The world didn’t end, again…
Aren’t you glad it didn’t end again after all the things they say that is going to happen.
It seems one of these days someone will be right about the end of the world, I don’t think I’ll be around to see it.
My suggestion for 2013 is: Seek Friendship.
It’s something we often overlook and forget it’s power.
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Friendship for the end of the world, the end of a year and the beginning of the rest of your life.
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The end, the end is nigh!
Huddle close to fire and watch the embers final light;
Remember the days behind and minutes between;
Follow the rabbit trail into a dream;
Listen, don’t speak, for the final moments are near;
Close your eyes, the end is here.
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Onward and Upward!
Good, Riddance.
(notice the comma)
What could I say about you 2011. I’ve said a lot between January 1 and today, but I feel that there might be a few more things to say, even if there isn’t there will be text below.
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2011 felt much like climbing a mountain that I couldn’t quite find the path on. It started off in January, where I could see the top of the mountain ever so slightly through the mist and clouds, but there was a top, and I intended to get there.
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The biggest issue with me is that the trail I was trying to take to the top would stop from time to time and disappear all together at times, however I kept climbing. February flew by as it always seems to in it’s 28 day flutter of a month.
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In March I claimed that everything was going to change, I was partially right, but then again we often are with vague proclamations of future actions or events. I continued up the mountain, with every twist and turn as I turned to the hellacious month of April when I finished off my Thesis and other major grad school things which brought me to May.
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Through the rest of the last month and all of June was like climbing a sheer rock face with no end in sight. My job search was on, even though it felt like the on switch was broken. This continued until July when I was fortunate enough to find a position and a reason not to have to move back in with my parents for a spell.
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By August I had made it to the summit and could look back on where I had been and how glad I was to be where I was even though I wasn’t where I originally planned to be. With September and October life seemed to continue on normally, but nothing is ever completely normal with my life.
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By November tragedy struck and life seemed to stand still for a while.
December came with celebration and excitement, but the ever present apprehension of future remained. From the summit I could see another great climb I was sure to make in 2012.
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2011 have been many different things, but it’s been a year of accomplishment, cardinals, rabbits, postcards, failed whims and winds of many different types, but overall it’s been good year for me and a terrible year for dictators.
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But riddance to it all 2012 is peering round it’s metaphorical corner and 2012 is marked to be another hill to climb.
Thanks 2011, I learned a lot.
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Check out my 2011 album on Facebook or Google Plus, or right below. I’m everywhere.
Certain things in life can be considered torture.
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However, there is nothing like graduate school and a thesis that constitutes torture that is self inflicted. Tomorrow I defend my thesis in front of at least three people who hold my Graduation in their hands.
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Mind you, I’m not too worried because I feel like I’ve put out a good product. (Give it a couple of years and I’ll probably think it’s garbage.) However this thesis is the culmination of a lot of what I’ve done over the past two years in grad school. I’ll be able to show a little more than a diploma, but also a small book.
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But it’s done, finished, finito, roll the credits.
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Now… to finish the other assignments in my other classes and get that job.
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If you’d like to watch and won’t be anywhere near where I am I’ll be live-streaming my defense at livestream here at 11:00 am Wednesday April 20.
http://www.livestream.com/nwlynch
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Let’s hope it works, if it doesn’t then whoops.
Also if you’d like to read the beast I’ve posted it on Issuu.
Some people may cringe, some people waver indeed for the place where you do this dirty deed.
A different type of space not so wonderful a place, foreign to those who call home a European throne.
Invention is the offspring of necessity it seems, but the inventive eye is blind in this blood stream.
A terrible terrible act must I lay upon such a perfect creation, as the train departs from the station.
I look down at the hole; I contemplate my fate, wishing that dinner had never left my plate.
My heart leapt upward as pant flew downward, aye gritted my teeth as the train rumbled onward.
I finished my deed with my dignity in tact staring at the place where I had just placed my crack.
It didn’t seem so scary, no, not too bad; however being done made me woefully glad.
I stared and I wondered at the dastardly hole and how it had gotten so much pain and woe.
Not a hole in the ground but a throne indeed; the most primitive of act lined with porcelain gleams.
It’s simple it easy and it might make one queasy, but this throne is just that; not ugly or sleazy.
So fear not my friends for the hole that never ends is the perfect place to place your rear-end.
~NL
Take that John Keats.
Some things in life can make you sit in wonder and disillusion.
I’ve been having those moments a lot lately. I am working outside doing landscaping work this summer, and I’m surrounded by trees, flowers, grass and other things pertaining to nature. You never look and analyze at something like blades of grass or tree blossoms on a tree until you spend eight hours a day around them.
This is less of a real story. More of a story from an observation I made.
