oodalolly!

Parallel Parking PR

2012-01-23T11:41:00.000-08:00

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.

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

ESPN + Iceland

2012-01-23T11:30:00.000-08:00

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.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qmXMA34CeoQ

The only thing that beats free laundry money

2012-01-21T22:58:00.001-08:00

I 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.)

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.

You have six fingers on your right hand--someone was looking for you.

2012-01-21T22:51:00.000-08:00

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.

http://www.facebook.com/l.php?u=http%3A%2F%2Futahporch.org%2Faudience-stories-bentley-snow-and-dana-fleming&h=OAQHhFSGB

MmmBop

2012-01-10T14:01:00.001-08:00

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?

Yes.

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?

Malissa suggested "The fridge," and I cried in triumph, "YES!" as she, mortified a whit or two, 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.

How do you guys edit these things?

2011-07-02T20:19:00.000-07:00

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.

9 Asians wearing identical cowboy hats

2011-07-02T18:54:00.000-07:00

was 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 oriental hat. 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.

Not Far From Angel’s Landing

Water a flowing jade

Etched with light,

The dimmest scratch

Of gold on living glass

Later sinking into a welcomed green oblivion,

Later contorting like obsidian

Born anew to motion

Celestial as the secret of

Sky slipping through this canyon

To touch the faintest turbulence;

And the fall of white,

From high, from megalithic red,

From unknown trails that it has tunneled:

A mist of flight,

A burst of winter’s melted memory,

Soon to be but the millionth streak

Discoloring the rocky haven I long love.

A dream that has not ceased

Is this ghost town come to life:

Every streak undry,

A cataract free falling,

Fed full within a storm with a thousand joyous fellows

All translating slotted cliffs into

A mystic burst of paradise—

Once that dream came true

And I saw heaven hanging in the valley—

Veiled not far from my precipice—

A hover and a hiding and a hint of what I knew

Could be my place most beautiful;

But now, while I see jade has changed,

See unfolding ripples slowly surge like hope,

See the scratches slipping by

On sleek duned mercury--

such emerald and ebony:

the river's ribboning and molten mirroring dreams' sheen for me--

I feel the same.

Words

In Memory of Tom Riddle, Jr.

(and Steve)

"You live in this"

--Shakespeare, Sonnet 55

I pour myself in vials

(the symbols you now see)

As if each were a horcrux—

hmm...

Maybe Voldemort

was just a poet

who hadn't heard of pens

And maybe I'm just a Dark Lord

who still remembers them (!)

Just You

I think the thought of you has been

Rewinding me to Eden:

Before I said what beauty was,

Where once I watched and knew.

Let There Be

From the wet moss’d rocks, a cool—

Where the rock has gills of green;

Where water scales it backward:

A pulse that’s shimmering;

Where tears fall barely staggered

Into black trickling

In which I saw six spanglings—

Sparking like the sun

At its first uneclipsing.

But Blessed Are Your Eyes

Mountains flicker in the foam,

Gliding white on sculpted glass;

Then veins shift on the sand:

The shallows’ dance with light;

And torturings, submerged things

Which blaze the mountains more,

Entirely undisturbing though

The intricate, set shadow:

Clustered leaflike answerers

to wind and sun alone—

And many things I've always seen

unattentively.

Tremendous Trifles

2011-05-18T02:41:00.001-07:00

That'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.

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.

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.

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:

"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."

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).

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.

And I wish I had a better segue, but I don't. No transition, but this is something worth the jolt.

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."

"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?"

Ah. That time I caught the difference.

There is a difference between just saying we believe and just believing. Is just believing really enough?

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.

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.

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.

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 "Could not bear 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.)

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.

*

So on to the trip here in the UK.

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.

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.

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.

ZANE!!! Gotta tell you this.

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.

Why was that?

AHA!

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.

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.

"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."
--Emerson, Nature

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 Middlemarch. 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."

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.

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.

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. :)

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.
I just realized that I loved how they were friends. I loved them 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.

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.

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."

God save the Queen.

Oh--PS--Zane, I was thinking about driving on the right side of the road, now that I am here:
"And the home, of the, BRAVE!"

Love,

Bentley

So...

2010-03-12T04:11:00.001-08:00

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.

Just wanted to letcha know :).

mmm

2010-03-09T05:49:00.000-08:00

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.

Lachish shall not fall again.
Yo soy Rambo.

Un poquito mas

2010-03-09T05:39:00.000-08:00

This wasn't like Moria; Moria was like this. Now I know why it was supposed to be impressive. Welcome to the Karnak Temple, folks.

For all you Dragon Ball Z fans: Ka-me-ha-me...

Moroni 10:3 "...Remember how merciful the Lord hath been..."

y mas - Egypt

2010-03-09T05:14:00.000-08:00

Here's to you, Communism. A fine meal at the Kibbutz. Felt like I was in The Giver. The Giver + great ice cream.

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.Pyramids. Gotta put 'em up there.

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.

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.

I live on the Nile; I get whatever I wish--I'm Pharaoh. Get it?

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.

This is what me and my homeys do on Saturday afternoons.

Und mehr

2010-03-09T05:08:00.000-08:00

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.

Dome of the rock with Dan Jones, Amjad--whom I mentioned in an early post--Dan King, and John Wiest.
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!).

More photos

2010-03-09T05:00:00.001-08:00

Meet Elias. Jovial. Spanish speaking. 92 yrs old. Lives around the corner. Lived through the Holocaust.
Lord of the Flies in the Kidron Valley. Potatoes and onions smoked at least partially on a trashfire.
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.

Gallery of Long Awaited Photos

2010-03-09T04:37:00.000-08:00

Southern Utah boys at Nabi Samwil (Jordan Mulford and I)

Gethsemane. There's a little cross in the center of the picture if you look close.
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.
Colgate.
Dan King and I, looking jemele.

Living Scriptures Presents: David vs. Goliath

2010-02-13T09:10:00.000-08:00

In the valley of Elah, none dared face the giant...none but one.

A Lively Tale of Spitting in Darwin's face in the name of Admittance to Grad School

2010-02-07T10:38:00.000-08:00

First 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.

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.

Cheers,
Bentley

“On Nothing”

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. And it wasn’t a fluke either: my co-jaywalking life-buddy Justin felt just the same way. Describing the jaunt is pretty easy: explaining why we loved it is a horse of an entirely different color. Not that I ever understood what that really means.

So, like a lot of people live in Paris. Like 11,769,433. Lots of these people have cars. Lots of these cars drive along the Seine River, down Le Champs-Élysées—that’s main street, if you live in Paris. And as it turns out, Le Champs-Élysées leads right to a monumental Arc, or rather to, on this occasion, “us.”

And by the way, technically I suppose we were jaysprinting-for-our-lives, my man Justin and I. We’d plunged in during a brief gap of traffic, which, for being undoubtedly Providential, gave sort of stingy odds on survival. 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. The Black Sea me and “J” were walking across 229.65 feet of unlaned chaotic speed. 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. 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.

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. 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. 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.’”

Step. Step. Step. The thought just kept thudding into my head, like a frog into a semi. “Well, probably anyways. 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.” It was a beautiful irony, so even though it threatened my life, I gave into it and laughed, ironically.

Despite this deliberate frog-duel with Darwin, I had some sort of belief that Justin and I would survive. Maybe it was irrational—a self-nominated candidate for natural selection, thinking he’d survive—but that is what I thought. The scariest moment was probably seeing a rush of cars cutting off our retreat, and another blocking our progress ahead. I experienced a thought: “This is dangerous.” Then my survival instincts kicked in—panic became adrenaline, adrenaline became speed and mental clarity. And hindsight.

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. Suddenly (I know the word’s overused, but it’s still the greatest “adverb of revelation”) the ridiculous possibility of making it seemed probable. A sensation of glory and elation mixed with a word much stronger than relief, one probably too perfect to exist. 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. I had all I wanted, padding down the homestretch. 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.” It was really funny.

Maybe you just had to be there.

The last danger came as Justin slowed waaay down because he was laughing so hard right then. 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—honestly, dude—not even watching just shaking his head while he laughed, so that just made me start laughing too. It was like a tickle fight with the Grim Reaper. And I didn’t know he was ticklish, ‘cause somehow, we won.

Those last few steps across the asphalt I wanted to hold my arms up like an Olympic sprinter in first. Maybe I did. All I remember was the feeling. Nike! Victory! It was glory, and it was worth it. Justin was still closing and wiping his eyes. If we’d been offered all of the world right then, we’d have refused and just kept what we had. That was all we wanted. That was a surprise for a demanding Me. But somehow, I’d scattered my greed and my “needs” along the way, and felt nothing but lucky to be there alive. Which is exactly what I was. And maybe no more than usual either—it was just more obvious. But if obvious is what it takes, I’ll risk my life every day. I hope you’re not thinking, “Don’t push your luck, kid,” but if you are, you should try feeling lucky.

Justin and I had spent the whole morning looking everywhere for sewers. How many people have seen the sewers of Paris? Better yet, how many have seen the sewers instead of the Eiffel Tower? I wish I could say we did, but we never found the sewers. We foreswore every other pursuit for their sake, and failed the entire day. We also failed to fail at everything else, too, by accidentally sighting ol’ E. T. off in the distance. Admittedly, I was glad to have glimpsed it—not that I’d lost sight of our quest.

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. I am dead serious. That is why. Because you people would be appalled. And I was too, at first. 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 especially—what I had wanted to see most of all—the Louvre, sounded like heresy, but the idea sort of grew on me, you know? And I supposed since Les Miserables 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.

It was like cultural masochism. Like a syndrome, Justin’s transcendent nonchalance, and it was infectious. 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. We would seek nothing, and only gratefully accept everything. Worst case, if we got hosed, we would laugh. Soon, we only wanted to miss more. Even water and bathrooms. “Pain is good. Extreme pain is extremely good”—I finally got those silly Navy Seals. They’re just preaching a sort of negative self-definition. A man’s greatness is negatively correlated with his needs: he is only as great as he is independent. So every loss proved who we were, and that we were enough. So we chose not to need. We chose, then we felt free.

So even finding the Arc de Triomphe, you see—let alone getting across to it—only happened by accident. Sure it turned out to be on main street, out there in total plain sight—but we hadn’t known that. We’d only known we could go on without it.

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. 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. 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, Liberté! Egalité! Fraternité!

I once read a letter from that period by a young woman. 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. This noble was the oldest. “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.” Bangarang, I say, and hope to be nobler myself.

Maybe there was a touch of nobility in the patent stupidity of Justin and I. We were going without, trying to forsake everything, to stand by ourselves. 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. But they were just our symbol for nothing. What could symbolize nothing better than a sewer? Nothing. Fortunately, that’s what we found.

