Sunday, March 30, 2008

April Fools

K, so I have about a day to think of a good april fools joke to pull. I think my victim will be my good friend Caleb. My friend Joe and I already discussed it a little bit, but we don't have any good ideas yet. So if anyone has anything good, feel free to share. Nothing too mean, well maybe a tiny bit, but you know, more funny than mean. Maybe even something with a little twist in it like make Caleb think he is helping me to pull a prank on somebody else while really the jokes on him the entire time. So far our only ideas have been somehow convincing him I have been long distance dating his little sister, or telling him my dad bought the bookstore he has been thinking about buying for the past few months, but I think we can do much better. Those don't even seem worth doing. So ideas, give em to me if you got em, or even if you don't, just say hey, good luck getting him. Thanks

Friday, March 28, 2008

Father and Son

Today was spent working at a friend's new store she is moving into. It was a fun time of making and cleaning up messes, tearing apart ceilings and making new ones. All of which was similar to the kind of stuff I used to do back home as a job. It was a good time overall. Only bad part was the hour of putting up with Coheed and Cambria; ugh that band is annoying. It was later made up for though with some classic 90s pop music that reminded me of driving to school in my childhood. The whole construction thing though reminded me much of my dad. I think it was the first construction project I was involved with that he wasn't also a part of. Made it kind of feel like something was missing. There wasn't always that person there to ask for the perfect solution to a problem or to tell me to look alive and get busy. Or even if not there knowing that he would be coming around anytime checking to see whats gotten done. Made me kind of miss him. So Dad, if you somehow mysteriously find out about this blog of mine, I miss you, and also my old working buddies Sam and Carl, but especially you.
Cheers

Wednesday, March 26, 2008

Just Driftwood

It's weird to think about how much little things can hugely affect your life. How much your decisions and the decisions of others can permanently change your life drastically. Take for example, me living here in this town called Nampa. Growing up, the thought of someday moving to Idaho would have seemed highly unlikely to say the least. But now, here I am. How did I get here? Well, through a series of many small events and decisions dating back to high school. I played basketball, and a guy named Simon Cook played basketball. Somehow, after knowing each other for a year, we finally became friends. High school ends, he goes to Bible college. Eventually, I follow him there even though back in high school I never even considered going there. At Bible college, I meet Caleb, who for some unknown reason, knowing absolutely nobody, leaves all his friends, family, and longtime lovely girlfriend behind to come here. Then, finally in the last few weeks of the semester, we become friends, and then we all travel to England together. There, Simon meets some girl and winds up married living in Texas with a kid. Caleb and I however just go back home. After being home for a while, Caleb tells me to move to Idaho. Looking for a change and some adventure, I go, and so through each one of these small little events and decisions, here I am now. What are the odds?
Does the story really start there though? Lets go back, Simon was from a family who traveled all over the country living in somewhere around 15 different cities before finishing high school. If he didn't end up at my school, I probably wouldn't have gone to Bible college. But he did, yet even still the mere fact that we became friends in our senior year is quite amazing, as we have little in common. Go back further, when I was in Kindergarten, an anonymous family friend paid the tuition for me to go to this school where I met Simon 12 years later. My parents couldn't pay it at the time. If forced to leave, perhaps I never would have gone back to that school, maybe, maybe not. Go back 10 years before that, my parents, the unlikeliest of couples of whom to this day I simply wonder how, are set up by friends who for some reason thought they might work. And yet, despite my dad seriously considering calling off the wedding all the way up to the day, are still married, accidentally producing me along the way. The odds anyone? Go back 50 years earlier on a train headed north. My grandpa and his friend headed to Alaska looking for work during the Great Depression. Legend has it the train was rather full, and the two of them both spotted a seat next to a rather fine looking young lady. What did they do? They flipped a coin for the seat. Who won? not my grandpa. Who took the seat anyway before the other guy got a chance to get there? my grandpa. That night he wrote in his journal, "Today I met a truly beautiful woman named Rosamond C. Werdell." A few years later, after constant writing back and forth, she became Mrs King. So today, I exist, or at least with the genes I have, because my grandpa happened to catch the right train on the right day and cheated on a coin flip. What are the odds? Even further back are when my ancestors made the very big decision to move to this country. I think that is far back enough though.
So all these little and big things have led to me existing, here, in Idaho. Who knows what the future holds and how this time here will affect my life. Who knows what decisions I have made have seriously affected others. So many different people you meet and get to know throughout life, and they all leave a little tiny imprint on you and in some small way help to form the person you become. I guess there is no real point to thinking about any of it, but it's just kind of fun and weird to think about. All these completely different events from so many different lives all leading up to this. If just one of them didn't happen, where would I be today instead? (that is if I were to be at all). Makes you think there must be a purpose to it all, as if its fate, or God. Maybe it is just a bunch of strange coincidences. After all, something has to happen, so why not this, but I prefer to think of it the other way, that there is some sort of meaning to it all. Which do you prefer?

