Thursday, June 24, 2004

Everyone that isn't me.

So the toilet broke yesterday. Well, not the toilet, per se, but the little chain that connects the flusher arm thingy with the rubber stopper thingy, in technical terms. (If you know anything about toilet tanks) So, now everytime I want to flush the toilet upstairs, I have to remove the lid and then use a creatively bent hanger to pull up the rubber stop thingy to make the water go down and stuff. (Did you think I would actually stick my hand in there? I know its clean water, but still!) So anyway, this would not be so terribly inconvenient if I did not have to complete the toilet flushing ritual three or four times in the middle of the night. You know, you cant carry out this delicate process in the dark, so you have to turn the light on, and well, you know how that is. So first, I would like to complain to the makers of the toilet chains for their faulty craftmanship (because this is the umpteenth time that my brother has fixed the toilet. (and he will only do so after I complain in excess for an undetermined amount of time)) and second, I would like to thank the makers of the toilet and its components for making our lives a lot less smelly. (Because when Katy and I stayed all night at the pioneer village it was just gross okay? Have you ever used a wooden outhouse after a storm?) And now Im done talking about the toilet.

So, I scheduled my classes for the fall today. Um, let me try that one again. So today, I scheduled my classes for the fall. Better? Um, you know what? That's just too much of a long story. IF you even care, I can tell you all about it with my larynx because my fingers just aren't up for all that tonight.

Hey, guess what? I was thinking about you tonight! (You being everyone I know that isn't me.) I was vacuuming the carpet in the fitting rooms at work and I was thinking about how I had memorized all the worn little paths that people walk on. Like there are little trails of crushed carpet from the little hall into the rooms and then little circles in the rooms where people turn around and around, I guess. So anyway, I was eventually getting to a point, but I did have to tell you about the carpet because you probably don't make it a priority to know everything I know or to stare at the carpet in random clothing stores. . . Anyway, I was thinking that we never really know each other, we just know those little paths that we all take. Lets say, all I know about you is like the crushed part of the carpet in the fitting rooms. I know what you do and what you say and probably what you might do and what you might say, but I never know the motivations behind your actions or the motivations behind the motivations behind your actions. So if I can only see where you have walked, imagine how much of you I am missing. A footprint does not tell me what color the foot is. Am I making any sense here?

Tangent: I just reminded myself of the time Chad told us in S.O.S that we should replace the word image with shadow in the verse that says God made us in his own image. So if God made us in his own shadow, what does God look like? I was thinking like, my shadow can follow me and it resembles my profile and is irrevocably a part of me, but there is so much of me that my shadow cannot be. For instance, my shadow is not 3-d, cannot think, is not in color, cannot be touched, is not even alive, can disappear quite easily, can be distorted. . . So when I think of how much more complex I am than my shadow is, I wonder, how much more complex is God than I am? At first I thought is He in 4-D (whatever that is) or in colors I have never seen or . . . but wait, my shadow cannot even think to even try to comprehend what I am so um. . God is so far beyond me that I cannot even think in a way to even try to comprehend what He is. Wow. Isn't it amazing what a single word can do? Changing that one word brings the whole thing alive to me.

Tangent again: Wow, imagine how much we miss when we read the translated version of the Bible. There is so much that is lost in translation. I know that when I read something in Spanish and then read it translated into English, it looses something. It looses all the connotations of each word that cannot be translated with it. I just wonder how much I am missing when I am confined by English. I wish I could know every language.

Tangent yet again: Do you ever feel confined by language itself? I don't know what I mean because there aren't words for it, you know? Like for example: we always have to come up with examples of some parallel situation to describe something new, but that doesn't work so well because it is never quite the same, and then you get all the feelings and preconceived notions about the example transferred over to this new thing that you cannot explain. I have read books that have said that this or that language does not have the word for this or that word. I cant know what we don't have a word for because we don't have a word for it. I was going to make up a word but then thought better of it. What is the use? And then I have spawned a new train of thought " stop talking gibberish or just stop talking. . ."

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