Justin’s not much for religion lately. We’ve always been best friends, but I think it’s even more important to be a good one now. 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. 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? As if France should trump camaraderie.

Well, so that was cool, but of course the sewer quest failed. Not to fear! All was not in vain. 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.

It hissed out of the stately portals facing the cobblestony Champs-Élysées; their columns and Neoclassical façades were endless. 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. The true France embraced all who’d fight for freedom. Every detail of the scenery seemed to bring me deeper into the vision. It was everywhere and everything.

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 Les Miserables in London; it was the dreamshard that I’d finally found. It was the true spirit of France, and it was alive, and while we felt it we were.

For Justin’s sake and with his help, I had hoped for nothing; but then I found all this. It was as if life had slapped and told me, “This is how you dream.” 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. That feeling: it’s something far too rare. It’s the joy known exclusively to those who’ve had their very brightest hopes fail, like candles do in daylight.

I wasn’t typically like that—free to find nothing as enough. I typically dream perfect dreams and then insist that life measure up, and in my demanding I become the slave to myself. I’m trying to see the quality of the sewer quest, my most liberating dream of late.

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. Had I been to the National Museum? Had I seen the remnants of the smuggled Parthenon? Had I brushed the daub, wattle, and thatch of the new Globe Theatre, with my reverently quivering fingers? Had I got myself into Parliament like a spiritual corset, and been gratefully asphyxiated by its smotheringly formal air? Check, check, check. I could say I had. Therefore, I had enjoyed London. How could I not have? Yes, I had enjoyed London, because how could I not have? But somehow not missing felt like much less than finding.

Maybe that’s why so much of what I did didn’t matter to me. But that didn’t make sense, because they should have. I was supposed to do them because they were supposed to be good. Maybe I shouldn’t have tried to plagiarize other people’s lives, the way I just plagiarized that phrase of my friend’s.

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. It happened all through my study abroad in England.

Wordsworth’s home, Rydal Mount, was a boring place, other than his garden. Not so the nearby stone and ancient chapel, and its medieval crenellations, which encased me in a reverie. 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? Chaucer was supposed to be the greater author, but it was reading the intimate essays of my friends that flooded me with feelings. But these feelings didn’t make sense. Why should my friend’s words mean more to me than a master’s? I thought I was listening to reason when I prioritized what was “supposed to be” important. Weren’t these things on the checklist and hadn’t they good reason?

I was stunned to learn in France that I should have gone to war with these voices, the tyrannizing dreams. I should have fought for freedom. And in France I saw I could have won the war, because I did without. I finally saw when Justin showed me. I could do without.

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. 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. That we had no checklist, directions, or even destination—that much was certain—but what we did have, that I do not know. I am still trying to articulate just what Justin’s—and then our—program was.

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. The external world was nothing but something to transcend. We almost hoped for a backhand from fate, because we wanted the chance to not flinch. Maybe that’s why we kept tempting it, almost trying to ruin our day into glory.

By the way, the kindly French policewomen cleared up a very confusing matter that spared us the trouble of beating “Frogger” twice. 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. “Like, really.” We looked as sheepish and apologetic as we could, but frankly, we preferred our way. I think they thought we thought that, because we kept laughing. So contritely.

I think that was the moment I really stepped onboard with Justin. 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. I wanted to run back across. Unfortunately laughing stupidly and nudging my friend and facing the roaring roundabout again was a little conspicuous. 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.

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 avant garde in fashion, which Justin definitely would have whimsically purchased had the stores not all been closed—neon green sweaters under blue suit jackets. This was tourism.

And it’s not that I didn’t love London, but it didn’t feel the same. 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. 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. My sights had been low, that is to say, no higher than “number 2,” to children, or than “feces,” to the scientist. And yes, I can say in the midst of Paris’s glory I had hoped for nothing more. I wanted diddily squat. And once I set life up to exceed all my expectations, it tipped its hat, “Monsieur,” and cordially obliged.

Anything is everything when nothing is expected. Imagine nothing. Now imagine that it’s gone. Everything is a black void, but the void is not absence, because there is no such thing as presence to be missing. There is simply nothing; it stretches on as far as the forever that there never was. What is the worth to that world of a single, searing candle?

I think I am blind to everything beneath my expectations. Anything less than them is nothing, nothing more than dues. Maybe London wasn’t dark because it lacked candles, because it didn’t, but because I expected chandeliers. I need to need less or I’ll always feel entitled, but how can I do that? 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.

I faced the darkness for this first time in a long time because Justin did. Could I go without? Could I handle nothing? I opened up my eyes and discovered that my existential abyss wasn’t as empty as I thought. Maybe I had enough inside me to handle nothing after all. That was the glory of it all. And then, clinging to that revelation, my friend and I saw the Arc. It was adorned by many figures. The first and highest was a fearless, flying angel—she must have been the spirit of old France. Her eyes were fire and her sword shot forward; her waxy voice sent out the call for other men to follow. Statues beneath her did. The megalith towered and shone, by the unknown soldier’s everlasting flame.

We came to a park after the Arc and the great square and the balancing scooters. It was beneath the street, like a gargantuan sunken living room, as wide as several city blocks. Just the wall of trees surrounding it made for walking trails and picnic spots. 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. It was crowned by a fountain-like pedestal in its center. It felt like we’d found the fountain of France, the spring of that deep culture’s essence.

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. Scruffy faces and classy clothes worn with abandon bespoke the philosophical preoccupations of the three or four late twenty-something dudes. Cool. They didn’t look too appreciative of our unappreciation of life’s tragedy.

At least a dozen pillars, capped by vivacious statues, composed a large concentric ring around flat stones which in turn surrounded the pool. 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-Élysées refers to the ancient western heaven).

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.”

For so it was.

We second-hand smoked the angst of the twenty-somethings. We took pictures of the statues. 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. The anticipation necessary to plan such an achievement staggered me. This was a culture of taste. 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. Almost like candlefire. Except it was about a candle to the left—almost infuriatingly close. I sort of tried to look at it sideways as if that would help. No. But there was something hilarious about the irony of it being that close to serendipitous perfection and then failing so unbearably. I showed it to Justin and we laughed. “Heck! I mean, seriously, we’ve had everything go our way”—or nothing, anyways—so it was so easy to gracefully handle this one. “It’s totally close enough!”

I never thought you could exceed perfection, but maybe that’s what that moment did. It felt like perfection was what we’d already found, and everything else was just a bonus. Life was just a bonus. I had a wonderful revelation: in the mode I was, my initial thought hadn’t been how far away the sun was from perfection, but how much closer than it had to be. Like I had said, everything had gone “our way,” but maybe that was just because our way was nothing. About then I remembered E.T. He must have been moping somewhere beyond the trees, utterly transcended, his absence a reminder of just who he’d been transcended by.

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.

I think the way it works is joy is a formula; life is a fraction. It numerates my circumstances, and I denominate my demands. I want “more” like anyone, I believe, but too often I forget that the quotient is the point and focus on the numerator. “If only life would give me more.” 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.

But what quotient will I find when I transcend the earth, and stand upon it free, a whole number over zero?

What will I feel then?

Joy jerked us about like a taze charge: we visited and revisited half the statues. 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. None of the details were right, but this was the dream I’d had for Europe. The dream was feeling how I felt. This was what the checklist would supposedly produce; of course, now I wasn’t even checking it.

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.

And then it was time to go. It was dark—just past ten. 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. There were jaw-bustingly big grins, and lots of hearty American shoulder slapping. Also there was a psychotic statue called “Cain and His Sons” which scared me in a way that Darwin never could. But even that was fine. Nothing could have not been.

So we couldn’t leave. We ran back down for one more picture, wanting to baste in our blessedness just a little longer. We walked directly away from the Arc this time—East—up strong white steps that were as broad as the pool. 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. I had no idea what it was: it looked like a small scale Versailles; its four-floor palatial wings gradually flanked us like pincers.

Our approach was inevitable: we couldn’t resist adventure at this point, though exhausted from hours and miles of travel, mostly walking. 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). Getting hosed is the best.

We would have had no clue what the palace was had I not read The Da Vinci Code. Thank heavens for the classics. An unusual shape appeared which I only remembered from the book because it seemed so weird to me then. Seeing it in the flesh stopped me like a slap. “No,” I thought, “No way. Could this really be?”

After wandering with total abandon through the fifth largest city in Europe, like disoriented six-year-olds swinging at piñatas, somehow we’d connected. I just couldn’t believe it, and burst out laughing. Justin chuckled, almost a bit impatiently, until he finally got me to tell him why.

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. And despite that, we still could have made it in—fifteen minutes earlier. We definitely 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. But life was great as martyrs, because we lived for irony.

The weird object was a pyramid. The building was the Louvre.

Long for the following reasons: a visit to Gethsemane, and the Garden Tomb, and Mark's House, and getting to know a Holocaust survivor

2010-01-18T05:56:00.000-08:00

*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. Well, this is more just tale relating style. Maybe I should blog more this way. I'll put this on my blog too. Anyway, here it is, if you've ever wondered what it was like to wander around Jerusalem. 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. Bent

Mom,

Thank you for the email and update :). 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.

Yesterday was wild/awesome. Sunday is our free day, which is really, really weird. 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. 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 :). Gethsemane is within walking distance of the Center. 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). 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. We had a neat chance to meditate in there for awhile on last Thursday or so. We read in the Gospels about the Atonement, then 3 Ne. 11. 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. Afterwards we sang a few hymns and it was wonderful. "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.

We also went to the Garden Tomb--on Sabbath (Saturday). There were some hilarious and irresistibly winning old British men running tours there. So cheerful--and they'd (at least our guide, whose name was Roy) testify all the time. "But the tomb is empty now--Amen! Right?" 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!" We laughed, then he answered, "It wouldn't be funny if it hadn't been." Hahaha. Later I overheard another guide talking about how he still used feet and miles etc. (He was pretty old.) "If the Lord would have wanted me to use the metric system, he'd have had ten disciples!" They were quite a hoot--over and over and over.

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. 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. Not sure.

Regardless the coolest part was actually singing hymns after. I'm not sure why it was so cool--several reasons, I guess. 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. 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. We just sat there and sang--for about 40 minutes. Hymn after hymn after hymn. He is Risen. I Believe in Christ. I Know that My Redeemer Lives. In Humility Our Savior (mine). Nearer My God to Thee. Be Still My Soul. Other tour groups just stopped to listen. I really felt like we were teaching, even though technically we're not supposed to, and technically we weren't. But maybe the letter of the law isn't the most important way to reach a people anyway. 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. 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. 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. I wish, like Elder Holland, that everyone could come here. 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. I noticed a man sitting on the bench as we were singing. He stayed the entire time, just watching us. I felt sort of like a beacon, right then. This guy is seeing something that maybe he's never seen before. Maybe he's been wondering what more he could find. I certainly felt like I was living life right then. It's like Ulysses says in my favorite poem of all time (Ulysses, by Tennyson): "As though to breathe were life!" We were doing more than breathing.