The Gardener
The Crepe Myrtle sits amongst a thatch of juniper bushes. It is not a particularly gorgeous arrangement of flora, but it serves it’s purpose and creates a green area to off set the dry landscape around them. She abides in commonplace and the world cannot see her true beauty yet because her day has not come yet.
She has buds that are just screaming to bloom and new growth that gives way to her true beauty, but she has been neglected and the overgrowth of previous years and dead branches covers up her beauty and splendor.
Some of her buds try to bloom, but are blocked out by all of her fruitless branches slowly killing and taking over. The light is blocked out and she begins to feel the slow cold of her demise, with none to enjoy her last breathes of splendor.
But somehow the dead branches and fruitless growth begins to be pruned away. With each clip she feels her health and spirit begin to grow. A gardener has began to prune away at her branches.
He snips and clips away at the dead lifeless parts of her and opens up areas of her existence that she had never seen before. Light began to shine through. The gardener keeps working away at her cutting parts of her that aren’t necessary. He works hard and sweat rolls of his brow and drips to round below where her roots have become exposed.
The gardener smiles to find new parts of The Crepe Myrtle exposed to the sun and warmth of the Summer day. He continues his work without break and without hesitation. She worries when parts of her branches that to her seemed fine end up being clipped too.
She still sits among the juniper bushes with her buds waiting to bloom, and waiting for the world to see her beauty.
The next day she still has not bloomed, but the gardener comes and waters her roots and gives them a nice cool on her feet to quench her thirst during the hot summer day. She is still confused why no one will come and see her splendor. The gardener covers her roots with mulch to keep them moist and cool during the day.
She sits all day and wonders why no one will come see how beautiful she is. This gardener keeps coming each day and clips away the dead parts and fruitless things about her. She wonders why no one will look at her splendor.
One morning as the sun begins to rise she sees someone on the horizon, but cannot make out who it is. She rustles with excitement in the breeze hoping and wishing it is someone to see her splendor.
The silhouette of the person in the distance becomes clear that it is the gardener, but this time he doesn’t have any tools in his hand. He came there with one thing… his eyes. So he could see how beautiful she truly was.
As the breeze blows through her branches and moves her leaves and pink-reddish blossoms she realizes that there was someone there all along to take care of her and look back and love everything about her in a way that no one else in the world could. She finally found someone was admiring her splendor all along… The Gardener.
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We often get caught up in ourselves so much that we can’t see the people around us that have been there the entire time helping us along. Remember to look back and see who’s helped you get to where you are now. Sometimes we forget about those people.
There is one Eternal Gardener that will prune, feed and provide for us but all we have to do is allow this “gardener” into our lives. All he want is to love and give to those that will receive him. If we accept this gardener’s gift of sacrifice for our lives then we too can be held in splendor and will continue to bear fruit and live forever.
This gardener’s name is Jesus Christ.
Some things in life can make you sit in wonder and disillusion.
I had that moment yesterday. I am working outside doing landscaping work this summer, and I’m surrounded by trees, flowers, grass and other things pertaining to nature. You never look and analyze at something like blades of grass or blossoms on a tree until you spend eight hours a day around them.
I’m going to put this story in narrative form because that’s the way it happened to me, and it the way it happened in my head.
This is a true story.
It was a very hot day. The sun set high in the sky beating down on my head. I was instructed by my supervisor to walk around the area and pull weeds and other plants that shouldn’t be there. I decided I would find a nice shady area to pull weeds for a moment.
I walk across the parking lot toward my oasis of trees and flower beds. The sweat was dripping off my forehead, and running into my eyes. I sighed deeply once I found my way under the shade trees. I began to walk around the area to begin my groundskeeper duties.
As I walked around the area pulling up tree sprouts attached to acorns that squirrels had buried and forgot about, I happened upon a bird that was sitting on the ground. It appeared to be hurt, but in any way it could not fly. I was able to come very close, but as I got closer the bird began to chirp loudly.
I back away partly because I was surprised, but also out of courtesy for the bird. As I back away a hawk swoops in toward the bird on the ground. I could only catch a small glance as the bird was descending, but this brown hawk had one thought on it’s mind. To snatch the hurt bird from the ground.
As the hawk came closer a second pigeon came out of nowhere and dive-bombed the hawk and threw him off his path of descent. Two other bird came out from a tree to join in the epic battle. The hawk and the pigeons fought and pecked at each-other for a moment and then the hawk grasps the first bird in his talon and flies off in the opposite direction.
I look and see the hawk flying away with the two other pigeons flying after, but eventually giving up because the hawk flies with much more velocity and distance. I am sitting there looking at the bird on the ground and looking off at the hawk in the distance.
I sat there silent, thinking that I never knew how vicious nature could truly be.
