Dominic_Ville's Xanga

NaNoWriMo

Fri, 06 Nov 2009 21:30:40 GMT

November is National Novel Writing Month. I skipped the first 4 days because I was busy (horrible excuse) and finally started yesterday. I'm not sure if I'll finish or if I'll even do a week or three days, but I started yesterday. Day 1 was fun! Apparently I'm doing a semi-autobiographical first-person novel. I wasn't going to share anything or even tell anybody I was doing it, but life is short and it seems better to be more open than closed, right? So I'm kind of sort of doing NaNoWriMo. Here's a small excerpt from yesterday:

In a Western Pennsylvania rest stop I was standing at a urinal when a short, skinny, balding old man began quoting from the Bible.

"The grass withereth, the flower fadeth, but the word of God shall stand for ever!"

I zipped up and scooted next to him, washing my hands under lukewarm water. He was still holding one finger high in the air as I saw his reflection watching my reflection. I stuck my longest fingernail between my two front teeth and attempted to shimmy out some beef jerky I bought at a gas station in Philadelphia.

"What do you know about Michigan?" I asked.

The old man slowly lowered his hand, blinked heavily and nodded slightly. "My nephew lives in Michigan. Detroit, Michigan."

I made a noise with my mouth, still attempting to remove the beef with my tongue. "How old is your nephew?"

"Twenty-seven."

"I'm twenty-seven!"

He nodded. "Beeee careful young man." His index finger turned toward me. "Beware the eeeevil, son."

"I have like no gap between these teeth. How does food find it's way in there?"

"The wrath of the Lord is at hand!"

I brushed my hair to the side with my fingers, then patted the old man on the back. "Thanks for the advice, sir," I said before leaving.

"Beeee careful."

I arrived in Grandview at 10:30 PM and found that the sun had not yet set. What a strange place, my new home!

albertine

Wed, 04 Nov 2009 19:58:55 GMT

never underestimate
the power
of a good woman
reaching
outside herself
passionate
about something
that matters

everybody wants it

Tue, 03 Nov 2009 01:18:32 GMT

My friend Lori e-mailed us last week and said she wouldn't be able to make it to small group because she might have gotten the swine flue. So I made fun of her. I love my friends.

through smoke

Thu, 29 Oct 2009 23:57:47 GMT

You start out as a reprobate, a sinner bound for the gates of hell, or at least that's what you later learn was your spiritual standing before you knew Christ.

And then you meet Christ and you love the church and you love going to church even if the music is slow and boring; you even start reading the Bible and find pieces of meaning in the the archaic narratives.

You continue in this state for a time, a long time, and then something bad happens. You respond in the way you're supposed to respond--crisis of faith averted. The Bible helped you and Jesus walked with you and there you still were, sitting in church on Sundays with the church, singing old songs and learning about Calvary and hell and how wonderful it is that you've been covered in blood.

And then you meet people who say that they love Jesus but they don't love Jesus in the same way you love Jesus and so they probably don't really love Jesus.

But a seed was dropped and you don't even need water for it to grow because it hasn't yet broken the soil and so you can't remove it. Soon after this you meet some more people who say they love Jesus but they don't love Jesus in the same way you love Jesus and yet they're less of a jerk than you are and that presents a bit of a problem. The seed grows even in the dark.

And then life happens.

And this time you sit with your emotions a bit longer before bee-lining for the default position you know is expected of you. Everyone around you knows the answer and you know the answer, too, and yet its truth rings less loudly this time. This is honesty breaking through. This is your soul radar asking more loudly what you're going to do when the answers and the truth have cut their ties.

under the skin

Mon, 26 Oct 2009 20:24:58 GMT

jon foreman recently wrote an article for the huffington post. in the first paragraph he says what i tried saying in the last paragraph of my previous post:

poetry can get under the skin without your permission, and music can offer perspective or hope that might have been hidden before. and so the song becomes a vehicle to cover some serious ground.

hymn

Sat, 24 Oct 2009 19:14:01 GMT

it's been a long few years journeying away from some things and toward others. along my journey i've de-emphasized some things while emphasizing others. i don't think it has to be like this, but i suppose it's just natural. perhaps i need to learn to better live in the tension, to think with two hands rather than one.

it's good to remember, though, that the god can't be an individual's "all in all." we already tried that back in the garden. it didn't work. even before brokenness entered the picture, the god could not satisfy the man's deepest needs. the god even had the audacity to utter, "it is not good for the man to be alone."

alone?

the power and the infiniteness and the love and beauty and faithfulness given for the pleasure of the man...and it's not enough?

how far we have come from those days! it's common now among some circles to insist that only the god can truly satisfy, but i bet most of the people saying this are married and having sex, so we can't really trust them. he said he will make a companion for him. because companionship from his powerfulness

       was still
                                 not
                                        enough.

and now we have songs saying that "all of you is more than enough for all of me"!

such damage this does.

of course there are times for that aspect of life, though. remember: two hands.

for me, one of those times is now. what sermons and books and conversations cannot do, music can. music has a way of cutting through the cognitive aspects and beelining straight to the soul. almost as if to say, "i don't care what you think. this is good."

and then we tumble to the ground

Sun, 18 Oct 2009 03:52:54 GMT

She wrapped her soft hand around my pinkie as we crunched yellow leaves made stiff by Autumn's sun. A large red truck revved its engine loudly as it passed. I moved to her other side so I was between the road and her body. She slipped her fingers between mine and we walked in comfortable silence until we arrived at an open field.