And the gardens were just beautiful anyways--I would have loved it even if it hadn't been in the Holy City. I never suspected there would be so much green growth here. Turns out, winter is the rainy season here, so we scored the most beautiful time of year. 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. Maybe that's why I love England so much. It just feels right. Anyway, it was really nice to find some of that here.

It was green in the Kidron Valley, which Jesus crossed on his way over to Gethsemane. I plucked a twig to bring home. The part that's cool is that seeing that these sites exist shakes you up at the scriptures--"Wait, the Kidron Valley is real. So the stuff the Bible says happened here..." The Bible ceases to be abstract, it ceases to be theoretical, or fictional. The places become real, so the events, tethered to that reality, become more real themselves. They're not just stories; they're History. They happened. Man that's cool.

A Holocaust survivor came and hung out with us last night. 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. We weren't just holding him hostage--he held us. He was a darling old guy with windy white hair and a nose that drooped a little when he smiled, which was usually. 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. It came and went. All he wanted, he said, was for everyone to believe in God. "I don't care what you call him, just believe in him," essentially. It was amazing to me. He had been to both Auschwitz and Dochau. I have been to Dochau. It all flashed back through my head like a very morbid nightmare. This guy, Elias, the loving, merciful, energetic jokester had been there--he had been there when it was Dochau. 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. I knew what it was. I just thought, "No. No that can't be real." But it came--the deepest, darkest scar you've ever seen: it was green. "B 1259." That's who he had been. "I just want people to know what happened," he repeatedly said. "They have to know or they won't learn." He was an amazing man. 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. We looked to him for an explanation and he just said, "I love people. And it happened, there was nothing I could do about it, so I moved on." It was pretty wild.

It was wild to see the other side. It was wild because I've seen so many instances of Israeli (seeming) unkindness here in the Holy Land. "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. 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. There are too many good men on too many sides. Things are black and white, but there are three dimensions. One side of Judaism is greedy; another never for a moment didn't forgive the Nazis. 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. 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? I don't know. I guess I'm just saying I can see much better where they're coming from. 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. And hard.

Ok, well I've turned that into a rambling soap box for far long enough. 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?). There was a ridge about 1/3 of the way up the green valley's slopes. 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. Would that I had died for thee, O Absalom, my son, my son." Powerful. I always wondered about that. I just don't know if I can see a murderer-never-to-see-the-highest-Heaven ever feeling like that. Maybe he's not as lost as we think. Maybe he is, but I hope he isn't. I really hope he isn't. 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. This day with the Lord deliver you into my hands...and David hasted to meet the Philistine..." So cool. It was a holy site, the sign said. 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).

Ok, anyway, the Lord of the Flies crew there in the Kidron. It looked like they were committing arson. 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. 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.). We decided to make it really, really quick, and avoid contact. First thing that happened was they swarmed around us all excited and their leader offered us a mostly peeled onion. Here, there are several layers left, tall white American "Onion boys" (or whatever Donkey calls Shrek). I couldn't believe how nice it was of them. 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. "Shekel! Shekel!" they started chanting. Oh. Yeah. Now it makes sense. 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. 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. We laughed and thanked them then left.

We also stumbled onto Mark's house, just within the Old City's wall, on the south side of Jerusalem. Totally random. We were winding down whichever street looked most aesthetically pleasing to us, or exotically arabic and aladdin-esque. When I read the sign though it hit me: "Mark's House" and above it: "The Upper Room." Whoa. I know what happened there: and the scene from The Lamb of God flashed through my head. The Last Supper. That was where Jesus instituted the Sacrament. Wow. Wow. It wasn't like most of these places. 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. I don't know why. But just as soon as I read that sign, I felt it. A man gestured us into the service that was just concluding there. Men left. We read the account of Jesus washing his disciples' feet sitting on benches in the back of the church. The father patiently waited, apparently (I wasn't sure what he was up to), and then left too when we were done. "Not my feet only but my hands and my head also." 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.

Too cool.

Well I must go, but I rather wish that all of you could come.

Love,

Bentley

Gettin' Jiggy wit the Jews

2010-01-15T11:14:00.000-08:00

It was like ring around the rosies, except for I was in a circle with a bunch of jews, and we were moshing--after all, it was the Sabbath coming in. "Shabbat shalom!" people kept saying. And actually, we weren't really moshing (mosh pit--not sure how to spell it), but people were drumming on their Torah bestrewn portable tables set up west of "the Wailing Wall"--the largest remaining portion of the Temple, just one wall of massive stones that used to bear up something holy. So now that is all they have: they come every Friday to wedge prayers of scrolls into cracks between the ancient Roman stones that are at least 2000 years old. "Come back." They come to welcome in the Sabbath Friday evening.

Even though it's a ruin, it's the holiest thing they have. This is the world's most sacred ground of all, if you're a jew. My friends and I were wearing kipas, the small round woven caps, to respectfully come here ourselves. I touched the wall and prayed, myself--it was moving. In the mid-2nd century they were scattered by impatient Romans who were tired of revolts, and almost two thousand years of exile later--2000 years which include almost perpetual, universal scorn, if nothing else the Holocaust--this was all they had left, but still at least half the jews we talked to turned out to be from the States, they were here on a pilgrimage. That must have been what an older man took my friend to be on when he kindly approached him and said, "Welcome home."

I'm not sure how to explain why or how I suddenly found myself in a de facto mosh pit with them. I guess it was just a lot of revelry to welcome in the Sabbath--way too much enthusiasm about it, in my opinion. Maybe they were just enthused about the chance to welcome it, whatever it might be.

There were now worshippers three layers deep against the wall, bobbing like people falling asleep in class with gusto, in order to show they loved God with all their hearts, might, minds and strength (Deutoronomy 8, I think). The Wall is at the bottom of a slope that's secluded sort of by two flanking walls. Fifty feet behind those praying, singing began around tables. Then dancing in rings. Then the music got crazy and the yells got raucous and the invitations got plentiful and somehow all 9 of my buddies and I ended up running around, arm in arm, in a ring with our new friends whose favorite language was Hebrew. I had declined at first, out of respect for what they should have had respect for, I thought, but then it just felt like I ought to join in: so I did. And maybe the enthusiasm was fervor or something. I saw a man who liked like my grandpa walk by--right after I'd danced a few rounds (oh, and males and females are segregated: this was a brothers' night out)--and he was singing along with the yahoos. A five or so year old was holding his hand, and clapping his other hand onto it as they went, in tune with the song--maybe I just didn't know how to rock religiously. "So darn cute," my buddy said as they passed. It really was. It was like a party too. It didn't turn out to be very deep, but it was a good experience, and I'm glad, just once, I got jiggy wit the jews.

But that's really the most minor of the things I'll take away. The two things I'll remember are touching the wall, and one teenage jew I saw before things got hectic. He looked like a simple kid--normal face, roundy cheeks, very much just ordinary. The wall wasn't even full of people praying near it yet; of course, this kid wasn't trying to get closer.

I tried, but I could only guess what it would be like to have my identity wrapped up in a culture who waited for a god who had not delivered them for 2000 years. Moses led them through the desert for 40; now they had no one, and they'd wandered much more. And now another major world religion had one of its most sacred sites sitting squarely on top of what used to be the most sacred of all to yours. What are the odds you'll get that back? 2000 years and one Dome of the Rock later, how much hope is there now?

Maybe we can hope even when there is no hope--I don't know. I do know that while everyone was observing letters of the law that I'd never even heard of and performing rituals with obsidian-edges of exactness, that my favorite part of the night--and maybe even week--by far, wasn't. Just a teenage kid, so inobtrusive behind the milling, murmuring, surging crowd that I can't believe I saw him. I sort of got it then. It was like I saw the whole history of his people in his eyes, the trials and utter exile and feelingly one-way prayers. But he still prayed them, and I think he really meant them. I don't know how to say it in a way that is convincing enough, but I know it was convincing enough for me when I saw the kid stand anonymously and cry.

Dome of the Rock

2010-01-11T05:37:00.000-08:00

Yesterday, a few JC chums and I met a man named Amjad under the Damascus Gate, as we paid to tour the old Roman entrance and "old city's" ramparts. (I was really pumped because it was my first chance to spend some shekels. If you, like me, have ever wondered if they're very fun to spend, accept my assurances they are. Other currencies I hope to spend include rubles and rupees.)

I also need to mention I've had the "Street Rat" song from Aladdin in my head for 3 days and it's all I can do not to buy genie pants and start stealing bread. I can only resist for others' sake. Anyway.

We chatted in line; he asked if we minded him tagging along; we said "Of course, man"; then he decided to spend the next 8 hours hooking us up. He soon became like a super saiyan (awesome/powerful) tour guide: a Muslim from New Jersey who haggled prices in half with native Arabic (I got a handstitched "camelrider" shawl and coil to keep it down), explained the history and significance of the things we saw, bought us some "awami" sugar-bomb candy, and helped us through some serious hassles that would have taken serious time and pain to navigate on our way to Dome of the Rock, where we suddenly were.

It was what awesome meant before diluted through invoking it's power in vain. It was that kind of awesome.

After some group pictures (there were about 12 of us he was leading around now, always deferential, taking our pictures for us and humbly trying to not let us include him just out of obligation, which wasn't why we were), we ascended up a wide staircase towards the one of the world's most singular shrines, and past a tall, freestanding colonnade of Corinthian columns (leaves sprouting at the top). It was about 1 pm. White slashes of scripture from the Qur'an ran clockwise around the octagon's top, which was massive, mosaic, and dark blue: the golden dome blazed like a beacon on top. As I was about to start off for the shrine, I passed the white colonnade at the top of the stairs, and was a little taken aback: there were bullet holes in the columns, where chunks had been chipped away.

"What happened here, exactly? When were these bullet holes from?" I asked Amjad. "That was from the war where Palestine was fighting for their freedom, in the 40's and later again in 67. This was the last place where the fighting was, the last place to surrender. A lot of people died here."

That struck me because the thought that had struck me earlier was that this was like the Muslim's Temple Square. Dan (King), my buddy, and I were talking about the splendour of "The Holy Mount" too: "All the investment it must have taken in time, and money, and energy--you can't spend all that and not have this place be holy." All of this came at a price. Whatever the name of this god was, this was a place of true sacrifice, and all sacrifice is sacred.

