Chicago Day 2

Today mom Sarah and i walked along Lakeshore Drive to visit a friend of ours, Billy...it was absolutely lovely.


  


This is mom and Sarah walking along Lake Michigan...it's surrounded by a huge concrete fortified bank. It's pretty amazing.


  

Sarah was tired all day...


  

Men playing chess in the park...and attracting an audience, apparently! The bordwalk area lining the Lake reminds me of the one in New York surrounding Central Park. Except it's nicer here. Everything here is nicer than in NY, in my opinion.


  

Mom stayed behind with Billy (she's turning 90 this month!) and Sarah and i set out for adventure and excitement...
The two of us hailed a cab and went to the Navy Peir. There, we took an architectural boat tour and got to learn about all of the amazing buildings lining the Chicago River.
The first is the Sears Tower, the second is the old abandoned post office (which the city is still trying to figure out what to do with), the second is the beginnings of the new Trump Tower (whoohoo.), and the last two are the "corncob towers", as they are known around here. (Also the buildings on the Wilco album...)


  

  

  

  

  

After the boat tour, Sarah and i took another cab to the Art Institute of Chicago. For me, the most fascinating part was the armour and war regalia from the 15-1600's.


  

  


  
  

  

  




Can you believe people used to FIGHT in that stuff? The last two are what they used on their horses.
And here are Sarah and i in front of the famous painting, "Sunday on the Island of La Grand Jatte", by Seurat!


  

and this was another gorgeous painting i saw there...i can't remember who painted it! if anyone knows please tell me...


  

anyway...tomorrow we're taking a plane to Minnesota and drive to Duluth for a big old family reunion.
i'm terrified.


  

(:

good morning

Chicago

Well...here we are in the Windy City! Mom Sarah and i got here a little while ago and are snug in our hotel room. The cab ride from the airport was very strange...i always feel strange suddenly traveling through a brand new place i've never seen before! It's very beautiful here...the weather is gorgeous, about 75 degrees with a lovely breeze. Old brick buildings line the streets, and our hotel is across the street from a gorgeous old church with a gothic spire a la Notre Dame. I'll have to find out what it's called.
"Coming to these cities makes LA seem so stupid." Said Sarah just now. True.

(Dad...click on the pictures to make them bigger)
First view of downtown Chicago...


  


Sarah listening to Sufjan Steven's "Illinoise" album as we ride in the cab.


  


Sarah sitting on the windowsill of our room...look Pip! Lake Michigan!


  



  


more later...


  

i knew it.

JERKS!!!

Now what am i going to do...? I don't have that kind of money! Life's not fair!!!

No, but seriously. i'm quite distressed. are you laughing at me? (;

Earthquake Weather

  

  

  

at least, that's what we call it.

CAID

  

  

  

who's with me?

im seriously considering getting rid of my myspace. i really hate it.

im low today. i hate that too.

Lies, Shame and Degredation

I think i'm going to Throw Up.
i almost can't even can't bear to read it. i wish i could smash my computer screen with a brick.

"The only God who seems to me worth believing in is impossible for mortal men to understand, and therefore He teaches us through this impossible.
"But we rebel against the impossible. I sense a wish in some professional religion-mongers to make God possible, to make Him comprehensible to the naked intellect, domesticate Him so that He's easy to believe in. Every century the Church makes a fresh attempt to make Christianity acceptable. But acceptable Christianity is not Christian; a comprehensible God is no more than an idol.
I don't want that kind of God."

~Madeleine L'Engle
The Irrational Season

aaah, why not!

So...i've started another joint blog with Sarah (my sister). You may find it here, at...
 

Tyrant Lizard King

Sarah chose the name. I'll also have a link to it in my sidebar.

Tschuss!!

"The sides rose up high above him like walls..."

Some stories you wish would just go on forever.
I finished Perelandra about an hour ago...a work of such beauty and complexity...yet such peircing, simple truth. I marvelled to Sarah last night as i rested from Chapter 14, that it wasn't something any mere man could have written...it just didn't seem possible. It's terrors, it's light...i couldn't understand...

A divine inspiration...a man blessed with a gift sent from the hand of the Lord God Himself. It is hard not to give all the glory to C.S Lewis, knowing, as we know, what sacrifice and submission of our own wills and desires it takes to allow the working of the Holy Spirit in and around our lives and in the works of our hands. In a way, we can give him praise...yet at once remembering that it was God who gave Lewis that willingness to search for truth...that disposition which made him unique in that he wasn't satisfied with acceptance of things that appealed to his fleshly, fallen state. How else could he, as a sworn atheist, have finally given credence to a doctrine that he had always ever seen as merely a crutch upon which weaker-minded men placed all their futile hopes and moronic ideals? He wanted what was right...what was pure...and not only did he find it...but he did everything he could, with the power he was given, to make sure that everyone else could find it, too.
And so i praise God...

As an artist it both inspires and weakens me...will i ever be able to come close to communicating anything worth giving real glory to Jesus? In the state i'm in...no. no no no no.

Sometimes i feel like i'm in a worse place than someone who is an atheist. I am a child of God...i know He is there i have heard His voice, felt His presence, touched His face, seen His hand...
but i am so weak. I am so unwilling...i am bound up by the devil.

And why oh why am i still able to go on every day...
Because Jesus wants me to. Because he created me to breath in the air. Because he gave me the ability to carry a tune. Because he wanted me to love the color green. Because he decided i would be 5'7 and three-quarters-of-an-inch-tall-and-no-more. Because he made me love people more than i feel they could love me. Because i'm here...because i'm alive...

Because i'm not hopeless...



