Some Initial Thoughts on James 2

In James 2, the author makes the famous proclamation that faith without works is dead. By saying this he made Martin Luther very angry as his understanding of being saved solely through our faith was really disrupted by this idea. So Luther thought we should take the book out of the Bible. 

He didn't mince words 

or 

have problems with confidence.

It would seem that James is arguing for faith and works operate together by means of informing one another. There is the assent and the action. The assent is that which we claim to believe. This would be our doctrinal values and all of our beliefs about what it means to follow Jesus. This is where we would state the expectations of a Christian life. 

Our actions serve as a type of mirror by which we see whether or not we actually believe those things that we claim in our assent. For example a Christian may claim that Jesus teaches that all human life contains inherent value and as such we should love freely all people as our neighbors regardless of their 

             status

                                          wealth

kindness

                                                                                                        lovability

                                                                                                                                      smell. 

She may verbally assent to this claim. However, when she is organizing a meal or a church service at which there will be both powerful and impoverished in attendance, she may arrange it so that the powerful are given the best seats and the impoverished are sent to the outskirts. There is a contradiction between her assent and her action. 

Her works demonstrate 

that her faith is dead. 

Works act to demonstrate the incongruity between our verbal assent and our lived assent. This person does not actually see both the powerful and the impoverished as equally valuable and this is demonstrated by the way she arranges her social and religious space. In this way, our works speak to our faith to actually demonstrate whether or not we have allowed ourselves to be transformed by the faith of Messiah or if we are in need of repentance. 

Or take as another example, the Christian who looks at pornography. His assent would be to say that he lives with his wife in sexual union and that in that oneness, his sexuality can only be expressed through her participation. 

But he  still really

enjoys looking at porn.

While he is cognitively aware that pornography is destructive, the belief has yet to take on flesh in his behavior. His faith here is dead. His faith, his belief that pornography is destructive for society, his wife, and himself mean absolutely nothing until he acts on it.

Yet there is hope.

By looking at our behavior, we find out what we actually believe. We are able to see our failings and flailings. This introspection is essential. 

If we try to shrug off the importance of acknowledging and confessing our sins, we are like a man who wakes up the morning after a new haircut. He eats his cereal and does his crunches (or yoga or whatever the kids are doing these days) but walks out of the house without looking in a mirror and patting down all the places where his hair sticks out 

all the while telling everyone how great his Barber is.

Stupidity and Creativity

You have to risk one to get the other.

I was reading about CS Lewis tonight. (<--- Things that should surprise no one.)

Old Jack had a friend named Ruth Pitter and like all of his friends she was ridiculously smart and talented and made beautiful poetry and thought beautiful and true things about the world. She was the first woman to ever get the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry and out of character, the Queen actually showed up for the ceremony. At one point, Lewis said that if was the marrying type, he would have like to marry Ruth Pitter (the fact that he was less than 2 years from a civil marriage to Joy Davidman not withstanding).

Ruth fetched him a good one

on the jaw

 one night.

As he sat with her and his brother Warnie, Lewis asked for her comments on The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe and while she was generally entertained by it, she pointed out some lapses in the logic of the story. Being the consummate logician and apologist, he found this inconceivable (and he probably wasn't psyched about hearing it from someone with ovaries either, oh Jack) and demanded an example. She asked how it was possible in a land of perpetual winter and without foreign trade partners that the Beavers were able to provide the children with milk, potatoes, oranges, suger, and suet. 

STUMPER!!

And like any good brother,

Warnie burst into laughter

at his brother's inability

to respond.

But is making that mistake 

and suffering that embarrassment 

worth never picking up the pen? 

So many times, I find myself stuck. 

As I read the story tonight, I thought about reading these books to children and what reading does for children. When you get to this moment in the story, you could look at it and say, 'this mistake makes the whole world fall apart, I can't go on.' letting your demand for internal consistency predicate your enjoyment as if the origin of the Beavers' oranges were the atomic mass of the Higgs Boson and its inaccuracy ripped the universe asunder. 