Saturday, March 22, 2008

No Direction Home

Lately, I have been thinking about home, not the place I grew up or whatever, but just the term itself, and what it actually means. The term seems to be used in so many different ways. Type it into dictionary.com, and they'll give you 30 different ways it is used. They say home is where the heart is, and that there's no place like home. So I guess I ask myself, where is this place that my heart is that is like no other place? Home is where the heart is, what does that even mean? The only thing I can think of is that it is the place where everything inside of you longs to be. So then, where do I long to be? The only problem with this is I know wherever I might go, there is always going to be someplace else I miss and wish I was.
I think the idea of home is greatly represented in America's favorite past time, baseball. The whole goal of a baseball game is to reach homeplate as many times as possible. Everyone is trying to run home. And what is the greatest single act in baseball? the homerun. Because that is the quickest and best way to get you (and anyone else out there running around trying to get home) home, the place everyone longs to be. Its much like that in real life. Everyone longs for home, or if they don't like their current home, they at least long for a new place where they will feel at home.
I once, for a short time, called England my home, and looking back, it was grand. But it wasn't the place that made it grand, it was more the great friends I lived with that made the experience so great. Though that place was amazing, if I were to go back, it just wouldn't be anywhere near the same because those people who made it so great aren't there, and never again will be. I went to the same school kindergarten through 12'th grade, and it became a kind of home to me. I spent more of my childhood there than any other single place, and though it wasn't all fun and games, that last year of high school was pretty darn good. It had that carefree feeling of home to it, but now, is nothing but a fond memory.
The place I currently call home is great, and I no doubt will someday look back upon this time in my life as a wonderful fun experience, but I am not sure if it has that feeling of home to it. Sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn't: it comes and goes. A majority of the time, I seem to think of home as a thing of the past or something I will once again experience in the future. That's not to say I don't enjoy the present; it's just that there is often that longing of the good old days that felt like home, and the hope that I will someday recreate a new version of them. Like maybe when I am married and established and start a new home of my own. I guess I just have a tendency to romanticize the past, as well as the future. Sure enough, in a few years, I will look back and think of all the wonderful times I am experiencing right now, but for now, its just life, full of its ups and downs.
It seems to me that you reach this point in life and nowhere really feels completely like home anymore. You go back to where your parents live, the place always known as home, and it has changed, your room isn't there anymore, that feeling of belonging isn't there, and while you are fully lovingly welcome at all times, you feel like it just isn't right to stay there anymore. You've moved on, but yet still long for that old feeling the place once had.
And thats the thing, though there is always a place you call home, to me, the word seems to represent a feeling much more than a place. So what is that feeling, how is it defined? I suppose it is just the feeling of complete belonging and complete happiness. It can be the feeling you get when in the arms of a loved one, or that occasional feeling that happens when you step back for a second, look around you, and take notice of the friends around you and realize all these people really care about you, and that you thoroughly enjoy being around them as well. That, to me, is the essence of home, and I'd bet Heaven will be engulfed in this feeling.
Now, as I rap this thing up finally, I realize it is just a big mess of muggled up thoughts that don't make perfect sense. I think I may have took this blog a little too far. Nonetheless, as it is just a blog that maybe 5 people will read, I think I am done with it and glad to have it all out. I hope you enjoyed a small piece of it at least. And to give credit, I must admit that much of this thinking was a result of a conversation in the movie Garden State. Though I haven't seen the movie in several years, and though it didn't really mean all that much to me at the time, the conversation, or at least the main thought in it, always stuck with me. It probably puts everything I said in a much simpler, shorter, and easy to read way. So I looked it up, and here it is in print:


There's a handful of normal kid things I kind of missed.

There's a handful of normal kid things I kind of wish I'd missed.

You know that point in your life when you realize the house you grew up in...

isn't really your home anymore.

All of a sudden, even though you have some place where you put your $#!*...

that idea of home is gone.

I still feel at home in my house.

You'll see one day when you move out. Just sorta happens one day, and it's gone.

You feel like you can never get it back.

It's like you feel homesick for a place that doesn't even exist.

Maybe it's like this rite of passage, you know?

You won't ever have that feeling again until you create a new idea of home for yourself.

You know, for... For your kids. For the family you start.

It's like a cycle or something.

I don't know. But I miss the idea of it, you know?

Maybe that's all family really is.

A group of people that miss the same imaginary place.

Monday, March 17, 2008

the blogspot

It appears this is the new rage as people I know are getting it or have it. Guess I'll join the party, and help to continue my wasting of time on the internet. After all what better way is there to share thoughts and funny stories with multiple people from all over than to blog? Guess I better start thinking and living through stories worth telling. Like that one time when I saw two flies mating with a third fly standing an inch away staring right at them. Maybe he was waiting his turn, I don't know. They were just little gross insects, but it seemed wrong nonetheless; and then there was me standing a few feet away watching them. I stood there a second pondering this activity, and then decided I better put a stop to this and smashed them all right there in the very act of their sinful deed. Today I ate like a 2 foot long piece of pretty good beef jerky. I shared some of it though. I love beef jerky, but its hard to find good beef jerky. Hopefully in the future I will have better stories than eating giant pieces of beef jerky to share. I suppose I should share where the title of my blog comes from. You know, just to give credit where its due. Well, it comes from the Cat Stevens song after the same name. Here it is:

Well I left my happy home to see what I could find out
I left my folk and friends with the aim to clear my mind out
Well I hit the rowdy road and many kinds I met there
Many stories told me of the way to get there

So on and on I go, the seconds tick the time out
There's so much left to know, and I'm on the road to find out

Well in the end I'll know, but on the way I wonder
Through descending snow, and through the frost and thunder

I listen to the wind come howl, telling me I have to hurry
I listen to the robin's song saying not to worry

So on and on I go, the seconds tick the time out
There's so much left to know, and I'm on the road to find out

Then I found myself alone, hopin' someone would miss me
Thinking about my home, and the last woman to kiss me, kiss me

But sometimes you have to moan when nothing seems to suit ya
But nevertheless you know you're locked towards the future

So on and on you go, the seconds tick the time out
There's so much left to know, and I'm on the road to find out

Then I found my head one day when I wasn't even trying
And here I have to say, 'cause there is no use in lying, lying

Yes the answer lies within, so why not take a look now?
Kick out the devil's sin, pick up, pick up a good book now




Goodbye