"'You must cover my eyes,' he said presently; and the two human forms went out of sight for a moment and returned. Their arms were full of the rose-red lillies. Both bent down and kissed him. He saw the King's hand lifted in blessing and then never saw anything again in that world. They covered his face with the cool petals till he was blinded in a red sweet-smelling cloud."...

~Perelandra

  

  

  

Some pics from Oakbridge...

  
Feel the angst! We should have our own prime-time soap
(photo courtesy of Jeffybear)


  
Lovely Sarah...as we walked around the area

i guess i only have two...someday Nicole and Jeff will send me a few more.

it rained this morning, now it's pretty.

Porco Rosso was awesome, by the way. Laurel, i can't wait to show it to you.

i wish i wasn't such a coward

i guess it's June already

Tired.

Grandma's in the hospital again...she's been there since Friday. I'm glad she's coming home tomorrow...i miss her.

J-bi was here this weekend. always good. Last night (well...Saturday night, really...) he, Sarah and i went to the Meyers for dinner. Bobby swung Laura and Sarah around on their new swing. i wouldn't get on if you paid me...well...maybe if you paid me...
Afterwards we went down into their old manky basement and dug up old family movies...that was amazing. Old poem parties, Laura's "cooking shows", and Bettina, remind me to tell you about the video of Justin Wood...
Then Jeff came over after and hung out.

Church was very good today...i need to get the tape.

We had the Pikes over tonight (Sunday) along with Wren, Cam, Joey Ginger and Caid. Amy and i read a few chapters of a Tom Clancy novel, "The Broker" to Sarah as we laid on a blanket in the lower part of the yard. Amy read the narration and i read the voices...accents and everything. Then we played with Caid...who really likes it when you scream at him. He also likes plastic spoons. We had bbq and ice cream and watched the Matt Video. Then Amy Sarah and i drove to Videotheque and rented:

...and watched it. WOW. Amy gave us massages and i scratched her back. I love cousins. I wish i could see Anna more often.

I also rented Miyazaki's Porco Rosso...which i've been wanting to see for a long time.


We have guests staying here so i'm sleeping on the couch. i am sleepy.

so...off to couch...

My poof...in all it's glory.

It's hot...but it has also been beautiful. It's finally starting to cool off right now...summer evenings are the best part about this time of year, in my opinion. That and the pretty pictures you can take.


  

  

  

  


I started a painting of Laurel. Well, all i have is the drawing. But i like that, so far.





(there's another painting underneath it)

Over the weekend i went to a retreat in Oakbridge, San DIego. It was wonderful and confusing and strange for me. Perhaps i will go into it later. It was nice to see Nicole and Jeff and the rest of his family and all those people i never get to see but once a year or so. Even though i was my usual antisocial self. o well.
If they ever send me pictures, i'll post them too.

i wish i could get myself to be more creative. invent stories...draw pictures...write songs...
It seems like all i'm surrounded by is inspiration...why do i feel so dull?

i should go work on my painting.

THANK YOU SARAH

my sister is weird.
V
V
V
V
V
She made the post below...i do not have a thing for Ethan Hawke.

But it was too funny to delete.
just clearing that up.

Ethan

I have come to the conclusion that I love Ethan Hawke more than anyone else.
This realization has prompted me to announce it to the entire world...yes... I am telling everyone.
He is handsome, talented, sensitive, and he likes Lord of the Rings.

I am going to name all of my children Ethan.


feel free to make a comment or two.

Well...

it seems, as i am wont to do, that now that i'm on break i'm getting less sleep than i did when i was in school.


  

As i type this, wrapped in a quilt on the couch in the living room, staring out the huge glass window into the bright, cool morning, i have trouble placing my thoughts...

Sarah Laurel and i have been taking turns at night this week being grandma's help. Our night nurse, Mele, injured her arm at her hospital job. Yesterday i showered grandma...i used to do it before we even had caregivers coming here...before we even moved here. I don't know what it is...but the act of helping another person become clean is a feeling altogether unique.

Yesterday evening my family came face to face with a very dark spiritual reality...
Last night mom was talking to grandma at her bedside before she went to sleep and grandma told her that grandpa had been coming to visit her at night. May i just quickly say that my family is not at all unfamiliar with the forces of the enemy and his ways of manipulating our lives...we weren't necessarily taken aback, we've experienced stranger things...nor were we unsure of what to do.

Mom and dad told her immediately that what she was experiencing was not the presence of my grandfather. We explained to her that grandpa was in heaven...he is with the Lord...he can't come back. He wouldn't WANT to come back! Mom told her she wasn't to invite "him" to come into her room anymore. "In Jesus' name, leave me now" is what we told her to say. Not to converse with it...the last thing this family needs is just one foothold to put this house in even deeper darkness. We all gathered around her and prayed. It's strange that i'm not more afraid...actally i'm not afraid at all. After having already dealt with so much spiritual warfare in my own life it's not in my nature to be terrified...worried and disturbed, yes...but not fearful. We have a power in Christ greater than that of the enemy...

Just in general, grandma has been declining...physically and mentally. If it wasn't for other members of my family having felt a real sense of spiritual oppression this week, we might have just brushed last night off as something merely within my grandma's mind...but none of us got that sense from what she was saying.

Laurel Sarah and i stayed up long afterwards talking...well, i talked a little and then mostly listened to the other two as i drifted in and out of sleep until about 2am. now here i am.


  

We finished Laurel's engagement announcements yesterday. I started a painting of her. We've been having a Miyazaki marathon. Last night we started Princess Mononoke.

I'm very tired. All these goings-on have been the icing on an already many-layered cake of biittersweetness i've been consuming in the past few weeks.

maybe i'll try to sleep a little more...out morning caregiver should be here any minute.

if you like, you can pray for us. Of prayer, there can never be too much.