Now there's a ton of security because another religion that holds this place sacred also has governing power over the Holy Land, and modern Muslims are afraid that the shrine which has stood since religion governs this nation, and Muslims are helpless to protect the "oldest extant Islamic building in the world"--it has stood since 691 A.D.--through peaceful means if the government fails to preserve it.

We learned that the Canaanites, destroyed unmercilessly by Israeli invaders, were once a covenant people in our Old Testament class--at least it was submitted to us (based on something in the JST, Gen. 17:3-7, I believe, but that may not be conclusive); that was an answer to a question about God's seeming OT wrath. If they weren't innocent people, maybe it wasn't unfathomable barbarity on God's and Israel's part. So even though it's distasteful, to say the least, God doesn't just have the wicked punish the wicked; sometimes good guys kill Goliath.

But what this meant to me was, maybe I shouldn't look at the Muslims as being where they didn't belong, here in the Holy Land, with a shrine on top of an old Jewish--God's former covenant-living people--temple. Maybe they had been the righteous ones. Maybe not, too though. I do know that God let the Jews be scattered. And it's for a better reason than most people think (Hel 15:3, Jacob 4:17-Jacob 5).

I don't ever expect to be able to judge, though maybe I'll get some ideas. All I know is that I saw bullet holes all over walls and colonnades, but I didn't see any in that shrine. And even if there were, there were fewer than there might have been because they hit something else instead, and I cannot but believe that the reason they did was holy, holy--like the ground on which I stood.

*"...A religion that does not require the sacrifice of all things, never has power sufficient to produce the faith necessary unto life and salvation." -- Joseph Smith

Today I learned the meaning of the word "Islam": it is literally "submission to God."

How good a Muslim could I be if bullets peppered Temple Square?

* * *

In case you're wondering how you can help:

I met a man named Eric and his wife Patrice pushing their baby, Elyza, in a stroller last December. Elyza, it turns out, has hydrosephalace. After I asked about her and the medical costs they told me they were LDS and the Church was helping--I'm not sure how much--but they had wanted to do what they could to pay for some of it, so Patrice had been crafting some bookmarks and headbands and clips in order to raise some money. I told Eric I would put a link to their blog on mine, in case anyone wanted to support them.

The link is http://carrillosfamilyarts.blogspot.com/. *

A link to their daughter's situation is there too.

I don't know how the church is helping exactly but I'm going to encourage Eric to post it on his blog, and a picture of Elyza too--she's a sweetie--but in the meantime you can call Eric at (801) 548-7617, or email him through a link on the blog. They were very humble and honest people, which is why I wanted to help them.

Saturday's the Sabbath here--for LDS too--not sure why

2010-01-09T12:15:00.000-08:00

So from an aquarium-like sacrament room we looked through three 20x30 ft (or so) arches down on a city in which we cannot even mention the Gospel and sang "Called to Serve" to begin Sacrament meeting today. I wasn't sure what to make of it, when the Spirit began filling the room. They have a lot of truth in Jerusalem, but how many know that a God died for his people, and grasp that fact's significance?

Also, our group exodused en masse to Gethsemane and the Orson Hyde Dedicatorial Garden today. I just wasn't feeling it that way, so I made plans to go there another time with a smaller group. When everyone else had disappeared, I went and found the guitars from the Center, then I went up and tried to retrace my steps to the balcony where President Hinckley is standing during the "Special Witnesses of Christ" video, on the Jerusalem Center's highest--floor 8--sandstone-colored portico. The door was locked, and security said that they never opened it except for tours at certain times. I was frustrated, but I wandered around level 7 outside and found a hitherto undiscovered staircase, as far as my group goes, I believe, which led right to it. Really cool view. I wish President Hinckley were still around.

I figured no one was around so I strapped one of the guitars on and played a Vocal Point original song (I think), "He is Born," that my brother adapted to guitar and showed me. It was pretty cool, looking over a city and imagining how all of them were still waiting, and this was the news they had always had the chance to hear, and even though they couldn't hear it, it still felt good to say it. And at least I got to hear it--that always feels good too.

If I were making horcruxes, one would be here

2010-01-08T10:17:00.000-08:00

Because part of me will probably stay anyway.

Today we wandered along the Via Dolorosa, where Christ is rumored to have passed bearing the cross, and eventually found a new friend, Hisom (hi-some). We went into his shop as he hawked "Antiques, lamps from the time of King David, ancient coins," and wanted to see the coins. I just hung out with him. He looked like a classy 28 year old. On the way in I said "Marhaba" (hello) to another guy, who was handicapped. Hisom said in a cheerful but almost vulnerable way, "He's handicapped." Another guy with slicked back hair ended up helping my friends while I learned Arabic from Hisom. What's the word for shop?" "Doocan." "Doocan-ak jemele" (your shop is sweet/beautiful). The way people take compliments seems so sincere--I don't think you can humbly take them unless you could just as humbly give them, unless you're humble enough to dare believe other people truly mean them. Charity believeth and hopeth all things. He clearly appreciated this compliment from a stranger. I was touched by the way he cared about that.

Aleah--Slick :)--was showing my friends authentic widow's mites. "These are the best coins in the world, because these Jesus said were worth more than all." These people are all Arabic, by the way. The northeast quarter of Jerusalem is the Muslim, (SE = Jewish; SW = Armenian -- I have no idea how they got here :) ; NW = Christian) so that is the culture we come to first on our way to the "Old City's" ancient walls from the Jerusalem Center. Heading "home" you can see the seashell bright palace high on the Mount of Olives descending like a terraced waterfall. The Jews call it Mount Scopus--we have to learn how to distinguish between the Jews and Muslims so we can refer to everything in non-confrontational terms: "Shalom" to greet Jews, "Marhaba" to Arabs, we don't say Israel or Palestine, just "The Holy Land," for now, etc. I feel like I should recount a small but telling event my friend witnessed so you could feel sympathy for the Arabs--whom I felt least akin too, and perhaps still do--but I don't want to elicit anything negative against the Jews. Anyways, the details are too many to tell, and too complex (and too not understood yet).

As I browsed in the shop I turned to see Dalynn arm and arm with Jaat, the handicapped man--he'd wanted to get a picture with her, apparently. Apparently all the men were brothers too. For a second I was like, "What the heck is happening if she's got her arm around a Muslim guy?" but I saw Hisom and Aleah smiling with warm eyes at them (the expression on Slick relaxed me--I'd initially been a little intimidated by him). Maybe it was different because Jaat was handicapped.

Jaat was gesturing excitedly and Hisom told Dalynn, "Show him the picture! He wants to see himself in the picture." She turned her digital camera back on and Jaat was clapping when he saw it. Slick pinched a bunch of Jaat's cheek and shook it like a grandparent who was too affectionate to help it. Hisom had done the same thing earlier. No wonder Hisom had sounded vulnerable at first.

It turns out Hisom had a degree in sociology and had had a fine job in a more impressive area; so had Slick, who had some other degree; and so had another brother, who was a lawyer.

"So why are you here?" I asked.
Besides mentioning the value of taking care of a family business, he said,
"Because here life is better. Here life is safe." He told Aleah to cut the widow's mite price from 33 shekels to 20, which may have been bartering and may have not, while a few friends were considering still. "Student discount," he joked with me on the side.

"Masalaami"--we left.

I was reading about how the Dome on the Rock, where the Jewish Temple had been before the Romans razed it a few hundred years before the Muslims took Jerusalem (the Jews had been expelled since an uprising in the 2nd century AD). That is the rock where Muhammad said an angel took him to ascend through the seven heavens and into the presence of God. Maybe the place had been sacred to him too, beforehand (maybe not--I don't know). Either way, it made me wonder, maybe everything religious is circumstantial when you compare it to the motive for which you live it.

"Gladly would I die a thousand deaths, to look upon the face of Tash."
--Emer, a young Calormene in C. S. Lewis's The Last Battle

"My strength is as the strength of ten, because my heart is pure."
--Sir Galahad, in Tennyson's telling of the legend of King Arthur

Wow...

2010-01-07T08:28:00.001-08:00

So being at the Jerusalem Center is like living in a temple/walking in the Bible. I was sort of stunned ten minutes ago when I heard the Moslem call to prayer for the first time: this is another world. I think, in a way, this is the most foreign of all cultures to me--the Arabic--maybe that's part of why I love this so much.

It's all incredible. We wound through a black labyrinthine passageway, like backalleys etc.--on an orientation tour around Jerusalem today--and went through a tunnel and suddenly a vaulted ceiling appeared and apparently we were in a Christian church. There is no way to describe the complexity of the architecture, and I don't even have a clue about the culture or politics yet. So far I feel like Aladdin and for a second I really wanted to steal some bread but I didn't. Bad for Church PR, you know. So instead I made friends with our security guy, Hidar. He taught me a handful of phrases, including, "Your shoes rock." His happened to.

I never knew how green this place was. I was expecting sand. Period. In fact, I was wondering on the plane and over the last few weeks about a line in Isaiah, where he says "the desert shall blossom as a rose." "Had Isaiah ever even actually seen a rose?" I wondered. Apparently. I saw some on our balcony. Oh yeah, and the Dome on the Rock is right outside our front window and features prominently along the skyline maybe a mile straight ahead of our balcony. The wall from the "Old City" slants down from right to left at about a 30 degree angle; it looks just like the videos you see in Church. The texture of the rock, just the texture of the rock, is about the coolest thing I've experienced. It feels...I don't know. Old. Hebrew. Biblical. Middle-Eastern. Authentic.

Our group is amazing. I'm sure I'll say more soon.

Lastly, at orientation we heard a line from Elder Holland's address awhile ago to students here:
"If you ever become what you were before this experience, you will have become a disappointment to me," or something to that effect. That's cool, because that's exactly what I'm hoping for, so if that's what an Apostle wants from me, and seems to think he can expect for me, I will hope and work and pray for it too. I don't want to be the same, and once I'm not, I definitely don't want to go back.

Masalaami, my friends
(peace be upon you, I think, in Arabic)

Like There's No Tomorrow: Dancing Edition

2009-12-01T17:28:00.000-08:00

"Never be a tightwad when your fear is the price for awesomeness."

--Me

I got to my soccer class late today. For the big-numberth time.

Nic Arrhenius, my coach, happens to be an Olympian. He threw discus for Sweden in Beijing. Not bad, huh? He’s probably the coolest coach I’ve had, though I once had a pretty cute coach in basketball--that wasn't too uncool either.

“You’re late, Bentley,” the big guy said.

“I know.”

He’s grinnin' though. I love people that can pick up the “irresponsible kid that really doesn’t mean to do things bad he just kinda does” vibe from me.

