Where has the time gone?

Six years ago, I started this blog. Four years ago, I abandoned it to serve a mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Almost three years ago, I returned, wiser and (for a while) quieter as I tried to process what I learned. Two years ago, I began posting again, with a greater sense of who I was and what I meant to say.

Two years ago I also began dating a woman who was smart enough to beat me at Scrabble, and kind enough to let me win sometimes. Who I could talk to for hours, about anything. Who has the wit and timing for a career in stand up comedy, but takes the serious things in life seriously. Who loves good music almost as much as she loves her family (and I know no one who has a stronger love of family). Whose faith in God led her to leave behind all she knew and face down opposition from those closest to her to do what God Required, and then used that faith to heal those relationships. 

And soon it seemed that all I had to say, I said to her, and all I wanted to do was be with her. 

And so I stopped posting, and wooed her. 

We've been married now for a year and a half, and I am happy every day, and grateful I could see the best chance in my life when it came my way. And now again I have new things I've learned, and new thoughts, and new things to say to the world. 

So here I am, and maybe you'll be seeing me more often. 

My New Favorite Typo

Usually, I spell things right the first time.  But four or five times in the past week, I've written "while" in place of "well."  Always at the start of a sentence, always followed by a comma.  I don't know what leads me to replace this space-filler with a temporal signifier, but I do.  I can't recall ever having done it before this week, but it keeps happening.

It's an odd slip, it is.  And isn't that a part of what life is made of.

Coincidence

Did you know that kiss and lips are identical in T9?  Well, neither did I.

What are you reading?

I read a lot of books (those less these days than at some times in the past) and a fair number of magazines and newspapers.  Also, blogs.  And lots of other internet things.  But there is one reading source which often escapes attention in regular discussion which is of great import here.  After all, no compendium of all things Mattathias-y would be complete without at least a passing reference to web-comics.

I also like print comics, which combine two of my favorite things (words and pictures) into a marvelous new thing. Web-comics add a third ingredient: the internet.

Back on the Blog

Sorry I haven't written in a long time.  I've been busy reading.  And living my life.  It's been pretty amazing in the past few years.

I'm not the same person who started writing this blog, but I'm pretty close.  I may be wiser.  I've certainly been more places.

Last week a good friend said she missed my blogging, and challenged me to start up again.  So here it goes.  Back to the blog.

How was your weekend?

Can we all speak straightforwardly to each other?

The first step is to speak.  Next comes speaking to each other.  Which seems to be something we're often poor at.  Often we speak past each other, or around each other, or we just insult each other while pretending that whatever position we've settled down on is unbeatable.  And then there's being straightforward.

But there are important questions we need to answer which we cannot answer alone, and which no amount of subterfuge or avoidance or beating around the bush will remove.  Things need doing.

So this is a very good question.  And I'm not sure what the answer is.  But there's always hope.

What were you thinking?

The source for this post is my recent project of "spring cleaning" on my gmail account... since I hadn't used it in two years, a fair number of unread messages, mostly from listservs, had piled up.  When I merged in all the messages I received as a missionary for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, I had 1,637 unread messages.

The most interesting part came when I went through my "drafts" folder.  Which is a snapshot of ideas I was in the middle of forming two years ago:

Why waste energy?

I just got angry at the internet.

And I mean really angry. So angry I swore loudly, and I try very hard not to swear ever.

So angry my heart rate shot up, and is still up now, ten to fifteen minutes later. It's racing in my chest, as if I just went cliff diving or nearly got bitten by a rabid dog.

I let a webpage do this to me. Not the content of a webpage either. Simply the inefficient workings of a search function. I became spitting mad over poor web design.

What use are stories?

Last August, I had the singular pleasure of reading, for the first time, a few essays by Brian Doyle, as part of a class about essays. At the end of that class, I had another great pleasure and privilege: that of sitting in the room during a phone interview with Brian Doyle himself. Here are my notes:

"The reason that poetry is in the end the greatest literary art is that it’s closest to music. It can be easily abused. There’s more bad poetry than anything else.

To say something big in a small space is a great virtue.

Part of our training as writers is to write poorly, you have to learn the craft by learning what not to do.

A lot of early writing is about the self, it’s kind of self absorbed—maturity as a writer involves looking at the glory and beauty in other things.

What immortal hand or eye?

I'd never thought of fireworks and William Blake as things that go together, but watching the fireworks on Saturday, I couldn't get this stanza out of my head:

When the stars threw down their spears,
And watered heaven with their tears,
Did he smile his work to see?
Did he who made the Lamb make thee?



Happy Independence, America. And keep on burning, tyger bright.