Boom.

Physics.

Or, if you are an attentive reader, 

you ask, 

'where did the oranges come from?'

And now, YOU get to create something totally new.

What's the point of literature and art if it doesn't leave us with questions? Why would we ever want to read, listen to, look at something that was good only because it was correct? I am without doubt that my life is not beautiful because it has been done correctly.

Ask any person that I have played music with. I make a lot of mistakes. Most often than not, if I'm on stage I am playing bass, an instrument that my mom asked me to learn because the church 'had enough acoustic players.' Yea, I know what that means: 

Dear Sloppy McSlopSlop, 

Cut it out and pick up an instrument where you can only misplay four strings instead of six. 

Hugs, 

Your Mom

My main instrument, which I'm not all that bad at these days, was put in my hands as a result of some stupidity. Not knowing what I was doing. Even now, the band leader who has most enjoyed having me as a co-musician pointed out that he doesn't keep me around because I play everything correctly, it's that I take risks and when I make the mistakes, I find a way to make them sound less like mistakes. 

It's a remarkable talent

developed

through years of error and error.

You (I) can't stop what we are doing because we are afraid of someone finding the errors later on and making us look like fools. We (I) are (am) fools. We just need to slide out of those sour notes and figure out where the oranges came from. That's where all the beautiful stuff happens anyway.

PS, What is Suet?

Beginnings Are Always So Hopeful... followed by a series of questions that demand discussionnotanswers

In Judaism, the places for higher theological learning 

are called yeshivas. From yoshev, the Hebrew word 

meaning to sit. 

Because it's important that  you sit still.

I have now been to one sitting for each of my classes and I am so incredibly excited about what I'm doing. The material is intriguing and new and one of my classes offers me the opportunity to simply sit and think about the ways in which I think about God. It also offers/demands that I read 1300 pages of material but I'm ok with that tonight. 

It took until right now to realize how incredibly fortunate I am to have this time. Three years separated from school, working and occasionally making money has taught me one very important thing. 

I really like school.

I couldn't help but smile while the laptops

clacked and the guy up front

told us 

all about the time the Lutherans and the Methodists got together

and the Methodists felt outgunned 

or about

the guy who used to debate Einstein but will always be remembered for his Theology.

Do you think that people are more willing to accept mystery 

within God now as opposed to 

50 years ago

 because

50 years ago

they still thought that we could

 use science to explain this whole world around us and 

God along with it?

If science explained it all,

down past the quarks and neutrinos,

hung a left past those vibrating strings,

and found whole other multiverses

would you still need God?

Is He just there to explain what you don't understand?

Or does He inform something more?

Would you trade enlightenment

for

a little bit of mystery?

So many questions and I haven't even written a paper yet.

Mints Aren't Meals

It's a land where space and time aren't concrete truths but rather matters for debate as if they were art or music. "You see at this time of day, Santa Monica is the shortest way to get to Hollywood. If it were tomorrow, the 10 to La Brea would be much shorter."

LA's roads are like a Dali paintings. Ever shifting.

Lines growing and shrinking with no connection to reality.

Clocks, like my soul, melting.

My friend and I moved to LA simultaneously and independent

of knowing each other's plans. His name is Seth.

We talk sometimes and that makes things feel more ok. Like the whole world hasn't stopped making sense. Mostly this consists of gripes regarding what passes for normal here. This could be anything from talking about the fact that yes, people really do own those stupid tiny dogs. whygodwhy To the need to immediately compliment something about a person's appearance as soon as you see them. New hair? Love it. Great T-shirt! Your skin looks amazing. Some of these things are good things, but it's great to have someone around who is running headlong into the same bewildering experience. One of the more confounding stories that Seth told me recently was about a mutual friend whom he had invited to out to lunch. She looked at him, pondered a bit and said, "No thanks, I'm eating dinner tonight and I have some mints. I don't really want to eat lunch as well."