“You’ve got, lets see…absence, tardy…tardy, tardy, tardy, absence, tardy today…you’re approaching failing out, man.”

“Shoot…yeah. I was wonderin' about that.”

I asked him how bad my grade was getting docked, since usually you drop after a couple absences (and a few tardies add up to an absence), and about how making things up worked again. I figured it must be pretty bad if I was already approaching total failure.

“Well,” he smiled, “actually because of the swine flu going around this semester the entire department cancelled all docking penalties having to do with attendance.” (As if other people having the swine flu had made me move to class in slow motion--lol.) He laughed cause he knew exactly how much I was getting away with and didn’t deserve to, but also because he was glad I was. Mercy can’t rob justice, but the best people wish it could, I think. Coach is the best. “You always feel like he’s on your side--probably because he is,” I mused once in my notebook after he didn’t count me tardy when I was “pretty close”--haha (for probably the third time at that point). I just love it when people are cool like that.

“So, uhh, where am I at then?”

“Well, there are three classes left, and you’ve got 4 absences” (counting the 6 tardies that count as 2 absences between them, besides my real absences), “and there are only three class periods left.” Then he started laughing out loud. “Basically, if you can make it to class on time for one of those three class periods, you won’t fail soccer.” “And I’ll get an ‘A’?” I asked, grinning. “Yeah, you’ll get an ‘A’.” A well-deserved one. Heh.

Pray for me my friends--with your help I can make it. And for those of you who've already borne the swine flu just to help me out, thank you--you've done enough.

Speaking of suffering, I’ve always wondered about how to feel about blessings that come because other people have suffered or done something wrong. Kinda weird. Sorta like the time I was in O’Flaherty’s Pub in Dingle, Ireland, and it looked exactly like the Shire everywhere outside on the Emerald Isle and the inside of the pub was wooden and quaint and had mugs and tables whereon lively spry hobbits would certainly dance and I wanted the people there to do so more than anything. A local band was even playing authentic Irish folk music and singing ballads. THIS WAS THE SHIRE SO HELP ME. But no one would dance. A few people who’d stayed at the hostel longer than my friends Emma, Whitney and I had come down with us for some traditional Irish pub-tales--I asked them if people ever danced. “Not usually.” I furtively watched the old people drinking their ale. I knew they had it in them. They’d dance. If they’d keep drinking.

“So shoulder the sky, my lads, and drink your ale!” I thought, but then I felt bad. That’s not a good wish. But it’s not like I could help anything. Well, I suppose I could stand on a table myself and quote scraps of D&C 89, but I figured that wouldn’t do much but irritate people and engender opinions that the church was narrow-minded and ludicrous in that scene. Maybe I was wrong. Whatever the case, I stayed another hour and a half nurturing the guilty hope that they‘d drink themselves into dance. If it wasn‘t wrong for them to do it (where there is ignorance there is no law), was it wrong for me to benefit from it? Nah.

Like the way some other BYU chums and I would pay our non-member, Korean roommate Jae so he could buy Little Caesar’s for us on Sundays. He wasn’t sinning. And we were just giving him the opportunity to serve, and bring others joy, and be a Christian. “Give the gift of giving” as a recent BYU devotional speaker calls it. So all of you judgers out there, I ask you whether you have given as much as I. Probably not. And you didn’t get pizza either--we did because we did what was right (3 Ne. 13:33). For those who didn’t judge, I confess we actually didn’t pay him off but it would have been funny and probably the right thing to do.

But anyway these Shirelings wouldn’t DANCE. They drank for hours and wouldn’t DANCE! I wanted Hobbit-time! What's the point of all that alcohol, all those spirits, if it doesn't put any spirit in ya? Anyway, my masterplan failed and someone finally me if I wanted someone to dance so bad then I should. So I did. All by myself.

It was pathetic, but it was semi-bold. I imitated the bit of LOTR scenes I could remember, which didn’t work because I mostly remembered two hobbits carousing arm-in-arm in circles (and no one was dancing with me) raising mugs to the hearty cheers of onlookers (except my audience was just staring awkwardly); then I tried some postmodern moves that definitely didn’t go down; then I threw in a shimmy; and then I called it quits. It was all I had. But right before I slunk away in shame--which I definitely did--I stuck me neck out a little further to see if I could entice some old English lady onto “the dance floor” with me. Cold-blooded. Grandma was an ice queen. How often do you get a lively, brawny, visionary American inviting you to dance a jig? The call went unanswered, but it did not go unissued. I did what I could.

I had dreams of rousing the entire tavern into a scene no less merry nor glorious as I do not doubt but what Merry and Pippin would have done--boots stomping, hands clapping, chandeliers swinging, fires roaring, ale pouring, and laughter bursting from every looking-on heart. I wanted to be like my heroes, but I failed.

I think I failed because I feared. I think the onlookers could sense that lack of total commitment. I was willing to stick my neck out, but not to go down on the ship burning. In the end, I was just a little bit bluffing.

When I go back someday, I’m not sure what I’ll do, nor how it will “go down in Hobbit town.” Maybe I’ll learn a few moves to legitimize the dance floor as such. Seriously, what if I just jumped on a table and started jigging in my heartiest most happily abandoned way? Could they resist that? Maybe. But maybe then I’d bust out an irresistibly lively song on guitar (which I haven't learned yet :), an invigorating folk song that will have all the lads and lassies looking at each other with romantic volatility (even the older ones). Maybe that will fail too.

So the songs and dance steps I'll learn won't be a foolproof masterplan but that isn't my real hope for next time. My hope is that next time, when they call my bluff, I won’t be bluffing, and then before they know it they won’t be dancing in my dreams alone but on their tables as they always should have been. Why? Why, well haven't you heard Merry and Pippin's warcry? “For the SHIRE!”

And if they don't, I'll dance on my burning shipdeck, saluting, until it sinks into the grim-bluest grave. "Oh Captain, my captain!"

But fear not, my friends: they'll probably dance. And I'll probably get to class on time--at least I'm going to try.

Epilogue

And if for some inscrutable reason you desire a more eminent/credible source to cite, try this powerful quote by Murray often misattributed to Goethe:

"Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back, always ineffectiveness. Concerning all acts of initiative (and creation), there is one elementary truth the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans: that the moment one definitely commits oneself, then providence moves too.

A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one’s favor all manner of unforeseen incidents, meetings and material assistance, which no man could have dreamt would have come his way. I learned a deep respect for one of Goethe’s couplets:

Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it.
Boldness has genius, power and magic in it!"

- W. H. Murray, from The Scottish Himalayan Expedition (1951)

Thoughts of a Man

2009-11-12T15:38:00.000-08:00

I wasn't surprised to find the top 35 moustaches of all time at theartofmanliness.com, but I was surprised to find some authentically sincere wisdom, particularly on how a man knows when he has "found the one." The guy quoted his father-in-law as saying,

“Marriage is not about finding a person you can live with, it’s about finding the person you can’t live without.”

It's true. Not that I speak from experience, but I think this expresses what I have always felt. So thank you, ye manly men, for enlightening your comrade.

Also, my roommate Kent was cleaning up other people's leftovers the other day: he said it was training to be a good dad. I nodded in approval and said, "Indeed: Patriarchal." Not a bad thing to be. So far the only thing that rivals it are "epic" and "mythic" and perhaps "megalithic."

Subway Saga: 2009

2009-09-27T21:10:00.000-07:00

Perhaps my favorite hike with Old Glory flying above it: The Subway.

Dave and I had talked for years about it. It wasn't until we made friends with a business major (Sir Evan Fitzpatrick) that someone took care of business and organized an expedition. Fortunately, I had done it before, so we didn't need a guide. Unfortunately, that was over a decade ago when I was in Teacher's Quorum.

Drew + Jenny, Evan, Dan King, Curtis Crabtree, Hillary Schmutz, Tyler Winterton, Dave Carter, me. = awesome.

We carpooled.

The Subway starts in desert, then dips down into an amphitheatre of white rock, then a gully and sandy trail, then a red rock amphitheatre (you'll note the British spelling), then eventually a 300 foot almost vertical descent off a ridge into the gulch.

Fun was had; friends were made; casualties were avoided; adventure was embodied.

Also the night before we went to Cedar's Shakespearean Festival and saw "A Comedy of Errors," which was ruddy brilliant and hilarious. We bought some tarts: blackberry and cream are the best, I say. It feels like a little pocket of England with its gabled concession stand, Globe-ish outdoor theatre, cross-laid brick courtyard, and ivy creeping up the occasional sign or lamppost. "Wench up, lads, there's tarts to be had!" Dan King and I made a merry time of it, I must say. Evan and Hillary were exemplary models of propriety and not being as merry as me and Dan. Just kidding.

So anyways, the Subway boasts an underwater tunnel.

Some heroic-stance provoking scenery (all of those are bona fide hero-poses, except one--what is Tyler doing?).

Some slip-n-slides. (Tried to upload but file problems)

And random other cool waterways and falls.

It's just a beautiful place. 8 miles of it.

The Fierce Fire of Freedom: updated with pics and vid (of piping)

2009-07-17T21:03:00.000-07:00

I was melancholy as I rehiked Arthur’s Seat. I wanted to be. I was facing the past, and indulging in doing so. I’m often like this, though I’m not sure why. I don’t understand the appeal, I just feel it.

I am rehaunting the place where my friends still stalk as spirits summoned by my memory. I have imagined revisiting these places that matter to me—all our study abroad’s significance will somehow be represented by coming back here where we all began—and now I want to torment myself with the meaning that is lost, or rather, the experiences that to the present are lost, while dwelling melancholically on the past, like a weasel sucking it out of an egg.

Jamie MacDonald Reid picked me up from the bus stop near Bread Street. It was just like the first time I came to Edinburgh, but now I’m a battle-hardened traveller that is not afraid of jet-lag or as touched by it. There the first time in the airport I arrived with Jon and Bess, whom I’d met in NY. Marshall walked by, missing his luggage. No one else would come for awhile, since we were a day early.

Katy Pitts was wandering on the wide flat shingly sidewalk, as casually lost in a massive foreign city as one might be in a library at home. I want to scream ‘Katie!’ again when I find her, except I know I won’t, other than the memorial ghost I’ll conjure. How necromantic.

I’ll go to the Tesco where Congo bodywash will be purchased to cover Matt’s beautiful not-african body. I’ll laugh again, but other than his long-vanished echoes, I’ll be alone.

