That Bothersome Predicament

 Current mood: Disobediently Enamored

I told myself not to feel even though, from the beginning, I recognized that he was once coal.

I told myself not to feel even though...sometimes...he hurts me with his beauty.

I told myself not to feel even after I noticed that his humble brain deserves not to have to be so modest.

I told myself not to feel even after I recognized a little 'dummer vati' in him.

I told myself not to feel despite the fact that his smile is genuine and lasting when I talk about something that excites me.

I told myself not to feel despite the fact that his lashes lower and his hand brushes his stomach when we talk.

I told myself not to feel although, honestly, he just makes me feel.

I really don't listen very well, do I?

July 7th, 2009 365-Day 17

 I have so many things I want to talk about, but I don't have time to write them all. Hopefully, Ill have time to be more expansive once summer II comes around because I won't have classes, just work.

Today, I was pricked in the heart on several things. One happened after class. (I'll prolly talk about the other ones on another day) I was walking out with a classmate and I found out some things about her that were not what I decided about her. I hadn't decided anything terrible about her, but as we talked, I realized that she was not what I was thinking. And I realized that I have to be more careful about how I look at people and assess them. On the other hand, there has been--for nearly the length of the whole class—something that has drawn me to her. I know that sounds weird, but it isn't. I have always had this sense of goodness and real and natural beauty in her. When I say "beauty" by the way, I'm not necessarily meaning it in the conventional sense, although that sense is also true about her. I mean, something good shines out of her. Kind of like her good heart just shines out of her. The same is true of Sami, another girl in our class whom I know believes in and loves God. It is interesting to see and I hope the same is true of me. Sometimes I tend to doubt, but perhaps, I know all of my foibles and I don't know all of theirs. I also know my doubts of others, my judgments of others, my impatience with others, my tendency to play the martyr. With knowing these things, I wonder if I'm a very good example of Christianity. But then, sometimes when I doubt my self the most, someone comes up and says to me, "I was just telling my friend about you yesterday. How you came to school as a non-traditional student and you aren't afraid to express your views and your feelings about God. You don't let the professor browbeat you. And I think that is really cool." So, maybe I’m not as bad at this job I have as I think I am. And on the other hand, I still have work to do since—as I said the other day—I am infallible and have faults and foibles. Sigh. Anyway, whatever the truth is, I hope I keep encouraging y'all and I hope y'all keep encouraging me, because it is in those moments of encouragement that we get what Billy Joel calls our "second wind." And although, Mr. Joel isn't right about everything, I like his idea about a second wind, and a third one, and a fourth one. I’m so thankful that God give us so many chances to keep trying to get it right.

365-Day Two (Sometime in the Summer of 2009)

This was written in the Summer 1 college course I took in 2009:     

Today, in my Concord Writer's class, we were discussing Hawthorne's writing. Dr. Wilson was explaining the author's puritanical roots and how those roots probably affected his psyche; and, therefore, his writing. It was a common belief during those days that--if you were lazy, you were immoral.  Wanting us to think and apply all these 'old" ideas to our modern lives, Dr. Wilson asked us to consider this puritanical idea in light of today's welfare society and the poor. 

    I think it was the very beautiful and intelligent Kate who said something akin to, "Well, we don't believe that today. Well, unless you're a conservative. Then you'll think the poor are immoral." Needless to say, I was incensed! I'm sure my ire showed clearly on my face, but--since she was facing the other directions--she didn't notice it. She just laughed and the conversation flowed onward. It always strikes me as kinda funny that someone with as much intelligence as she has can have such ridiculously unintelligent ideas.