I look at the bird on the ground. It began to chirp loudly again. It was calling out as to be calling to a friend or a lover. It turned its head toward me and stared me down with it’s beady eyes.
Staring deep at the bird it seems as if she was saying to me, ‘He saved me. He gave up his life to save me.”
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The beauty and poetic nature of dying for the one that we love was so terribly evident. I could do nothing, but sit and wonder to myself this idea; that to this bird seemed so simple. To save ones life meant to risk his own. This epic battle was not for his life, but for the one that he loved.
As I walked away hearing the bird chirp for her loss, my heart sank and I haven’t been able to think of anything since. That’s something I want. A love so strong for the people around me that I would not only fight for their life, but also die.
That to me is the most epic battle.
I found a Coldplay song that I hadn’t heard before, and now it has been on repeat since I downloaded it (legally). Here are some of the lyrics.
How tides control the sea, and what becomes of me
How little things can slip out of your hands
How often people change, not to remain the same
Why things don’t always turn out as you plan
These are things that I don’t understand
Yeah, these are things that I don’t understand
I don’t understand what is happening now. For the longest time college was happening, and now that I move on to the next thing… that familiarity is no longer there. I pride myself in usually knowing what is happening, and when there are things coming up that I don’t understand I’m left holding onto nothing.
…slip out of your hands
It’s crazy cause for the entirety of college we are all enamored with getting out of school and ‘getting out here’. but now we are holding on to it and not wanting to let go. Someone put it this way. We’re speeding fast in a car toward the finish line of graduation, but when we see the finish line we slam on the brakes and slide through the finish line trying to slow down so we can look out our window and see what we’re going to be missing.
We can’t stop the car.
We’re continually speeding through life, and when we know there is something that we don’t want to lose… we try to keep it from slipping out of our fingers. It’s only 4 years, but it has felt like a whirlwind that I thought would never end, but now that’s it’s ending I’d don’t know where else to be.
I don’t see myself as incapable, but I do find myself afraid of the unknowns. They’re exciting unknowns, but a healthy fear is nothing bad.
I’m excited to see what’s next, but for now….
I’ll hold onto the ones that I love. I’ll try to experience the hell out of the next 6 days of my life, because each day is the first day and also the last. We can’t get that day back. I’ll reminisce with the people I may never see again, and I’ll say my salutations to those who I plan to see again. This isn’t the end of one thing as much as it is the beginning of something else.
So I’ll hold onto to these times, and embrace the things I don’t quite understand, but I hope to find out soon.
I think we’ve lost touch.
Not on everything, but we’ve lost touch with each other and how we talk to each other. I’m one of the many people that detests the jargon you see used in text messages, which has made it’s way into e-mails. We’ve changed the way we communicate I can’t disagree with that, but I can’t say I particularly like it. My question is what happen to the letter? Why have we moved to short cut and dry forms of communication. I hope to change this in my life.
Forward/Reverse Letter Writing
I’ve started this idea that isn’t really something I’ve ever heard of before, but it’s taken from things I’ve heard before. Sometimes people write letters to God, dead family members or even themselves in the future. I’m going to do two different things.
1. Letters to Family in the Future.
2. Letters to My Future Self
Letters to my Family in the Future
I have already written a letter to my future wife. I want her to open it up on our first day married. I will also have one for her when we have our first kid, and other major times in our life. All written now. To let her know that I’ve been thinking about her even before I even knew her.
I will also write letters to my kids. Like I’m writing one for my son when he graduates college, and other major things such as marriage and first kid. This will help my kids be able to see me in a light that they might not have seen me in before. I will write these things as they happen. Such as when I get married I will write one to my son, and ask my wife to write one for my daughter. This will put perspective, and show my kids that Yes! I have actually been where you are now.
I will write one for each decade of my life, major events and even when my father dies… that way I have something for them when I pass. I will write them a letter.
It may sound eccentric and odd, but I think this is one of the best ways to communicate to the people around me that I loved and cared for them even before I knew them. I was thinking and in love before I even knew I was in love…
Letters to My Future Self
I’m sure that you’ve heard of people doing this too, but I’ll be doing this ever major birthday as well. I’m writing on for myself when I’m 30. Telling me what I believed, thought, and where I think I was heading. I’ll then at 30 write another one . to myself at 40. This will be a continual thing where I can always keep my true to who I am, and not compromise, or see where I was way off. This is just a way to keep me honest.
Letters
I could have done a lot of things, but who doesn’t like getting a letter from someone. A letter expressing your hopes, and fears and dreams. A letter can say so much more than a simple text or an e-mail. Someone who knows you can look at it and know how you might even say that sentence. A letter is like a small peak into someones consciousness, if only for just a page or two. It’s a page or two of sincerity.
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