I’ll sit on the little dais thing in front of the National Gallery, eating lunch with Emma. We´ll wander looking for others. We’ll gaze into the valley near the Burns monument; we’ll sit on the sidewalk, I’ll show her Anberlin, she’ll watercolour a cathedral we saw on the first day; then we’ll make a pilgrimage to the Elephant House where Harry Potter was born and I will be moved by the encounter with the view out the back window which is so romantic because there is a graveyard beneath it and a lofty ridge with Edinburgh Castle (read: Hogwarts) beyond it and the other British streets, lamps, and buildings. I’ll be moved because Harry’s one of my favorite people too, and he’s here as much as anyone, all through my imagination—or shall I call it ‘the eye of faith’? Or is it ‘poetic faith’? Or is it real faith? ‘I am not solitary whilst I read and write’ (Emerson). Lord Kames called it ‘ideal presence.’ All I know is I won’t be alone. But also I will be. It will feel bittersweet, and somehow the bitter is the sweet part sometimes.

I am hiking early in the morning, at 7. It would have been earlier but yesterday I left my Dublin hostel at 4 something and I didn’t feel up to rising earlier today. I am fully equipped to be fully and appropriately accoutred: a kilt is slung over my backpack, and an old box with a squeaky brass handle is inside it carrying the true treasure and weapon of tribute: bagpipes. Sarah Moulton, who taught me how to play my one song, Amazing Grace, after dinner groups, would be so proud. Well, I guess, based on how she actually always regarded it, she’d just be weirded out especially. I wanted to run through the Scottish wilds under the moon down to the lochshore and pipe my praises to my hero William Wallace alone in the wee hours. He’d be with me too. He is.

In the Winter semester of 07 I had History of Europe from 1914 on. Dr. Choate told us about fascist Italy, and how in their chamber of war they had a roll call. They would go down the list of their warriors, one by one, calling them by name: ‘so and so. ‘here.’ So and so. ‘here.’ Etc. Whenever they got to the name of someone who had fallen in battle, when they reached their empty chair, in unison all who remained would say, ‘Here.’ I was moved and never forgot that. All for one and one for All, and things like that come to mind when I ponder it, again, in my mind. I don’t think prayer is much less than envisioning: what is it that you worship? What do you think about—what do you pray for? They are almost one thing for me now, communing with Truth in vision.

I failed at my Scottish dream earlier, but the fact that my flight out of Europe was from Edinburgh also gave me a chance at redemption, and immersion in nostalgia, both. I determined to rehike Arthur’s Seat because it was their I felt our British fellowship was first forged: the fellowship of our writing. I remember something about Tiffany as I tread on dewy plush grass, and soon take off my shoes like we did earlier, though it’s a hassle, because I promised Katie Pitts I would. No one is here to give me a ‘Chaco check,’ this time though, but I still hear Katie saying it. (Also, I beheld as I was transfigured before her voice of the pure Romantic childlike poet, in vision, the august spectre of Katy A. bow o’er me as if in benediction as I there symbolically removed my shoes as I approached our sometime Sinai.)

I am determined also to enact my own fascist roll call while I pay my tribute to the fallen, and reenact a ritual that to me is meaningful: I will stand atop Arthur’s windy throne and there recite all names. I will ponder my favorite memories with each. I will feel the feeling of the overall community. I will bask in the sweet memory as I forget it isn’t real, then I will feel it more acutely as I remember it isn’t, but at least it was.

That’s what I remember from seeing Les Miserables in London more than almost any other thing. For one moment, when Marius is in the tavern, alone, he is lost in a presently past moment and forgets it is only a dream. He smiles in pure joy. Then he remembers now, and the remembering is all the more painful because he now he also so well remembers the sweetness of then. So too, in a rugged, mountain way, I am returning back to a sacred place of friendship: I am alone, alone in a natural tavern or perhaps mountain temple, where there are, so to speak, ‘empty chairs and empty tables.’

In Normandy, with a lifetime friend from home, Justin, whom I met up with after our program, I read an unforgettable story. During heavy fighting in an attempt to take Saint-Lo, France, an American captain was killed in battle. His men loved him so much that they draped his coffin in an American flag, and carried him with them as they fought their way into and took the city. ‘Captain ____.’ ‘HERE.’

All I know is, of our charging squadron, no one is here anymore. I remember that sacred space of separation from all the rush of life was sanctified as ‘England and Lit: 2009’ and how for a moment we were all that mattered. If it felt so good, why does it have to be any other way? Why live another way?

There are ants, I mean people, crawling over the hill though (that’s what Arthur’s Seat is to me, a mountain original lad). If I was Whitney, I would say, ‘I am pissed.’ I’m not, so I just say, ‘if I was Whitney I would,’ and sort of get away with doing what I want without scandalizing my classy grandma with casual/crass language. (I like it on the inside, un poco. Or at least the freedom, which it may not be but it represents.) That red is not endemic to the hill; it must be a jacket. Feces. Big fecis. You sir, are a fecis. I’m sorry, I was just upset. It was my fault. I should’ve gotten up earlier. ‘But I was too tired, really…’ I think.

I am bummed, truly, because now I can’t stand where everyone sat huddled out of the wind near the very top, and listened to Christian tell us about how its name is maybe a corruption of ‘Archer’s Seat.’ Marshall will be pretending with me: ‘Oh I’m sorry, (King Arthur), was that your seat? Like, the whole thing?’ That’s where I was going to bagpipe at 3 am. I’m not about to put on a military kilt borrowed from Jamie, and pipe out some second-class, novice Amazing Grace in front of a bunch of traditional Scotsmen and effectually diss their culture and disgrace myself. Maybe that was a cowardly thought.

I found an outcropping hill, halfway up the hike, and piped there. I am so new to the pipes it takes all I’ve got in me to semisuccessfully play the song, let alone enjoy the moment as if I were Harry Potter summoning his best friends with the Resurrection Stone. ‘Do you think the dead who truly loved us ever really leave us?’ I just finished rereading book 3 and its foreshadowing. After I play the song, I take about 16 pictures doing dance moves (which were atrocious yet somehow encouraged on the trip—it’s a medley I assembled of the worst things I’ve ever seen in the name of dance); looking like a superlatively benign priest in unbridled magnanimity (that one was for you, Chris Bennion!); and, naturally, attempting to reconcile kilts, ninja kicks, and modesty. Those three things, man, whew! Bad brew. If you’re endowed, and male, however, I can show you at least one pic of a wicked sick Scotch ninja kick (every one of those words might be interpreted as literally as it may ‘slangfully’).

I put my shoes back on where I mentioned the broken glass I’d seen to barefoot Roxanne, near the top. My kilt was stowed again; I wonder how Superman always found a phone booth near when he needed to pull out his piece of supercloth; I used a big British bush.

Old people were all over (I guess they hike in the mornings), like ten of them. This was the top. I was on a secret mission: ‘On the top there are two pillars. Go to the higher of the two. The white one. Go to the side with the Red Lion stenciled on it. Beneath it above the bedrock, next to the biggest stone there, are two smaller ones. Between these I have left thee my message,’ said Marshall. He left Europe on July 3rd. Today is the 5th. He paid homage to our fellowship as well by rehiking the lofty throne of England’s greatest symbol of gaelic subversion and appropriation as well. He promised to leave tidings. But alas, I arrived 48 hours later; and they were gone. I was already planning this essay, because this was going to be a super melodramatic, indulgent, and as I said before, melancholic rant. I was going to whine about how the truant tidings symbolized the impossibility of hope ever living, or ever finding joy once it was lost again, or who knows what sort of emo thing like that. Kinda pathetic. I stood atop the pillar where John Bennion would have stood, indeed, striking the pose he once struck—grinning, with his hands in his pockets and hair blown wild like the peninsulas of western Ireland—that was cool and necessary for my tribute, ‘Oh captain, my captain!’

As I shivered in the same seat wherein I heard Christian’s little lecture, I realized it was fast Sunday. Feces. –the kid in Bariloche just put on some jazzy music; I wonder if it will change how I write…-- I had saved a strawberry rice pudding for the top, just in time to remember I shouldn’t eat it. But I need food. I’m hiking a lot today. I think God understands. I’d justified the excursion on the Sabbath because this was to be a sort of communion for me. I pondered. Finally I decided to fast: maybe I didn’t have to, but the man I want to be would do it, so I will too. Hunger doesn’t matter, I decided.

I wanted to say, ‘I was too cold, so I wanted to move, but I didn’t want to leave where everyone had been. So I stayed.’ Then I decided I was ridiculous, but I still needed to see Edinburgh Castle. I hadn’t done the roll call either. A sheet of gray flitted towards me over the distant houses, I saw. Miles away, past the castle, the rain was defined very crisply, something rather striking, since storm clouds generally have nebulous boundaries. I took pictures to verify it was indeed visibly progressing over house by house. Yep. Then I felt a raindrop. Then I heard an old woman start complaining. (‘Well look what you’ve done now, Frank, since you wanted to come up here.’) I chuckled a bit disgustedly. She was right though, we were all getting wet.
Then we fled. The Highland storm was giving us a drubbing. I gallantly let Frank get off the mountain (where I hope hopelessly that things are better) with his wife first.

I put on the long-sleeved shirt that went with the kilt, but shook anyways. ‘John—the time he came to me after I’d complained a lot to him, and was so Christlike, and told me he thought I had a point. How he let me carry the leftover cakes from Kendle.’ ‘Karla—she’s a fountain of unconditional goodwill and cheer.’ ‘Chris—he wanted me to come see his band play.’ The musings were getting much shorter, and I had wanted to relish each one. In fact, I soon stopped reminiscing at all, and simply started saying the names so I could tell people I’d done what I’d said I would. I turned tail (it was a very wet one, mind) and booked it after Frank.

And caught up in 25 seconds. I skipped past them off the trail, and kept running. I was entirely unprepared to deal with rain, and it was freezing in the wind even before I was wet. As I was running, though, a thought stopped me. I was maybe 100 ft from the top now. ‘What am I running for? What am I worried about?’ I decided to think that over for a second. All I had to worry about was Jamie’s stuff: his kilt would be fine, and I could cover the box. The rain pelted me in the back. I was halfway turning when another memory hit me. Somewhere on the way to Switzerland I was explaining to my friend Justin about Keats and tuberculosis and how about 2/3 of the Romantic poets had killed themselves trying to have intense experiences with nature in the Scottish highlands. I felt a very, very big grin hit my rain-splattered face—I love irony. I bet any true Romantic would’ve done the same thing. Then I turned completely and started sprinting back up the steep ridges, hum-yelling Braveheart notes and determined to not rest for a single second: hunger wouldn’t stop me, neither would rain.

The pedestal under which Marshall’s note should have been was the highest point in the Edinburgh area. It was slippery in the rain. Ha. Who cared? It was semi-dangerous perhaps to mount it with just the wind, like John and I had done. Whatever. I jumped atop it and screamed into the wind, as the gray curtains draped entirely around me. My arms were 45 degree angles: ‘Frreeeedddoooommmmm!’ I howled. I was alone in the storm, the last one to face it, while all others retreated down the trail. ‘Whaaaaaooooooaoh!’ I yelled.