    How many conservatives does she know, I wonder? Her comment illustrated very clearly how little liberals understand conservatives. And, how strangely hypocritical they can sometimes be.  In my mind, I can almost see a large group of them gathered together, toting signs with slogans of toleration hand-painted in many colors. They are shouting "Toleration NOW!" and "Peace, Love, and Toleration!" I imagine that they have a key-note speaker (someone chosen specifically to whip them up into a rabid franzy of toleration and love) saying these words: "We expect toleration of our beliefs from everyone! And, in return, we will tolerate everyone else AND their beliefs, no matter how diametrically opposed they are to our own, EXCEPT Christians and Conservatives. NOPE. Those people we shall scorn and ridicule and berate. Go Toleration!"

    I guess, in a certain sense, you could say that conservatives/Christians are less tolerant than other groups, but I think it is more an issue of not really understanding the whole picture:

a) Our motivations are different.  We don't really want to help the lazy to sit around always depending on the help of others. If it is just a matter of poor--and NOT lazy--that is a different matter all together. But poor AND lazy is just really not acceptable. There are many things which could be said to support this antipathy for the poor and lazy.   (If a man will not work, neither let him eat, etc.)

b) We're not hypocritical about it. We tell you from the beginning that we have a standard which is above earthly standards and that we strive to live by it. We hold OURSELVES to this standard, too. We're not 'high and mighty' as Hope (another student in class) accused us of yesterday. We're just doing what we think is the right thing to do. We're living here on this earth, on this 'vale of soul-making', trying to please our God and help each other.  How is that wrong? How is that the ugly thing Kate tried to make it? It isn't. I guess I just need to keep trying to understand the fact that some people just don't get it. Or--even better--if there was a way I could teach myself not to care about the ideas of people who don't understand what is really and truly and ULTIMATELY important about our world. But I don't think I have it in me not to care.

Monday, 06JUL09 The Creation of Pollyanna

     Please, allow me to apologize right from the start. I have a feeling that this blog will be a tad sappy.  Ah well, Y'all know me already. I can tend toward sentimentality, yeah? I'm writing this blog because some tiny, little thing happened this weekend that made me so happy. Seriously, a tiny, tiny little thing.

    I guess I should preface the tiny, little thing with some background facts. I took a road trip this weekend. I shouldn't have because I had a paper due Monday--from which I just received the grade and it isn't a very good one. I should have stayed home and worked diligently on the paper the entire weekend, but I'd already made plans to take this road trip MONTHS ago, so I felt I needed to go. And, in my own defense, I did make it a one-day trip instead of the three-day trip it was intended to be.

    So, it began how I like every trip to begin--in the dark! I love beginning a trip whilst it is still dark outside cos I really like watching the sun come up. It just makes me happy. There is--as I've said, perhaps a million times--something encouraging about watching the sun come up.  The trip, which included a thirty-five minute stop for breakfast, took four hours and eleven minutes. I listened to a story on CD and 3 informational CDs on health most of the trip and then--when we got closer to DFW--I listened to KLUV which is the Dallas Oldies station, and one of my favorite radio stations ON THE PLANET!

    Most of the group I was meeting for an event was heading to the nature museum after lunch, but I'd decided to find a place with wi-fi and try to work on my paper. I found myself  heading over to Mom and Daddy's house cos I knew they had wi-fi and I wanted to see them. I was in luck! They were home.

    I spent the next three hours with them. We chatted and Daddy worked on my computer. It was a very  nice time. In reality, it was even nicer because I got to spend time with them and JUST ME. With three siblings and a niece who often share my time with them, these moments when I get them to myself are very, very special to me.  I had some time with both of them alone, too. Time with Daddy is even rarer, so Saturday was extra special because I had ten or fifteen minutes with him down in the office.

    Now, all the background information is out there. On to what made this trip extra special.  Daddy and I were talking about a class I'm taking. Early in the semester, the class had been discussing Emerson's transcendental ideas. One of them was that--in transcendentalism--if a person does what is best for himself then he is doing what is best for everyone. He makes the world and society a better place when he makes it better for himself--because each man in every man. (I should note here that I might have misunderstood this idea. I've done it before, but I think that is what Emerson thought.)