I've started working a lot in the past couple weeks as a result of my little sister (thelavirgin.com) basically knowing every last person with hiring/firing capabilities in Los Angeles. I'm venturing for the first time into the realms of the service industry as a Busboy as Hemingway's Lounge in Hollywood (hemingwayslounge.com come grab a drink!) and advertising as a Copywriter for DBA Worldwide (dbaworldwide.com come get advertising done!). All told, I'm pulling down a lot of non-concurrent hours. 

Down at 3AM up at 730. Check.

I love the places that I'm working, the challenges are new and both will be incredibly flexible as I move into the school year.

They are changing me though. 

Pulling me into the ether of Los Angeles.

There are some days when I work at both institutions. This involves getting to Santa Monica at roughly 930 (read: leaving Pasadena at 730, driving 25 miles on the freeway at an average speed of 12.5 miles per hour while imaging how great personal flight would be as well as how great personal violence to those around me would be. I laugh maniacally the whole time.) I work there until about 630 and then run over to Hemingway's for my shift which begins at 8 (This 1.5 hour drive is shorter in distance so, for reasons of personal sanity, I don't calculate an average speed), complete my shift at around 230 and hit the hay back in Pasadena at 3. The roads are empty at that time of night and the freedom makes me weep for the roads of Detroit where my little Ford Focus can and does travel as fast as it wants to go with its mismatched wheels.

So sexy

One such day I found myself glued to my desk working feverishly on a project when I looked down to see that it was 2 in the afternoon.

I was very hungry.

But I had bigger problems.

If I ate then, I would lose my rhythm on whatever it was that I was doing and I would ruin my dinner. (this 'dinner' being a mcdouble that i would pick up on on the way to the bar. dont judge me. im so sensitive.) I don't normally go for Altoids, the experience is too violent for my liking, I prefer breath fresheners that taste like candy and fortunately, I had just that in my backpack. I began fumbling blindly through my backpack with my left hand while continuing to type with my right and found the container. I started popping the candies in my mouth like a toofarnorth penguin eating sand because he thinks it's snow.

This is when I had me Teen Wolf moment.

I was changing. Adopting the habits of the people around me and not one that I was particularly fond of. I was looking in the mirror and seeing my canines grow. I shouted "Mints aren't Meals!", Confused my coworkers severely and ran out to get something to eat. I would write better with a full stomach.

Afterword


Cities always change us. 
We are going to become like the people we spend time with.


Jerusalem made me slow down and rest.
Port-au-Prince showed me how to hold my own.
I'm just trying to be mindful of what I want to keep from LA
 and what's not worth hanging on to.

Unintentional reading and books that make me feel dim

That English degree sitting in a box somewhere in my closet may not have given me an office wall to hang it on, but it most assuredly represents the fact that I'm at least semi-literate and have tried to consume a decent number of books. Sometimes I read these books and they make me feel eloquent and dynamic.

I'm able to have aggressive discussions
about them complete with allusions,
incisive commentary
and a subtle clink as I sip my Jack on the rocks.

And then there is 100 Years of Solitude. My friend Daniel recently suggested that I read it. And by recently, I mean that he let me borrow his copy of the book last year and after the first chapter, I moved on to reading something that was probably slightly less demanding.

(see The Last Ringbearer.
Tolkien fan fiction?
Yea, I get down with that.)

A few weeks ago, I decided that the gig was up and I was going to slog through Solitude whether I liked it or not.

I do not.

I'm about halfway in and every time I turn the page, I'm hoping for a distraction.

Phantom ring on the phone?

Good point, Self,
This is a great opportunity to check out CNN.
I bet a lot has changed in this world since you last did.

This book is genius. It's been confirmed. It's right there on the back binding. White letters on orange paper, "Winner of the 1982 Nobel Prize for Literature." Why is this book so impossibly inaccessible to me then? I've got a few ideas.