‘Whaaaaaooooooaoh!’ echoed back. On the next hill down, a girl sat mildly drowning in the attitude of one sketching a scene in the central park, saluting crazily back at me. ‘Whaaaaaooooooaoh!’ I responded. She tried to say something, but I’ve never had good ears, and we gave up trying to communicate. Well, other than yelling ‘Whaaaaaooooooaoh!’ about fifteen more times apiece. Maybe that’s why I got an insanely sore throat and thought I was going to die when I was grievously sick a few days later in Buenos Aires. Boo yeah. (Not what I said at the time, but I never recanted: ‘Whaaaaaooooooaoh!’ Ok, I’m abusing the ‘copy and paste’ functions and hotkeys now.) Noting this correspondence is important because it was awesome, and because it felt exhilirating to have had someone witness my wild and fierce, brave cry of freedom. Freedom, I suppose, from circumstance. I would not be a creature who was acted upon: right then, I was free of it all. I did what I wanted. And I wanted to be epic. I was.

A bit later my friend left. My hands remained up—I needed no Aaron nor ¿ to sustain my burly Mosaic position. ‘John!’ I grunted fiercely. I saw his constant kindness, non-judgmentalism, and above all, his love. ‘He loved me when I didn’t deserve it.’ ‘HERE!’ ‘Karla! She always was so kind to me.’ ‘HERE!’ I bellowed. ‘Chris!...’ and I continued, this time also remembering how he felt like a brother sometimes. Rain poured down my bowed head, then I raised it and looked to the sky (and lost my equilibrium and almost fell). I got about halfway through, then two equally brave and battle-hardened fearless Aussies found me, Byronically heroic, transcendant, and irrational (not as Byronic as Jon Smith, though). A wild man in the mountains, an immensely pleased with himself one. They laughed. I laughed. I asked if they wanted to get up, and offered to get down. They declined, but took a picture of me. I told them this was a sacred ritual Mormon study abroad finales invariably required of their cultic participants. I perceived much soon after. ‘Actually…’ one said. ‘You want to get up here too!’ I nodded triumphantly, hopping down. ‘Yeeeahhh!’ he said. I took one of him, and we all stood in the rain, his friend atop the other pillar. We were free, like all the kids on top of desks in the end of Dead Poets Society.

We parted as friends. I reascended. I counted a few more names. ‘Sammy—too much to say at once. She scratched my head in a friendly, familiar way as I had it bowed, spiritually weary, praying, reaching, after sacrament meeting in Bath.’ It was more what all that moment represented than that single thing itself. ‘HERE.’

A group of five Scotsmen hiking all the nearby peaks in one day then came. We became friends. (If you ever want friends, just act like a crazy mountain hermit. Everyone wants to be friends with them.) I took a picture for them, then hopped back up, counting more names: ‘Rick – showed me you should be humble and simply love because that is the better way, even if you could be proud if you wanted to because you have a PhD in a top college and are smart or something. Plus he rescued one of my zip off pant legs from the dark magic in the maw of Merlin’s cave.’ ‘HERE!’

I caught myself simply reciting the names, worried I couldn’t recall all thirty. So I started over again with number eleven or so, enjoying the feelings and relationships more. I actually had failed and only gotten to 28 once. I decided to trust in the spirit of the venture and that all would come to mind if I recalled them from my heart. This time it worked. I said the last name, ‘Rachel,’ and a thrill shot through me (not that you were the one I forgot, Rachel ;), as if it truly was a sacred ceremony I’d just finished performing. The thirtieth name. Technically there were thirty one, but I counted them squished into thirty ‘cause the number sounds more magically delicious. I was soaking wet. But my arms were out, my palms were up, and my spirit as unshackled as my body.

It was interesting. I think I really did complete something in that moment. That act of ceremonial tribute was something beautiful, and that thrill was a powerful experience. It was beauty in the present. I had come to dwell in the past, but in consorting with ghosts I somehow found out I was alive where I was. I think if I knew why I tend to coddle my precious ‘pasts’ I would understand why I don’t do as well in the present as I would like. I think I lack hope for the future, because often the present feels too empty, so I turn to the past. I want to learn to live better. Carpe diem—this one. I need to learn to say, and have it echo as permanently as being, or reality, rather than an action, ‘Oh Captain, my Captain!’ In the meantime, I act until it echoes, I guess. Fake it til you make it.

The storm passed as suddenly as it came; the veil was torn from me and swept further into the east. I could see Edinburgh Castle again. A Scot and some Californians had since attained the peak as well by now, and I got down for them to conquer the altar as well. I don’t want to crawl on God’s altar, incidentally. When I am best—when I decide to fast—I stand on it: I think less is less than true sacrifice: all must be voluntary. I want to give my whole will: I believe that’s how I will feel present and free.

Maybe I am the one, ironically, that was least present while I went on saying ‘Here’ for every single one of my writing fellowship friends. I lived who knows where in time. Joy is in the present, I do believe that. The past offers some, even if it is tortured, feeling, though.

A kind woman and her husband offered to take a picture of me when they arrived, and heard my story (not like I was throwing it at everyone, they just asked how long I’d been up there, and I was so pumped up about my thrills that I had to tell them why I had stayed too). You should take a picture, the lady said. I already had, with my Aussie mates of course, but thought I’d oblige plus I might be wetter and hard-corer looking now. Plus she offered to let me put on her red jacket. ‘Like a cape!?’ I asked. Yes, she said, if you want, like a cape. The Scot had overheard my story too—he was super jovial. ‘Hey, what’s that?’ he asked, indicating my backpack, slunk against the white graffittied pedestal. ‘Oh, uh, that’s a kilt my friend let me borrow.’ ‘Well heaven’s sakes, man, you’d better put that on too!’ Someone then asked, ‘and what’s in that box?’ ‘Oh, uh, some bagpipes.’ ‘What?!’ said all the Californians, laughing. I confessed their origination and purpose. Then somehow framed by a withdrawing storm atop the highest peak o’er Edinburgh, I was induced to stand, as fully and fearlessly accoutred as I might’ve dreamed, or dared to do while in nightly solitude, in a full military kilt, matching shirt, and red jacket cape; and pipe as best as my remaining trashed lungs allowed, the song ‘Amazing Grace.’ My lungs gave out about two thirds through. Everyone cheered for me, which I appreciated, but I squeezed the last bit of air out and fought desperately, falteringly, on. I kept thinking, ‘This is it, my one chance. My one chance to do it right. I’m here in Scotland right now. Now is when it’s all gotta come out. Don’t hold anything back. Leave it all up here, like you’d leave it all out on the field in track. All you got.’ (‘A man who gives into temptation after five minutes simply does not know what it would have been like an hour later’—and nor does he know what he would have been like an hour later’!) And when I finally, completely, helplessly gave way before reality—which broke my body, but never , I am thrilled to say, my spirit—I raised my fist in fury and screamed again, more naturally than I’ve screamed it ever, before or since, atop that (forbear me a bit of dramatized romanticism) windy peak whence legends ever came (ok, now I don’t even know what I’m talking about), ‘Freedom!’ in my rawest, bereft of fear-est, most genuine voice. And my new friends clapped again.

It wasn’t that I had forgotten my old friends, it was that I was presently enjoying some new ones. I was havin’ a heckuva time, now, after finding peace with the past. I made friends with a jew who made a very funny remark he thought was offensive about Mormons, and which might have should have been, but was definitely funny, and he said to look him up if I went to the Jerusalem Center. His friends were from Cambridge, where I’d always dreamed of going, too, and we talked all about it. I guess my chums up there loved the fact they’d got to be a part of a more spiritually begotten Scotsman, and as such, so did I. There was no way I’d have had the guts—I must sadly say—to get up and do that on my own, without friends to encourage me. I guess that’s why they’re so great—they help you when you lack strength to do, or to see.

Walking towards the ruins of St Anthony’s chapel on the way back down I listened to the Freedom Theme on the Braveheart soundtrack. I saw him in a crucifix tortured on the altar, willing, like a hero; it was coming to the part where he yells freedom, and again—yes, again (screaming freedom is like taking a spiritual vitamin C for you, I suspect, but definitely for me)—I simply wanted to. I looked around at all the random hikers walking up to Arthur’s Seat—it was now well after morning, it was even after noon. If I did, they must think I was the weirdest, craziest, stupidest guy around. What would you think of a guy who screamed random quotes from hero movies which he constantly envisions for the love he bears them and help they bear him?

Well, I decided I didn’t care. ‘FREEEDDDOOOOMMMMMM!’ I yelled in Scotland, one last time. It rolled down the ridge to the hikers I would soon cross who were headed up. If they looked queryingly at me, like, ‘Uh, wtf?’ I would simply, unapologetically, and high-headedly look back, like, ‘Sorry, it’s just what I sort of wanted to do. And you know what (to quote Whitney), ‘I do what I want.’ ‘ Turns out, when we met, they didn’t even know who’d let out that fearless and manly scream. But I did.

Elephant House

2009-07-01T11:35:00.000-07:00

Emma and I were separated from everyone else when we had better artistic taste than them. We left the art gallery early, intending "to do Turner right" (he's my favorite and the best British painter--thanks Tobes for introducing me) in London, but then no one else came out the same door or something. After lunching on a nearby bench overlooking the valley in the middle of Edinburgh, she was kind enough to accompany and guide me to the Elephant House, where everyone else had already gone, without me hearing about it, to pilgrimage to JK Rowling's original room of inspiration for Harry Potter. Here, he was born. And believe me, it was more magical than Shakespeare's birthplace, which we saw later. Not to hate on old Bill, to be fair, I've just read a lot of him lately; I just missed Harry.

Emma thought she was too cool to cast "Avada Kadavra" at the helpful photographer, but I didn't; either that or she just forgot her wand. She probably didn't know it was a muggle.

The entrance to the cafe is just off an Edinburgh street, but because it's on a hill, out the back window you look down on the view in the back. If you've ever wondered where Harry Potter was born, you'll look no further. The pics are a little weak; sorry. You step into the cafe; there is a narrow room with a bar on the right. Follow the hall to the back, where it opens up into a room with about 6 tables, and 3-4 big windows in the back. Light streams through them into the lively diners' area. Out the back window, Edinburgh Castle looks more than just a little bit mystical, and the graveyard just beneath you seems beautiful, in some weird way, for some strange reason. It is just a gripping sight; it's beautiful. You're just amazed at such a collision of wonders all out of one cozy cafe's window's view. It was like it was meant to be. Welcome to the world, Harry. He must have been bubbling about in her mind every time she saw the sight. Every time she took a dish to that window table, she must have been thinking up the secret passageways, the youthful adventures, the poignancy of dear ones' deaths, and the overriding beauty of courage and heroism, and purity of heart. It was that view which was so cool to me: even cooler than the Scott monument.