    I had balked at this idea from the beginning. That just didn't seem right!  Surely, thinking of others before yourself as often as you can is more correct, yeah?  Surely, being selfless and taking care of someone else is more important than making sure the world makes YOU happy, isn't it? The idea that someone would think the opposite was true seemed astonishing to me. I was expressing my ideas about it to Daddy and when I finished, I said, "But you prolly already knew that, didn't ya, Daddy?"  He smiled at me and said with a tone that sounded both affectionate and proud, "Not my Pollyanna."

    My heart just filled up, ya know? I am aware that my gregarious, never-meet-a-stranger, open personality is not my Daddy's favorite kind of personality.  I know he loves me in spite of it. But, at that moment, when it was evident that this part of me--this inherent and essential part of me--was something that made him smile at me in a genuine way; I felt so worthwhile and special.  I have found myself smiling numerous times over the last several days remembering it and knowing that I am loved by my Daddy.

    

Daddy and I sometime in 2008, I believe. This was the first photo I took from my webcam.

Just Swimming

  I was lying quietly on my bed listening to the sounds of the house as it creaked and settled in the night.  About a half hour ago, I heard Mother and Dad begin puttering around in their room, getting ready for bed.  I hadn't heard anything from their room for about five minutes and I wondered whether or not enough time had passed for me to take the chance heading out on my midnight excursion.  My 11-year-old sister, Gail, had gone to sleep two hours ago, so I was sure that she would not interrupt my mission.

The day had been a long one and I was really tired, but I just couldn't sleep.  I sighed to myself as I sat up and swung my legs around to land on the floor beside my bed.  “Just get up and do it, now, Paul.” I said to myself, “The sooner you do it, the sooner you'll be asleep.” I walked across the floor toward my dresser, carefully avoiding the board in the center of the room which creaked whenever I walked on it.  I grabbed my trunks from the bottom drawer and quickly changed out of the pajamas I had donned in subterfuge an hour ago. I tiptoed over to the door and slowly opened it, listening carefully for sounds of movement in the house.  All I heard was Dad's snores filtering out from under the door to their bedroom.  I took this as a great sign.  His snores would mask the noise of the window as I opened it

The streets were dark and deserted as I pedaled the half mile toward the town's only swimming pool.  Porch lights seemed to flicker on and off through the tree as I passed each house and, occasionally, I could hear the muted sounds of television sets from dimly lit living rooms. As I turned the corner to the street where the pool was located, I smiled in a kind of gratitude, for the actions of the city leaders who had decided, four years ago, that we needed a swimming pool for the town's youth.  In previous years, our only choice had been Tahoka Lake which was more like a large pond than a lake; and, to be honest, was really not much of a choice.

Memories of my one and only visit to it passed in front of my eyes.  My friend, Johnny, and I had hiked the five miles to the lake in hopes of enjoying a refreshing dip at the end of our journey.  My heart plummeted with disappointment when I saw that the lake had some other occupants. Water moccasins were sunning themselves on the opposite bank or coursing rapidly through the water below us.   Dejectedly, we turned around and started the return trip, stopping only for a moment to throw a few well-aimed pebbles at the serpents that had ruined our hopes of a lovely swim to counteract the effects of the hot Texas summer sun.

The memory of that day faded as I jumped the curb with my bike and rode around to the back of the pool.  I always parked behind the building so that Officer Rountree wouldn't catch me as he performed his midnight patrols.   I scaled the fence in the back where it met the building.  The security wire which followed the fence on its topside didn't quite make it to the wall so I always jumped over the fence at that spot so as to avoid tearing my skin or clothes on the wire. 

As I dropped to the ground inside the pool area, I stilled for a moment to listen again for sounds on the surrounding streets.  When I was satisfied that no one was aware of my presence, I walked over toward the diving board.  I peeled off the shirt from my back and dropped it onto one of the many lounge chairs which were placed liberally around the edge of the pool.   I toed off my shoes and took a deep breath.  I knew I didn't have much time to swim.  The hectic pace of the day would catch up with me soon and that would be the end of thoughts of anything but a nice long nap of the eight hour variety.

