letters from barabbas

Saturday night's conversation:

Calla Maria: You'll probably never have an accident.

David: You know, I've thought about that a lot. It isn't that I'm a particularly good driver. I don't really pay much attention to what I'm doing. I'm beginning to think God must have some special plan for me that requires a perfect traffic record. I figure, who am I to ask questions?


Sunday afternoon's conversation:

David [singing]: It takes a worried man to sing a worried song. I'm worried now, but I won't be worried long.

God: You wanna bet?

David [rear-ending the truck in front of him]: Oh, fuck!

God: Sure, I've got plans for you, but they're not that special! Learn to tame that tongue, and maybe you'll drive better.

the bulbs in the garden are growing
the bulbs in the kitchen are blowing

i think that it's time for a change

I don't exist much in the physical realm.

I actually feel like I learned something today. How novel.

We studied Othello in Shakespeare today. It's all about faith: where do you put your trust and where do you get your identity? Othello's trust in Iago (who only trusts himself) whittles down his trust in Desdemona. He depends upon his observation as every empiricist does--give me the ocular proof--but he fails to interpret his observations critically. Lacking a strong sense of personal identity, he allows self-doubt to creep into his heart, chilling the trust that love should foster and leading to a monstrous jealousy.
But he wasn't jealous until he got around Iago, who speaks in animal metaphors and always asks about moneybags. Iago is earthbound, can't see past the flesh, and Othello the 'honest fool' can't even conceive of such treachery. In taking his eyes off the heavenly realm to look for truth from Iago, he learns to trust in the flesh himself and begins to smell treachery everywhere. A lost handkerchief is thus formed into evidence of lechery. Had he placed his faith in the love between him and his God and him and his wife, he would have seen the truth, and through the truth that is found in love, interpreted correctly what he saw.

In today's Cell Biology lab we took a field trip to the school's electron microscopes. The scanning EM allows you to see the surface of an object in three dimensions, the transmission EM lets you see it in cross-section. We looked through the SEM at the surface of a hypodermic needle. At 1000x it didn't seem so sharp anymore.
The special thing about electron microscopes isn't in their magnification. You can get up to 1000x with a simple light microscope; although you can get much larger than that with an EM, you usually don't need to. It's their power to resolve an image that really makes the difference. Electron beams have wavelengths of 0.05 angstroms, whereas light rays are somewhere around 5,000. The smaller the wavelength, the better the resolution--the distinction between two points. So you can make out the same image with much greater detail, distinguishing between objects at a virtually molecular level.
It helps you to interpret what you're observing.

I shadowed a radiological oncologist today named Dr. Glisson. I was somewhat horrified as I watched him painfully insert an "applicator" into a woman's uterus. But this way, he could guide the radiation directly to the tumor rather than shooting it through her skin and damaging healthy tissues along with the malignancy.
Fine-focused healing destruction.

Get it?
I am learning to see.

Days like today always let me down. The clouds sat heavily just above the clocktower, letting out a fine mist from time to time. It seemed to be pouring on the horizon. I looked up expectantly with every chime, but I never saw the deluge I was hoping for.

Stargazers must train themselves to appreciate the periphery.
My psychology professor was telling us about the cones and the rods this morning. Cones are concentrated in the center of the retina on what is called the fovea, and they sense bright light and colors. Rods are spread out where light from the peripheral vision hits the retina, and can only sense motion and dim light. They kick into gear when you're in the dark.
You will see a shooting star out of the corner of your eye, only to lose sight of it as you give it your full focus.

Then: for an instant's virtuoso sketch
a ground of contrast is prepared, laboriously,
so we can see it; for they're very clear
with us. We don't know our feelings' contour,
only what shapes it from outside.

The living all make the same mistake: they distinguish too sharply.
The harder you focus when you're in the dark, the worse your perception becomes.
Today left me waiting for the rain.


(poetry by Rainer Maria Rilke, The Duino Elegies)

Notice something.

a night abloom with symbolisms not quite ripe:
riddles that never unwound:

dark forest journeys and wild coyotes:
courage in the falsest sense:

conceit without fruition is simply simile:
like or as but not is

I got this cd my first year at Auburn, and for the whole winter, it was all I listened to.
I was in a dark place. I felt like everything I had done in high school had been a waste and I had nothing left to give. I felt like I had lost all my friends and could never make any new ones. I felt like I had run away from God and might never find Him again.
I thought I might be dying.
This music seeped through my dark bedroom to breathe life into my heart with lines like

Some winters are harder than others.
We are going to take our cameras
and look through at black trees with empty arms
and sled tracks, wandering as we are.

and

Look for me another time,
give me another day;
I feel that I could change

I knew it was only a season, and there was a change coming, someday.
And when it came,

The world at night
could see the greatest light.
Too much light to deny.

It was a process I had to go through, and I internalized these songs so deeply that they became a part of me. I have only done this to such a degree with two other albums: The Cure's Disintegration and Don Chaffer's You Were at the Time for Love. They are pieces of my history, as much as any of my journals or letters, and there is something intensely private about them. I don't just play them casually in the car with a bunch of strangers. When I play them for someone, I'm letting them inside of me.

So when I let Josh borrow birds of my neighborhood, I was really glad that he liked it so much. But when I heard the opening riff of Snow coming over the speakers during the announcements at Chi Alpha's big meeting, I froze. I started to blush. If the 100 people there didn't like it, it would mean that they didn't like me.

It's irrational. I know. It's silly. I know. But it's true.
You understand, don't you?

But the brilliant thing is: people did like it. Because it's good music. And because everyone knows that some winters are harder than others, and everyone could feel that truth resonating in their hearts. Because that's what Art is supposed to do.
Josh was worried that I would be mad at him for playing it for everyone, for spreading it around to all of our friends: people sometimes don't like something as much when it's become popular. (God has delivered me from that affliction, though, hallelujah!)
I wasn't worried about losing my secret. I was convinced that nobody would like it.
I was wrong. As usual.

I hope some other time
I won't care so much about
being understood as I do now.
I will leave myself and go away.
I would like to follow you away.

whenever i think about breathing
i start feeling short of breath



And then something real--even beautiful--happened, and I wanted to edit myself.
Because reality is like fine wine, and it won't appeal to children, but I've (we've all) got a lot of growing up to do.