Jabes_Branderham's Xanga

Verbiage

Wed, 07 May 2008 21:56:25 GMT

Today I was having fun with "is" as a copula and as an intransitive verb meaning "exists." Some fun sentences with identical or nearly identical meanings:

All that is all that is. (All of that over there is everything that exists.)

All that that is is all that is. (That over there is merely everything that exists.)

All that is, all that is. (Everything that exists, all of that over there is.)

Isn't this a fun day?! (I couldn't find an interrobang.)

Valuable Lessons From My Second Second Consecutive Semester of College

Tue, 06 May 2008 07:58:54 GMT

I sometimes sleep in and don't go to class, but it's never for a cool, hip, edgy reason like a hangover; for me, it's more likely that I'm watching old episodes of Scrubs or researching Lutheran theology. I try to get my homework done, but sometimes I don't want to read George Herbert's poetry, and even when I do, sometimes I don't have much to write about it. It's hard for me to gin up interest in things, to motivate myself to get things done when there are other things I'd rather do. And I guess that in a way, college has been working for me even when I haven't been working for it.

I've always been different, sometimes by choice and sometimes not. I honestly haven't had a lot of experiences during which I felt like I was a part of something, at least not one similar to the other parts. When I'm with my family, I get that feeling, like I'm the same as the people I'm with. Sometimes it happens in a group of friends, but that's rare and fleeting. I'm almost always aware of myself as something else, always something separate from my surroundings. This is not a complaint, but merely an observation. Truly, I have no problem with being myself. I started my college career at a school where I knew one person, and she and I hadn't even really talked in a while. I wasn't really like anyone that I met there, and I was always very aware of myself as a singular identity. After not really fitting there, I left for home, and for the first time, I didn't really fit there either, because I knew it wasn't where I was supposed to be. I was supposed to be off at school, preparing myself for the real world. So I went to college again, at a school where I knew people, and as far as background was concerned, there were a lot of people like me. But I knew I wasn't them; I wasn't one of them, and none of them were like me. "Yeah, I think I'm a junior, but I'm a transfer, so this is my first year here." I suppose it's a little surprising that this wasn't difficult for me. I guess I was proud, like I have learned to be for most of my life, to be different from the people around me.

The challenge, then, wasn't fitting in. It wasn't living in a house with guys I had just met. It wasn't even the schoolwork, though the load wasn't light. That stuff was easy to deal with. The challenge I've had this year, and especially this semester, was myself. I learned, as I mentioned earlier, that I'm not a good self-motivator. I suppose I knew this, as did some of my friends and high school teachers, but I've begun to realize that it's more of an obstacle than I'd reckoned. A lot of life, as it seems to me now, requires you to set goals for yourself, to be accountable to no one but yourself, and if you can't motivate yourself, there is often no one else to do it for you. A lot of Responsibility, that big, capital, scary word that parents and guidance counselors use to frighten you to make your bed, do your homework, fill out your college applications, and declare your major, depends on taking charge of yourself when there's no one else to tell you what to do.

This semester's almost over, and I still have a lot of work to do: papers to write, tests to study for, summer rent checks to postdate and hand over. I've learned a lesson, though, I guess you could say about learning itself. People go to school for a lot of reasons. Some go to college because that's what you do after high school, some because they want to learn all about something that interests them, and some because they need a degree to land a job and make money. These reasons all provide motivation, and the second two are really noble and worthy reasons. But a major reason to go to college, that some, but not all, students recognize, is to prepare for life. More important than learning about English literature, or music theory, or engineering, is learning about yourself: your strengths, weaknesses, passions, revulsions, etc. To be a complete, functioning person, I think you really have to get a handle on yourself as an individual. After you're a member of a team or a club, or a resident on a floor, or a brother in a fraternity, or a student at an institution, after all that, when you graduate, you're just you. Nobody else is like you, nobody else can tell you how to be you. If you haven't figured out in those four or five or fifteen years since graduating high school how to be yourself, then you're going to be lost. Once you're out there, in the Real World, wherever that is, it won't matter as much if you got A's or C's, or if you can recite Virgil in Latin, or if you were the treasurer of a club, or if you dropped a class and had to take it the next semester, as it will matter if you learned about yourself.