Since school had begun this year, I had been running at full speed from the moment my feet hit the floor each morning to the moment my head hit the pillow each night.  I left for school every morning at 7:30.  I came home after school for chores; and then, nearly every night after supper, I ran the projection booth at the theatre for the evening movie.  When work was finished, I came home to hit the books at the kitchen table. 

It was my senior year, but I decided to quit both football and track in order to help a little bit with the bills.   Last year, I had a part-time job as a grocery sacker at the Piggly Wiggly.  It had been only on the weekends, though, so I was able to continue with sports.  This year, however, Dad had been let go from his job at Frederick Goddard's farm and the only job he had been able to get to replace it had been a part-time job at the auto parts store.  Since Mother spent her days running the house and keeping Gail in line, I felt like it fell upon me to help with putting a few more coins in the family's coffers. 

I'll admit that there was a part of me which wanted to feel bitter about the fact that during this year, my last year before adulthood, my childhood was so very strikingly AWOL.  I didn't allow those feelings to linger around for very long.  Mom and Dad had always taught us that being blessed to be part of a family brought with it certain responsibilities.  I understood that sometimes we wished we didn't have them.  And that sometimes we didn't understand why we had them, but, nonetheless, we had them.  It was just a plain and simple truth of life.  So, though I missed the exercise and camaraderie which came from participating in school sports,  I always did what needed to be and should be done.  In the end, I was left with this particular avenue:  I stayed up late each night, climbed out of the window, and went swimming.

As I stepped onto the diving board, my heart sped up a bit because I knew that soon I would be doing one of the few things that really made me happy in this mixed up half child/half grown-up life I was living this year:  I was going to play!   As I dove into the water and my body sliced through it, I sighed to myself.  I loved these short and solitary workouts in the pool.  It was the only time I got to spend each day just for me.  It was not time for my family.  I took care of my responsibilities toward them with due diligence every day.   It was not time for my future.  There would be enough time for it...well, in the future.  This time was just for me.

After my hand slapped against the far wall, I clambered out of the pool.  As I walked around it to jump onto the board again, the grown-up responsibilities dripped off of me along with the chlorinated water.  For these few moments, I was just a kid again.  I was as far from a grown-up as I could think of being.  I had no job, no school, and no chores. I was not an employee, a student, or a son.  I was just a 17-year-old kid with no responsibilities except, perhaps,  for having some fun.  Tomorrow, when the sun arose once more, I'd be that half kid/half grown-up again.  But for these twenty minutes each night, I was just plain ol' Paul at the pool...just swimming, and it was a wonderful place to be.

Please forgive the GIANT 'A' at the top of this post. I can't even see it when I look at the story in 'writing' form.  It only shows up when I preview or post it.  I'd just ignore it??   And...about this piece: I wrote it--I think it 2009--for a writing class in college.  I had just gone with my family to a family reunion, of sorts, and--afterwards, Daddy drove us all to his hometown and gave us the tour.  The places discussed in this short story are real places. Tahoka is a real town.  The story is based on some real events, but was pretty much a figment of my imagination.  What was the BEST about it was that Daddy said that--if he hadn't known it wasn't true--he would have thought my story was a real depiction of real invents in his life as a young man.    :) :)  There are some photos to follow.

The area circled in orange is where Daddy hopped over the fence to go swimming after hours.

The front door to the community swimming pool in Daddy's hometown.