Shades of Stonehenge

2009-05-30T13:10:00.000-07:00

The ravens conspire atop these megalithic ruins—they definitely know something. They’ve seen something, or perhaps their knowledge has only been passed down by oral tradition through the years. These black shadows, which swoop from monolith to monolith—and sometimes to nests wedged in cracks beneath cross-stones, which bridge the towering slabs of rock—are the sole survivors in a race of witnesses. No human knows what they know, what has transpired here.

There is a green magic about this place. Though much is ruin, enough remains to cue one’s mind to what it used to be. The east side’s outer wall stands with three bridging stones on top; the next inner ring (there are at least three concentric circles in all) is composed of stone slabs which are about half the size of the outer towers—that is to say, still twice my height—then there are two spires that are only as thick and tall as me. As I walked through it, that is to say, the main gate—which the sun pierces at the high summer solstice—I felt moved; I have no idea why, or in what way. I’d forgotten the wonder I had for this place when I was a dreaming boy, until that abrupt moment.

Not a flock but a horde of ravens emits a living cacophony of shrieks as one traverses the tunnel that is yet a hundred yards from the henge. It brings to mind dark incantations of druidic rituals, and I muse that maybe these are the shards of spells once heard by these birds’ forebears, that now live only in the ravens’ lore. The way it echoes in the tunnel is so eerie that for a second I actually seriously wonder if they were involved, or still could be. The sun is still not up, though there are predawn rays.

I step out of the rings to survey the stony ruin, now broken into mostly solitary obelisks, again. The ravens continue their surveillance but their watchful cries are drowned out by a new noise. It is the noise of screaming, primal energy; it is constant, and it is power; it is the raw roar of power. For half a second I turned to see what it was, and had I not, I do not know if I could have recognized sounds from a freeway sloped down to me. When you looked at the henge it didn’t sound the least bit mechanized, or intelligible. It was the sound of pure energy, that, despite being intangible, was somehow apprehended by the senses. The power rushes in to answer the summons to this place: it is like water deep in the earth, and Stonehenge is the earth-power’s well. I feel it is being drawn.

I return to the great circle, reflecting on what once had been. I sit next to one of the smallest monoliths, pondering the aura about—and especially the magic within—this place. I notice a single, sable feather in the dewy grass. I consider fingering it, then instinctively look up and see the dark sentinels, not unaware of my intentions. One presiding obelisk stands taller than all others—it was once co-ruler, but its crown and mate have long since fallen. Now they’re broken at its feet. A stone of sacrifice lies near the innermost circle. The epicenter is rough grass, strange and short-shorn between the stones. The stones too are witnesses; and though they are mute, perhaps they know more than the ravens, for they were the very observers. They were there.

The dawn has come, and now the primal roar from the nether fields, broken incantations from the black-winged priests, and a rising ray have pierced the henge to its very center. A throaty hum emits from something deep within the rocks, or maybe the earth. I whirl from stone to stone, seeking its origin. Cries grow shriller, and the ravens flock to the center, spitting curses, bloody curses. Their shrieks and blackness mix with misty light from through the eastern arches; the energy streaming in from all directions, through the arches, draining the earth, almost seems to power these cries into a shadow o’er the stone of sacrifice; yet there is no shape to shade it, nor does the shadow lean on the rock—it hovers in the air. The materializing shadow is pulsating now; it is an ethereal blackness, though transparent. There is a shape to it. I recognize it. A cowled, menacing, cruel cloaked figure—it is a Druid.

I retreat to before the stone where I’d been sitting, but the sounds roar from beyond the circle stones. Spirits rage through the curving corridors, trapping me within the sanctum. I recoil, aghast—pillars rise to former places; missing stones shimmer into reexistence; the two great pillars are reunited, and their immortal crown returns. The Druid smiled in dark satisfaction as awful power and dismal glory rematerialize: Stonehenge was reborn. Then, though the storm of screams continued unabated, a frigid voice pierced mortal blood. The Druid spoke to me.

“My summons is nigh unto complete. And YOU, son of blood and dust, will be the first to face the Fate. Unluckiest of your kind”—here it laughed, convulsing with sadistic glee—“If you cannot defy the unbridled fury of the earth, Our rule will be restored to this world. Again we shall reign from here, from this, Our ancient Throne of Stone. ”

The rasp of its immortal mind assaulted my inner thoughts. My soul was desolation, the world beyond the roaring henge, oblivion. Only a few words in answer required almost all my courage:

“Why me?”

“You are the unlucky one. Every thousandth year the fairest virgin is drawn here, drawn to die at dawn, or defy the earth—this or all the earth will pay.”

Then It grudgingly added,

“Incidentally, your race has never looked better.”

I conceded it graciously, then declared,

“Well then, I shall defy the earth. Let it be now.”

“So be it, mortal. Now,” it continued, “BACKFLIP!”

I was standing amidst the innermost stones; my shadow lay upon the altar whereon other beauties had once been slain. My muscle bulged and burst sleeves; spirit steeled and unknew fear; eyes squinted and pierced time. Rum thing—in retrospect, it was funny—I don’t think the earth was truly against me. She must have claimed me as her own, for as I channeled my thoughts, nether energies convalesced in my corpus and I became pure power overwhelming.

“If I die,” I thought, “this was a good day to die. And if I do not, why then, this was a rad day not to.”

“You bad, cracka, you bad,” mused the Druid, while his head grooved like a voodoo hobbit from MGMT’s “Electric Feel” music video (or maybe an extra from “Renegades of Funk”).

My outstretched arms rose until my hands had traced an arc perpendicular to the trail of the sun, and as my hands touched, all of Earth’s power thundered through my fists and I exploded into the pure Platonic form of backflipness—it was, as if for the first time, known to Earth.

Stones screamed and creation roared—the Druid with his hardcore frown nodded His otherworldly approval—and my feet erupted into a volcanic reverse arching kick, THE Backflip, and I landed levitating on the air an inch above the ground.

“Boom-shuckalucka,” said the Druid, still wearing his sneer of badness.

I nodded curtly in response, “Yeah, Bass.”

“Yeah, Bass.”

“My man.”

(Backhanded Peace Sign + Approving Sneer Back)

“Be cool.”

Then he moonwalked into the mist.

May humanity ever produce such breakdancers, and such backflippers—such heroes.

This is not my story. This is the story Stonehenge told to me. The last thing it showed me was this camera, mostly overexposed to pure awesomeness, which recorded the last half of the single most epic move known to mankind—the backflip that saved the earth. View it well, for it was this that inspired this story.

England is Blue

2009-05-12T13:48:00.000-07:00

Mmmmmmm, just wanna tell ya bout that hurt deep down inside. I's (it is) gonna be comin in real soon...

Here in England, in a hotel with ten kids, just wound up singing the blues on camera, which moved me to start this. It also includes a harmonica debut, live, without training.

Peace be unto you,

Bentley

(round one of the blues was not recorded, so it doesn't all make sense)

Arthur's Seat

2009-05-02T11:19:00.000-07:00

Behold the glory of Arthur's Seat--an eminence not far from Edinburgh.Sometimes, professors are irreverent.
The hike was great--our first of many. I used my chacos for the first time: they had been recommended by many, but it was Greg Littlefield's voice which cemented my trust of their worth. I actually scrambled up the side of it barefoot for awhile, because I thought it was something William Wallace would do, and I bet it's where he did it.

The view from the top, looking down on Edinburgh. Great view of Edinburgh Castle.

I squinted for one last look at the front entrance.

Then harder to view into a little chapel from the 8th century or something which was around the sweeping, swirling stone road down from the keep, to review my favorite stained glass window I saw that day:

Our group bonded. Katie Pitts and I were both Chacos novitiates, so we frequently did "chaco checks," to see how we were holding up. Katy A also began being noted as awesome in Scotland as we hiked up, and she was witty.

Edinburgh Castle and Scott Monument

2009-05-01T10:50:00.000-07:00

Come on, come on big guy -- gettin some love from Scotland

From the sweet vennels we saw lovely things like the Sir Walter Scott monument, the biggest monument to a single writer in the world, "created to represent the esteem in which he was held by his contemporaries, and to show the gratitude felt for him by Scotland," or something like that. He revived Scottish culture almost singlehandedly after their final war for freedom was crushed at the Battle of Culloden in 1745. Kilts and bagpipes were almost nonexistent, but Scott grew up on the border of Scotland and England, and he heard the old timers tell their tales of both the war and the true Scottish culture. He romanticized it so movingly that after his Waverley novels rocked the world and established the historical fiction genre, which eminents such as Victor Hugo and Leo Tolstoy wrote their magnum opei in (forgive my unwieldy latin: greatest works, I mean), that the world fell in love with Scotland so much that through it she was reborn.

As you can tell by this gallant lads face, Scotland is no place for mamma's boys.

The high keep in Edinburgh Castle is this: a monument to Scotland's fallen in World War I. The phrase over the inner entrance simply reads, "Lest we forget." You should read the "Beware of Pride" talk by Pres. Benson--that line is taken from Rudyard Kipling's poem, which I might add here in full sometime. The other tribute inside--where we couldn't take pics--which I loved best, was inscribed in stone, beneath stained glass windows, round and round a central tomb: "Their Name Lives."

"Some say that the age of chivalry is past: that the spirit of romance is dead. The age of chivalry is never past, as long as there is a wrong left unredressed on earth, and a man or woman left to say, 'I will redress that wrong, or spend my life in the attempt." -- Charles Kingsley

(I've only read this quote, but intend to read the rest:

http://articles.christiansunite.com/article11275.shtml)

Scotland was epic. We were very tired, all having just got in, but adjusted quickly to the massive British breakfasts consisting of eggs, bacon (ham), sometimes mushrooms!!! (as I learned to yearn and scream for in my heart like Merry and Pippin), delicious mueslix cereal, yogurt, juices--even rolls and cheese and meat if you want. I suspect I'm fatter. But I don't care!!!

Beginning with the Beginning, from the End

2009-05-01T10:27:00.000-07:00

So what's better than a 374 hour flight including layovers? Getting to Scotland and meeting up with your bagpipe piping pal Jamie and heading directly to Loch Lommond herself for some rustic revelry and a Scottish revival hullabalooza in the presence of all the great Scots and as the lone American representative. Tell me you don't want Scotland to never die. Try it. As if Braveheart wasn't reason enough to love Scotland forever.