The most important thing you can do is to be yourself. It's a cliche by now, but I think cliches exist for a good reason, and that is that truth is always truth, and people don't get tired of speaking it, even if they get tired of the phrases it's spoken in. It sounds funny to say that you have to learn how to be you, but I think it's really true. I have to get some sleep, so I can get up tomorrow and go to class, read some literature, and write some papers, but I wanted to share this because I think it's really important. Wherever you are in life, I think you can stand to understand more about yourself. Socrates said that the unexamined life isn't worth living, and I think that ultimately, it's not a very rewarding life to live. It might be easy for a while, but I don't think it can stay easy. For me, college is a struggle, and it's a fight that's worth fighting, because I'm learning about myself, and I'm taking what I'm learning and I'm trying to apply it. I hope that somebody reads this, and I hope that if you're finishing it right now, you'll have received something from it. I hope that you have a good idea about who you are, and I hope that you continue to work at it. May we all continue to learn to be ourselves.

Foggy, Foggy Dew

Thu, 24 Apr 2008 16:02:11 GMT

When I was a bachelor, I liv'd all alone
I worked at the weaver's trade
And the only, only thing that I did that was wrong
Was to woo a fair young maid.
I wooed her in the wintertime
Part of the summer, too
And the only, only thing that I did that was wrong
Was to keep her from the foggy, foggy dew.

One night she knelt close by my side
When I was fast asleep.
She threw her arms around my neck
And she began to weep.
She wept, she cried, she tore her hair
Ah, me! What could I do?
So all night long I held her in my arms
Just to keep her from the foggy foggy dew.

Again I am a bachelor, I live with my son
We work at the weaver's trade.
And every sing time I look into his eyes
He reminds me of that fair young maid.
He reminds me of the wintertime
Part of the summer, too,
And the many, many times that I held her in my arms
Just to keep her from the foggy, foggy, dew.

OTEOTDSOD!

Mon, 24 Mar 2008 19:34:12 GMT

It's interesting, I think, to experience art made by the same person in different forms. For example, Bob Dylan painted the album cover of The Band's "Music from Big Pink." One of my favorite musical artists, Andrew Peterson, has just published his first novel, called On the Edge of the Dark Sea of Darkness. It's a story about three siblings, Janner, Tink, and Leeli Igiby, who live in a small town under an oppressive government, but who all have a taste for adventure. It's a fantastical novel, with evil non-human rulers and mystical lost jewels, sort of in the young adult Harry Potter/Chronicles of Narnia range as far as difficulty and storytelling, so you can read it to your kids, or to your mom, or to strangers on the train. I really do think the appeal is pretty broad. Maybe you don't like fantasy stories, but if you like fiction, and if you like strong thematic elements, I think there's something here for you.

Sure, there are dragons, and there are other whimsically named creatures, like Cave Blats and Quill Diggles, and there are evil lizardy guys, and I like that stuff as much as the next guy, but what really grabbed me while reading OTEOTDSOD wasn't the swordplay, or the secret maps, or even the sea dragons' singing. What drew me in to Peterson's fiction was the same thing that drew me into his music: his expression of deep, sometimes hidden meaning and buried longings of the heart. In the Igiby children, especially Janner, the eldest and most central in the narrative, as in the songs on Peterson's 2005 album The Far Country, there is a feeling of deep-down homesickness, even though he is in the only home he's ever known. This kind of thinking really resonates with me, and I think it's a deeply human, and deeply Christian experience to long for more than you know, for a home beyond the world where you can clearly tell you don't quite belong.