 

Taiwan Bucket List, # 1

 So, as many of y'all know, my departure date for Taiwan has been pushed back due to several things:

a) Covid has finally reached the Island of Taiwan and they aren't hiring people right now.  They are in level 3.  The restaurants are all closed except for take-out, etc. All the language schools (I'll be working in one of that type of school for at least the first one to two years, by the way) are all closed, so the need for English teachers is down to nil.  As a matter of fact, many of the foreign language teachers have left the island to go back home until this all blows over.  

b)  The schools won't even hold interviews with prospective teachers unless they have an actual photograph of the person's college diploma. When I finally received mine mid-June, Covid had already made its way to the island. Now, it is a waiting game as to when they'll start hiring again. The good news is that their levels of Covid infections are significantly less than what ours were here in the states.  Also, they're already receiving the vaccine (Thanks USA and Japan!), so they'll liking reach herd immunity--as we have here--much, much sooner than it took us to do. My AWESOME Mandarin teacher, Diane, told me yesterday that they are 'down to 100 cases'; however, I don't know if that means 100 deaths, or just cases and if it means a day or a week or a...month, etc.   I guess the point is that they are already on the downswing.  I have a friend from the Taiwan expats Facebook group who says he thinks they'll be back in the swing of things by October.  I'll keep y'all updated.

So, when I'm leaving is up in the air, yeah?  However, that does not stop me from dreaming or making plans!!  I'm writing my first Taiwan bucket list item in this blog today. Now, understand that the bucket list items will be added as I think of them and not necessarily in the order in which I'll do them.

I'll preface by asking y'all if you realized how much I have really enjoyed watching Korean and Taiwanese language television series on Netflix over the course of the last year? I have become a fanatic. (and I guess--cards on the table--it doesn't hurt that the swoonworthy Taiwanese and Korean male lead actors they choose really illustrate God's amazing ability at creating 'good scenery!' LOL)  It's mostly all I watch now.  I know I won't be able to easily pick up language that way, but--at least--I'm getting some hints about what the culture is like in these two Asian countries, yeah?  That being said, I just finished watching a Korean television series called, "Do Do Sol Sol La La Sol."  (Those of you who don't recognize the title can imagine you're singing the first four words of 'Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star" and you'll have a very good idea of what one of the major themes in the series is. I really enjoyed the series. However, if you're going to watch it, just know that the last fourth of the series is kinda sad and that the last six minutes of the series is non-sensical.  It's still good, though.

The fictional town in which most of the action is set is called 'Eunpo.'   It is not a real town; however,  most of the filming is done in a southern South Korea town called Mokpo.  It has just recently become a tourist town, of sorts, and several films/t.v. series have been filmed there.  It is very colorful and looks like a fun place to be. The town has taken it upon themselves to preserve many of the television and film sets from the filming of various of the shows, so that fans can go visit.

Therefore, the first item on my Taiwan bucket list is--during a summer vacation trip to Korea--I will go spend a day or two in Eunpo/Mokpo and take photos of the colorful city and visit the sets from 'Do Do Sol Sol La La Sol' and maybe go fishing.  I'll be sure to bring my camera and my computer to write blogs about my adventures there.  I hope y'all will join me on that future trip via our pensivepollyanna (or even in person! :)

                       This is an image of one of the alleyways in Mokpo.  During the series, there were many                           colorful shots that made me want to go visit, just for the colorful photographs I could                               take.  I found this one on Wheretokim.com

Conundrum

I'm having some kinda weird thoughts.   This week, as many of you know, is the one leading up to Father's Day.  I get emails trying to encourage me to buy something for my Daddy.  I hear commercials on the radio.  I see ads on websites.  I'll have to admit.  I really, intensely dislike these few weeks before Father's Day.  My Daddy died 7 years ago. The ads make me miss him more and I really don't like the ridiculous grieving that surfaces back up so intensely.   

The things is--my birth mother died, too. It will be 19 years ago this November.  Why don't all the Mother's Day ads bug me?   I worry that I--somehow--love her less.  I don't like the idea that this might be factual.  Or...could it be because the main mom in my life is still living--the one who was ALWAYS there for me from 2.5 years onward and STILL is?

I guess it shouldn't bother me as much as it is today, but that is what is on my mind.