Scribble Theology: Nico and the Magical Talking Bible

Hurt

Hurting is a hard thing to do.

Or rather, figuring out what to do with that hurt is a hard thing to do.  I've always held a deep admiration for incredibly destructive people.  People who can tear a room to shreds, shatter a mirror, punch a hole through the wall.  Because all of that is way impressive, but it also means a lot of miserable work the next day and possibly a lost damage deposit.

Or a lost relationship, lost job, lost whatever it is that rides on not absolutely losing your shit.  The hurt self in me--and here I bank on the recognition that we all have an inner hurt self, lest I be singled out as morose--believes that I suffer some significant caliber of mental illness, but it is unrecognizable because of my compulsive need to control my image, to give the appearance of having everything together.  But it would be pretty rich of me to think I have constructed a complex that the whole field of psychiatry never anticipated, wouldn't it?

So having some dramatic, public breakdown is ruled out as an acceptable response to hurt.  The problem is, when we hurt, we desperately want someone to know it.  All we want is for someone to see our pain, and respond with love.  Why, then, is it so hard to go to someone and tell them that is what we need?  Instead the blogosphere explodes with "sideways communication," people Facebooking about how they're "sick of fuckin' drama" or venting to Xanga about their unfair treatment.  I do, on occasion, re-read my old Xanga, and I cringe at the sullen teenager I see screaming for attention.  Nobody likes someone who screams for attention.

Maybe we are better at being composed now.  But I think a lot of us are worse at being people.  I am, anyway.  Yes, in high school I responded to a very deep hurt by flailing for attention in ridiculous ways, and yet I found from friends a level of depth, support, and patience that seems increasingly rare as I age.  And I, in turn, offered the same to others.  I held the suffering in my arms, and my heart swelled with the significance of the moment.

Now, I turn a deaf ear to many cries for help, saying I will offer only what is asked.  And in penance I don't have that person who drives to meet me in the middle of the night to sit with me by the waterfall.

I'm really not trying to make this about me.  That hurt, caring me was the introspective one; now I much prefer to universalize my experience and try to process it in the form of social commentary.  It shields me, I suppose.  But I think there's something to this... I don't know if it's the fact that we all grow up in the years between seventeen and twenty-three, replacing naiveté with a jadedness that tells us there's no actual significance in those old "emo" moments; or if it's the lightning-paced, surface-grazing communication style perpetrated by Facebook and texting, pushing an unexamined culture; or if it's something else entirely.

The imperative here is that we do something to correct that.  Maybe most of our efforts to resist the progression of the world are vain and ill-advised--the shouting of luddites at a harmless but irreversible wind--but this one matters.  We need to embrace a hurting world, sit with crying people, and allow ourselves to be awed and humbled by what woundedness is offered us.

I suck at this.

YouTube me f'real

My apologies to Jason and anyone else who obsessively searched for the fourth Scribble Theology yesterday without success.  YouTube was being a total butt and not letting my uploads work.  You may now watch and enjoy.

Chef Nico

Because I am not Amy, I do not have beautiful pictures of my food to prove it existed.  But I just want you to know that I fried myself up some catfish today, and it tasted all right, and I have yet to fall over dead from some food-borne illness.

Also, Spanish rice.

YouTube me

Hi, loyal blog readers.  I love that you come to my homepage (or subscribe via RSS) to read my random thoughts and to watch my theologically educational videos.  I really do, and I hope you continue to do that.  However, in order to promote more activity on my YouTube videos, I will be posting the fourth installment of the Scribble Theology video blog to YouTube tomorrow.  It won't appear here or on Facebook for a couple more days.

Click here to go to my YouTube channel, re-watch your old favorites (all three of them), and subscribe!  You should probably "like" the videos while you're at it... provided you do!

Overnight changes

I went to bed a normal person and woke up a hipster.

Pictures!

I was going to include this in my last post, but I know I sure as hell wouldn't read a blog post that long.  Another part of this new communication style I was talking about is we don't want to read long blocks of text.  We want bullet points, summaries, thoughts broken up into segments of 140 characters or fewer.

Anyway, thinking of mail and envelopes and such made me think of something I found in a filing cabinet my mom picked up at The Depot (a thrift store).

The envelope contained an elementary school report card from 1934 and a certificate of scholarship standing from Goshen College from 1947.  I kind of want to see if I can find the owner's descendants and give them this.