She let go of my hand and ran into the field fast as she could because she is by nature wild and free. 100 yards out she stretched her arms out and spun circles until the tips of her fingers tingled. By the time I reached her the dizziness had faded and she was laying supine in the grass. She patted her stomach and opened her arms.

The ground was cold and hard but there wasn't a king-size bed in the largest castle in the world I would have rather been on in that moment.

trying to get away into the night

Sat, 17 Oct 2009 02:29:51 GMT

"Did you expect it to be like this?" She said, looking at me expectantly.

"I, uh, I didn't really think a--a whole lot about it, actually." I disappointed myself with my stutter. I know from dating websites and blonde friends that girls like guys who are confident. I broke eye contact with her solid stare and immediately regretted it.

She smiled barely and cocked her head, and that made me feel better. She looked down and then up at me strongly. Uh oh. At this point our entire lives could have shifted paths, which I wonder about every so often but that's it -- I just wonder -- I've never been inside a real live moment where in a matter of seconds whatever words traveled in the small space between us would have the power to alter the course of our lives so drastically.

"I think about you more than myself," I blurted out and did not regret it. "I've spent a lot of time thinking about how I'm suppose to act, how I'm supposed to live and think and be, so much of me." My hands were in my pocket at first but they moved quickly in front of me and to my sides, as if my whole body was trying to communicate this explosion of feelings I couldn't hold in. "But-but when I think of your face and the way your cheeks connect to your nose and I hug my pillow at night until I fall asleep and then again first thing in the morning and I usually have no reason to even get up but now I have energy even before eating breakfast and I probably don't actually need breakfast anymore." I lost track of the movement of my arms for a few seconds but then I shoved my hands into my pockets and thought it wouldn't be so bad if I could die right then because my face was on fire. "I can't, I c-can't stop thinking about you."

She reached towards my upper body and took hold of each side of my open coat and moved her eyes from my ears to my jaw to my hair and then to my eyes. Hello. I'm sure glad I didn't die. The blood rushed elsewhere from my face.

"How do you do that?"

Softly, she said "What?"

"Do you know magic?"

Through a big grin she asked again, "What?" as she tugged on my coat.

"Right now you look more beautiful than you did at the start of our conversation and I was just wondering how that's possible."

She kept looking at my eyes and then she sighed.

We walked out into October and watched the stars dance across the darkening sky.

and i think the dress looks nice on you

Wed, 14 Oct 2009 23:46:06 GMT

I went on a date last night.

I went on a date and it was fun.

It was fun but it wasn't amazing.

Does it have to be amazing?

One of my good friends back in Iowa married a guy who, when they first met, she hated. I'm not kidding. She said he annoyed her and that he was immature and stupid. Today they have a wonderful marriage and three beautiful children.

I still wonder, though, if I should wait for that girl who my first date with is amazing.

I should also be open to the possibility that my image of what a first date should go like is influenced more by Hollywood scripts than flesh & blood reality. And in reality, some first dates aren't that amazing.

Last night I dreamed about a motorcycle, which is strange because there was no discussion of motorcycles throughout the course of the evening; I live in Michigan and it's October -- I don't think I've seen a motorcycle in months. But what I found interesting is that the motorcycle stopped working because of a problem with the spark plug.

I went on a date last night that was fun but lacked something special...some...spark.

We walked around Calvin's campus for a few hours. Autumn starts above the Lake and stretches out to us, hovering over the trees, ordering them to strip, but not before caressing our sidewalks with fiery reds and yellows, which we walked over gently while conversing about our families and jobs, her mom's eight cats and the weather. She said that down in Indiana the weathermen are saying it's unseasonably cold this year. I told her this kind of weather is very seasonal in these parts.

We sat in the second row of a Donald Miller book event. We laughed some & then sat across from each other at Denny's eating wheat pancakes and eggs while we tried articulating how we both wanted to live a better story. This was difficult because we're both borderline introverts. I was pretty hungry but my tummy was bunched up in knots so I couldn't even finished my granola.

Long-distance relationships take a lot of work. The question is whether or not there was enough of a spark to ignite the motorcycle we'll need on the road connecting West Michigan with Northern Indiana.

Towards the end of his talk Don said that if you take the advice in his book it's possible that your life will end up horribly, but then he said this, which made me laugh and cut to my insides: "I can tell you this, though: it will not be boring."

And that, right now, is enough.

from a friend to a stranger

Thu, 08 Oct 2009 00:00:39 GMT

so you travel holy
and you travel high
on the road to change your life
not to give it all away
but to sing your song
'cause in the end
that's when you arrive