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my_own_ire_land
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Name: Jonathan
Interests: reading, writing, music, mags, tennis, travel, theater, film, postcards, puns, shiraz, sharks, storms, phone-tography, NYC, the Northwest, Ireland & Scotland, Frenglish
Expertise: abiding
Occupation: Travel Editor
Industry: Publishing
Message: message me
AIM:  scottjon20
Member Since:
5/29/2006
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There's people been talking
They say they're worried about my soul
Well, I'm here to tell you I'll keep rocking
'Til I'm sure it's my time to roll
-Rich Mullins, "Elijah"
Oh, fakebook. Where would we be without it?
Not at all to trump but rather to riff off of and commiserate with a friend's recent post, here's a line I got from a
friend from college, fellow one-time Christian student groupie and someone I haven't talked to in 3+ years:
"You have been on my heart a lot lately. I have been praying for you and hope you are doing well.
Jon, I am praying that you remember the truth of the gospel and really believe Christ's love for you."
My response days later:
"Thanks. That is interesting and warming and in a way a bit strange to hear. I'm not sure how exactly I have come
to mind or heart for you, but I would never turn down the prayers of friends. You can know that I am well and
healthy and sound. I'm active and have hardly felt so sane and stable and just flat-out good in life to date as I do
now, heh. Work and tennis and friends and community are good, solid. I appreciate you extending this line.
Should you be in Indy, by all means, look me up."
I mean, what to say? It came in rather sanctimonious, very "I know you're in a bad spot in life." Apparently
someone is the good Lord's new facebook sentinel. I don't even care (but I care). Just how to respond?
There's just a right way to go about things -- and a decidedly wrong one.
If you want to know, ask. But don't treat it like a check-up, as if you're some doctor for the soul.
THIS JUST IN: It is well with my soul.
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You & Me
By The Walkmen
"I know that it's true, it's gonna be a good year/ Out of the darkness and into the fire/ I'll tell you I love you, and my heart's in the strangest place/ That's how it started, and that's how it ends"
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[all apologies again to Plath]
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead;
I lift my lids and all is born again.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)
The stars go waltzing out in blue and red,
And arbitrary blackness gallops in:
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.
I dreamed that you bewitched me into bed
And sung me moon-struck, kissed me quite insane.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)
God topples from the sky, hell's fires fade:
Exit seraphim and Satan's men:
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.
I fancied you'd return the way you said,
But I grow old and I forget your name.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)
I should have loved a thunderbird instead;
At least when spring comes they roar back again.
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)
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Me: "Apparently we're on hiatus. That's what I was told. Hiatus. Like a freaking TV show."
Friend: "Well, I hope another network picks you up."
_________
Oy. Here I go again...
REASONS IT NEVER WOULD HAVE WORKED, v. 2.0
- Sorry, but you basically have chicken legs.
- I defended you on this, but it's really just true: You look cross-eyed in half the pictures you take.
- "Now that's a silly question." "This conversation is over." "Are you really asking me that?"
Mmm, some of your oft-used phrases when we would talk. Yeah, not endearing.
- Also not endearing: Telling me it's not an age thing, and yet telling me at the end that I'm being
"childish" about one viable, relevant point in particular. And telling me also that you've handled
me all along the way "with kid gloves." You, on the cusp of 30, and me, all of 2.5 years younger.
Please. Spare me. The condescension.
- My favorite female tennis player ever is Monica Seles. She was stabbed on the court in 1993
by a deranged fan and left the pro game for 2.5 years to recover, physically, psychologically.
About that incident you had this to say: "Oh, please - the knife didn't even plunge in that far."
Uh, girl was 19 at the time. Just, wow. Heartless much?
- You sought to impress by regaling me with tales of Anderson Cooper's alleged tawdry doings with
an acquaintance of yours, and of other personal run-ins with celebs (SNL cast members, Bon Jovi,
Dick Gephardt's daughter and further into obscurity). Impressed, yes ... and then it grated on me.
- You also sought to impress by way of $$. "When a problem presents itself, my way of handling
it is usually to just throw a little money at the situation." That so? Okay. Life your life.
- Distance. I have become so realistic about long-distance 'ships. It certainly can't start that way.
- You famously told me, "You can't over-communicate with me." When it came down to it, when it
was over, you had drastically under-communicated with me. And then you ended it (heh, the first
time) online. On mother-loving instant messenger. During the work day. Who's childish now?
Heh, you should know that the very first verse I committed to memory after my spiritual resurgence at university
was this: "When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child; when I became
a man, I put childish ways behind me."
You couldn't know. You, the self-styled "cafeteria Catholic." Therein lies your error: You let your kindnesses
come a la carte, like your tenets. That is no way to do life, no way to do other people. Yet it's how you did me.
Just, don't be choosy. With your love, yes, certainly, but not with your kindness. And know that nice is not kind.
I really liked you. Obviously. There are things I'd do differently, and things I wouldn't do at all maybe.
Even so, I'm glad it happened. Glad you happened. And I'm smarter, wiser, more wary now - and of you.
For all your talk of "kid gloves" in this thing, you strangled me at the end, wearing them. So, way to go - OJ.
No, you were not careful with how you ended me. I have a short memory but, in the words of Nelson Mandela,
"I can forgive but I can never forget." I know, amore hardly compares to apartheid, but you get the point.
Now I will return to fam and friends, focusing and fashioning my own future. (And other f-words.) It may or
may not have much to do with you, but I'm not stopping. There's just too much to see and do.
We were strangers who came to know each other very well, very quickly.
I wish someday we could meet as strangers.
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Spirit
By Leona Lewis
"Better In Time" - "It's gonna hurt when it heals too / Gonna smile 'cause I deserve to / It'll all get better in time"
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For more than a month, everything from the simplest and smallest artifacts to the biggest, earth-rattling things have
all made me prone to cry. Or at least tear up. It's strange, I've never really been like this.
But, well, the account of the rabbi's young son saved in the Mumbai attacks in November, that could only induce.
Then I viewed United 93 and just choked up for most of the movie. Nothing out of the ordinary about doing that
while watching a film about an extraordinary day and extraordinary lives. Same with the (fictional) lives of the
people in Slumdog Millionaire. Twice I teared up toward the end of that film when I went to a matinee solo.
Maybe this all seems perfectly healthy, perfectly normal. But then the remix of Coldplay's "Lost+" featuring Jay-Z
slayed me. The part where his rap comes in, speaks of Jesus and Judas, Caesar and Brutus - I don't know, I think
the concept of betrayal just undoes me.
Then there's the possibility of losing someone who has become special. It just does me in.
A terrible truth to keep in mind at this time: "A man's reach will always exceed his grasp."
I think I just need to get better rest.
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Resolved:
- budget
- cook
- noTunes!
- floss
- write
- prune
- read and reflect again
- do everything in my power to not eff up a potentially great thing
- learn, study, become
Time will tell.
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