Jerusalem.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Totally random.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>We were winding down whichever street looked most aesthetically pleasing to us, or exotically arabic and aladdin-esque.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>When I read the sign though it hit me: "Mark's House" and above it: "The Upper Room."<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Whoa.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>I know what happened there: and the scene from The Lamb of God flashed through my head.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>The Last Supper.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>That was where Jesus instituted the Sacrament.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Wow.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Wow.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>It wasn't like most of these places.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>It actually looked less like the video than you could imagine; it was probably one of the least correct looking places I'd seen or been to here, but it felt better than most, or almost all.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>I don't know why.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>But just as soon as I read that sign, I felt it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>A man gestured us into the service that was just concluding there.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Men left.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>We read the account of Jesus washing his disciples' feet sitting on benches in the back of the church.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>The father patiently waited, apparently (I wasn't sure what he was up to), and then left too when we were done.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>"Not my feet only but my hands and my head also."<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>It is so cool to reconsider every single story in light of a physical reality, the physical reality of the place where all of it happened.</span></p><p style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 10pt" class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes"><span style="font-family:Calibri;"></span></span> </p><p style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 10pt" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:Calibri;">Too cool.</span></p><p style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 10pt" class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes"><span style="font-family:Calibri;"></span></span> </p><p style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 10pt" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:Calibri;">Well I must go, but I rather wish that all of you could come.</span></p><p style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 10pt" class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes"><span style="font-family:Calibri;"></span></span> </p><p style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 10pt" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:Calibri;">Love,</span></p><p style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 10pt" class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes"><span style="font-family:Calibri;"></span></span> </p><p style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 10pt" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:Calibri;">Bentley</span></p>Bentley Snowhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12276828854041057296noreply@blogger.com3