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Wednesday, December 31, 2014

spes [hope]

Welcome to the last day of 2014!

Did y'all realize that today is the last day?  Like...after this there is no more 2014.  All gone.

So, hopefully we can all look back on that over-optimistic list of new year's resolutions we made last year and say that we satisfactorily accomplished all of them.
I hope that that's most of what happens to people, rather than just completely forgetting about them.
Either way, there is a surprising lack of people spending their last hours of the year hurriedly losing weight, reading things, being kinder to others, and achieving their dreams.
Seriously, I do wonder why new year's eve is a "drop everything an celebrate" experience rather than a "hurry and cram, finals-style".  After all, it is the last day of 2014...
We're either too irresponsible for that, or too hopeful for the future, choosing to look forward to the dawn of a second chance, rather than mourn over the missed opportunities and forgotten intentions of the past.  With our sincere desire to change, the wasted time and mistakes of the past seem to erase themselves.

So kudos to the humans for maintaining a hope for the future and for working to continually improve themselves.

And while you're out there partying tonight and neglecting your unfinished business from 2014, do it in a hopeful rather than irresponsible manner, and be grateful for the second chance you are given with the great dawn of a new year.

Monday, December 29, 2014

mutuat [lending]

So, I've managed to leave y'all hanging for a little while and my only reason is that the utter lack of structure that prevails during Christmas break is making it excessively difficult for me to do routine things.  This mostly comes down to writing.

So be grateful for this blog post, because it comes at the opportunity cost of updating my journal, which is terribly out-of-date, or reading a book, since I have so many to read.

Anyway.  I decided that maybe coming to the library would help me crack down on my life and get some things done.
The only drawback is that it involves coming to the library :)

As many of y'all know, I am a bit of a library aficionado.  Just a wee bit.

So why would going to the library be a bit of a problem?

Well, whenever I go, I try to bring a book or two with me to return, implying that I have finished reading those books.  Today I successfully returned three books.

The problem then comes with when I have to walk through the library in order to leave.

You know how grocery stores put the necessary items way in the back?  So you have to walk past all the seasonal items, candy, and bacon just to get your hands on some milk.  Then you have to walk back through all those items just to pay for it.  And then they wave candies and tabloids in your face while you're in line to check-out!  The nerve.

Well, libraries are also guilty of marketing their goods in such a way.  Although I don't suspect it's intentional.  It's just that bibliophiles are so terribly succumbing to it.

So, I walk into the library. I manage to make it straight to the computers without even picking up a book.
I know that I have heaps of books at home, waiting to be read.
I know that I don't even have time enough to read all of them before they're all due.
I know that I only have about a week left in town before moving back to university, so borrowing a book here would be futile anyway.
I know that there are books in my possession that I actually OWN and I still have not read, mostly due to library books intervening.
I know that I do not need to check out any any any more books here.  None of them.  I have enough,

Regardless of all that....I still manage to leave the library with a pile of books under my arm.
A heap.
A literary mountain of joy.

And I regret nothing.

The only alarming thing about this is the model of growth for the number of books that I have checked out from the library.  In a "two steps forward, one step back" fashion, I regularly participate in "two books returned, three checked out" as a policy for library lending.  Thank heavens for renewals.

Thursday, December 18, 2014

nix [snow]



I woke up this morning to a brief moment of snow.  Elation!  Of course, the sun that we depend on for survival quickly turned it all to puddles, and once again we are left with a snowless landscape as we bustle around our Christmas errands.

As Coldplay teaches, "When you're still waiting for the snow to fall, it doesn't really feel like Christmas at all."

And for those of us from snowy climes, it's absolutely true.  Snow is one of the symbols of Christmas, just as much as pine trees or candy canes or candles and lights. The world covered in white represents several things to me.

For one thing, the snow is a huge cleansing agent out here.  Where I live, the cold winter air tends to trap all the smog and air pollution in a haze of inversion that looks and feels awful.  All of the pollutants that we pump into the air every day just sit there and hang over our heads.  The only way to clean the air up at that point is for the cold inversion to disperse, or for precipitation to clean it out. And nothing cleans the air like a good snowstorm.  After every snowfall, the air is crisp and clean again and the world feels great again.  The more it snows, the cleaner everything feels.  Falling snow is a cleansing agent.

Of course once the snow has fallen, it covers everything in white.  All the dead leaves, yellow grass, bare mud, and dying world are completely dressed in white and made spotlessly beautiful.  The Christmas season has a similar purifying effect on us-- it seems to cover all our mistakes and shortcomings in a coating of goodwill, hope, and charity as we remember what life is really about and find it in ourselves to believe, to forgive, to realign our priorities, to sacrifice, to serve, to inspire, and to be inspired.  Snow on the ground is a renewal of purity.

The winter snow has more than just immediate effects.  For my desert home, the only way that it can support such a growing population and industry on less than ten inches of annual rainfall  is by relying on the snow.  Those towering mountains that shut in all the inversion also save us from an utter paucity of water throughout the ensuing months, as the 500-600 inches of snow banked up over the winter months melts and supplies the valley inhabitants with sufficient water to subsist upon.  Thank you, greatest snow on earth.  Without all that snow, we would not have life-sustaining water.

Even though there is reasonable doubt that December 25th is the actual date of Christ's birth, the traditional winter celebration thereof provides us with a wonderful symbol of Christ's life and what it really means to us.  Through him we can be cleansed of our pollutant mistakes, our mortality can be clothed in purity, and we will have the living water to sustain us through our lives.

For me, snow is a great contributor to the Christmas spirit because it testifies of Jesus Christ.

Friday, December 12, 2014

it's been a while...

Greetings, greetings, o readers of my blog.  It's been about an 18-month hiatus since the last post, but I promise you it was for a good purpose.  And I'm sure we'll talk more about those months as time (and the blog) rolls on.

I'm not sure what kinds of organizational changes I'll be making to Mr. Martin here (Martin being the blog)  but there will probably be a number of them. Still mulling them over in my mind.  Because in the past year-point-five, I've definitely changed enough to change my blog. :)

I'm also having to re-learn the internet and the ways of blog formatting and just get back into all this good stuff.  So...it might be slow.

But, it's time to talk a bit about change.  I'm sure I've mentioned it here before, because it's such a constant element of life, but here and now I am noticing changes all over the place.  I go driving through my hometown, seeing all these new things that have happened in the past 18 months, I walk thorough my own house wondering if the walls were always that color, and I've stepped into a new world as a different person.

The thing that I really want to get across about change is that it's not all bad.  Yes, it can be hard and weird and sometimes your own house feels like another planet, but for the most part, change is really just adding more good stuff to the good stuff you already had.

I think one of the biggest fears we tend to have about change is that it will mean letting go of a good thing.  It's a risk, to leave a good thing in search of something that may or may not be better.  And it is exactly this fear that keeps a lot of people back in life.

But the trick is that because we as human beings are composites of our experiences and perspectives and feelings and memories, we never truly leave something good behind if we effectively take it in as a part of us and let it take affect on our character.  If we look at change and opportunity as only adding to the excellence we already treasure, then that is how it will turn out.

Just keep in mind that the only way to change the world is to start with yourself.

And please comment with feedback for anything you want to see on the blog! (Or don't want to see..) And questions you may want for me to answer as the blog resumes :)