So yes, the storytelling is engaging. Yes, the places and people in the book have fun, sometimes laugh-out-loud funny names, and the book is even peppered with sometimes silly, always fun footnotes. It's a fun read, to be sure. But the deeper, more meaningful experience came for me in noticing the echoes, here in his prose as well and nearly if not completely as clearly as in his song lyrics, of Peterson's awareness that the world we see around us not all that there is. If you're a fan of his music, then I recommend this book. If you've never heard of his music, then I recommend this book, and I recommend his music too.

Sunday, February 10, 2008

Sun, 10 Feb 2008 22:42:44 GMT

Some people in the Calvin College community have gotten the flu. I am one of those people. I don't remember if I've ever been sick like this for this amount of time in my entire life. The past week has been one of the worst I've known, and included fever, chills, a terrible headache, a sore throat, a sore chest, a runny nose, a stuffy nose (those were actually the same nose, but at different times), and a painful and often disgusting cough. I also had trouble breathing, swallowing, talking, sleeping (mostly just due to body temperature and headache), and standing up. One thing it did not include is class. I missed 5 days of class, and have been scrambling since I started feeling better to catch up on all the reading I had missed. The good news is that when I went to the Health Center, the doctor wrote me passes for all my classes, so the absences shan't count against me. On Friday, I started feeling the beginning of recovery, and I've been improving through the weekend. So, things are looking up for the week to come.

Also, I saw Bee Movie on Saturday night. A weekend highlight. Really, really funny.

Wednesday, January 30, 2008

Wed, 30 Jan 2008 21:39:31 GMT

The great thing about buying your textbooks from Amazon is that you save money over buying them at the Calvin Bookstore. The bad thing about buying your textbooks from Amazon is that if you get the wrong edition of a book, you're kinda stuck. If the difference in the editions is substantial, and the new one isn't merely a money-grab by the publisher, then you have to buy the new one, in addition to the old one that you've gotten in the mail and can't return. Your only hope is that you can sell both of them at the semester's end. Or pass the old one off to some sucker in your class who doesn't know quite what he needs. I can't recommend that, though. Not on the Internet. There are standards to uphold.

Tuesday, January 15, 2008

Tue, 15 Jan 2008 03:58:19 GMT

I finally saw an episode (and a half) of the BBC/Discovery Channel program(me) Planet Earth today. If you haven't seen the show, I urge you to do so as soon as you can. The bigger the screen you can watch it on, the better. One of my housemates recently purchased the box set, and we watched the first two episodes tonight on our projector screen in the basement. Regardless of whether or not you're a huge fan of nature shows (I'm not), this stuff is pretty unbelievable. We saw some breathtaking footage of glaciers, volcanoes, mountains, and lakes, as well as some elephants swimming, African wild dogs hunting, and a panda caring for her tiny cub. And that was only in the first two of eleven episodes! Another great feature of the show is that at the end of each episode, there is a 10-minute segment about the making of the episode, in which you get to see the great amounts of time and effort expending in getting the footage. I highly recommend the show, and I assume it's available to rent if you'd prefer not to spend the 60 bucks.

Tuesday, January 08, 2008

Tue, 08 Jan 2008 01:59:03 GMT

People sometimes talk about a hill of beans like it's no big deal, some kind of insignificant thing. But think about it for a moment. Have you ever seen a hill of beans? Can you imagine what that would look like? It sounds to me like a pretty impressive sight. If someone told me that there was a hill of beans 15 miles down the road from my house, and that somebody was charging 10 dollars to see it, I think I'd pay it. Assuming there are others like me, the owner and proprietor of said hill could stand to make a healthy sum. So next time you hear about something that amounts to a hill of beans, or is worth a hill of beans, don't brush those claims aside. Investigate. There might be something worthwhile there.

Wednesday, November 28, 2007

Wed, 28 Nov 2007 22:55:41 GMT

DiverDan has made a triumphal return to the Xangasphere. I urge you all to navigate over there and get baffled.

Thursday, November 15, 2007

Thu, 15 Nov 2007 21:30:01 GMT

The leaves in November
are smoldering embers
of fire's losing battle with ice.

The warmth in their colors
makes cutting cold duller.
Has death ever looked so nice?