Also my previous post made me want to take this picture:

LOVE <3 (yes I just did the less than three thing).

Oh and in keeping with this whole speedy technology thing I didn't take those pictures with my camera; they're from my phone.

Mail

Is e-mail the new snail mail?  Then what's snail mail?  Hieroglyphics chiseled in stone?  Yes, I had to use spell check to spell hieroglyphics, but only because I reversed the i and the e.

I was just reading this article in the New York Times (what am I going to do when they go to paywall?) about how traffic to e-mail sites is in steady decline because that's just not how people communicate anymore.  It's all text messages and Facebook messages.  I'm guilty of it, too; why keep track of someone's current e-mail address when I can just pop over to Facebook?  Remember address books?  Holy crap.

Perhaps this is how my parents feel about letters and phone calls, but I remember e-mail with fondness.  All the way back to the sixth grade, when I shared my parents' ISP-provided e-mail account, trading e-mails with all of two people, somehow allowing myself to believe my dad wasn't reading them.  Before you protest, Dad, I still remember the time I made a document called "journal" to see if you would try to read it, which you did.  Then I discovered what was almost too good to be true: that there were websites that would give you e-mail for free.  So my first personal e-mail address became nmk116@startrekmail.com.

Yes, that's right.

I think my current e-mail address on Gmail represents the longest I've ever had one.  Six, almost seven years now?  The days of people changing e-mail addresses, I think, are mostly over.

Anyway, I'm off on a tangent, which is what happens when you get a blogger with severe ADHD.  I ask if e-mail is the new snail mail because it has been reduced to a formality.  I use it for work and parents, and that's about it.  My inbox, starting with the most recent e-mail, has messages from the following senders:  Myself, Mom, a co-worker, CouchSurfing, Mom, Mom, a group of friends, Mom, Mom, Mom, and Mom (the frequent appearances of my mother are mostly from conversation; I [still] use IMAP and detest the thread view of e-mails).

I have recently found a new use for e-mail: formal letters.  The kind other people like to write out and send to my physical metal mailbox--the kind I love getting--are just too hard for me to write.  My handwriting sucks, I don't have any stamps, and I can't keep up with my thoughts unless I'm using a keyboard.  So I write eloquent e-mails and attach stationary.

Since I cannot help but think philosophically (my philosophy major housemate gave me a book in he inscribed "from a lover of wisdom to a lover of peace with a philosopher's soul"), my concern is more than just nostalgia.  I have to ask, what are the implications on our minds and our societies when we can have fifty conversations without even leaving our rooms?  We were not designed to communicate as much as we do.  Our brains scatter in a thousand directions.  Attention deficit becomes the norm.  Is looking longingly at a past being a luddite, or just self-preservation?

While writing this post I talked with Brandi, who linked me to this manifesto.  I think it's worth a read.

OK maybe you should just go to their website

The front fell off!

I posted this back in 2008 and just uncovered it while re-reading my blog (isn't that something you should never ever do?)  It made me laugh again so maybe it will do the same for you.

Wanted: late 80's Honda motorcycle in good working condition. Nothing fancy.

From: [censored]
To: Richmond/Wayne County Freecycle
Subject: WANTED: BLUETOOTH HEADSET

Nothing fancy any would do. Thanks in advance Sent on the Sprint® Now Network from my BlackBerry® 

-----

Every day, people who do not understand how Freecycle works pollute my inbox.  Look buddy, I'm pretty sure if you're sending this from a BlackBerry, you can afford to pony up and buy your own damn bluetooth headset.  And if you really can't afford a bluetooth headset, maybe you should be thinking about buying something else.  Especially since there is no circumstance on the planet that makes talking on a bluetooth headset OK.



(Technically he's not on a bluetooth headset but I bet most of you didn't notice that I'm sure you saw that already).


And finally, a bluetooth related conversation from my liquor store days:

Me:  This guy got a 40 of Budweiser, brought it over to the counter, paid for it, picked it up off the counter, and immediately dropped it on the floor.  LAKE of beer to clean up.  He got another one and I made him pay again.
Laura: I usually don't charge them if they break something.
Me: Yeah, except he did it one minute before close.  I had to re-mop the floor.
Laura: I still wouldn't have charged him.
Me: And he was talking on a bluetooth headset the whole time.
Laura: Oh, fuck him.