1. I have no frame of reference to grasp the intricacies of injustice that accompany living in South America.

This idea has a ton of merit to me and the facts of its case completely true.
No one ever put up a banana farm in my neighborhood. I don't know what
it's like to live with constant war and upheaval. However, I have spent
working on behalf of people who have been marginalized. I've eaten with
them, listened to their stories, and told them there was hope, and
watched them die from a treatable and preventable disease. If I can't get
this book because I lack the capacity for empathy, it raises some way
darker questions about me than whether my tastes are appropriate.

2. The chops are gone.

Back in my prime, I could snap through a book faster than the blink
of a fly's eye, gurgle up some literary silliness for an essay, and be back
in time for dinner. Three years out from turning in my last college paper and the
game has changed, I'm all out of the practice of intentional reading. This
leads to listless perusal and most assuredly to a lack of enjoyment
of the text.

3. You couldn't give someone a new name?

Ok, I recognize that I am not Gabriel Garcia Marquez and I have
not won a Nobel Prize, but I don't know how I'm supposed to keep
these characters straight when they all have variations of the exact
same names. So far, there's over 20 Aurelianos. The family tree at
the beginning of the book didn't even help.

4. Maybe I will like it as I get closer to the end.

This has happened to me before. And by that, I mean it has happened
with every Jane Austen novel I have ever read. Every Jane
Austen novel I have ever read has taken me at least 35 pages of slogging
before I start to have any fun. Let's just hope my
Garcia Marquez number is 200.

5. I'm currently ill served to spend time meditating on solitude.

I'm presently coming off one of the more relationally intense periods
of my life. Sharing a home with the 60 people you work with does not
provide you with a lot of 'me' time. I've returned to the States and to
a job where I'm the lone person on duty for roughly 5 hours every
night. Our visitors probably think that I'm about to ask for their phone
numbers given how much I dote on and chase them. I just want them
all to be my friends and to pay attention to me!!

So I carry on. Reading and reading. Using books as a type of self measuring psycho analysis. I've heard literature readers are better in social situations. I will hide comfortably in that.

I think Daniel wants his book back soon. It should be fine though, he's got my copy of The Satanic Verses and I think that one also took me about a year of unintentional reading.

Haiti Day One: Airports and Bad Investments

So I'm on my way to Port-Au-Prince!!

Just touched down in Miami and have a few hours to kill

waiting for my flight out of this country.

Enter the bad investment

I actually just paid $5 for a half hour of internet access.

The shame is overwhelming.

If I paid that much for a straight month, it would cost almost $7500.

Side Note: I'm slow at this and totally failed to get this finished in a half hour.

I am now writing from the camp.

I'm so excited about this new journey in my life, I have spent a little bit of time reading up and getting myself prepared for what I will face when I get down there. The problem is that I have no grid to really prepare for the type of destruction that I'm going to see.

I will be helping facilitate a camp that houses 55K people on what used to be a 9 hole golf course. I don't really know how that is even possible.

I think that one of the most exciting elements of this is the unknown. People have asked what I will be doing and the answer that I give is that I've been told I will be an Information Officer but that I have no idea what that means in the way of day to day responsibilities. I don't know who I will be sharing a tent with. I don't know what I will eat. I don't know creole. I don't know what the hours will be like.

And I'm really excited about all of that.

Some kind of extreme blank slate experience.

I hope to keep this updated while I'm down there and provide clarification, but we will see as I am presently unsure about the hour situation....

New Absurd Project

Ok, so my last project ended up being a gigantic mistake.

Why I thought that I would take

time to write a whole book

whilst in the midst of application

review season and Christmas,

I am unsure.

So now I'm past it and I'm on to

some new silliness.

The goal is to translate a book that is written in a language that

I have never learnt.

I recently bought a copy of Les Miserables in Frnech and will soon start the process of translating it. I am expecting a solid amount of frustration and some really funny mistakes along the way but hopefully I come away with some ability in French and having read one of the great novels of the 19th century.

After finishing War

and

Peace,

I feel Invincible.

John Adams and John Quincy worked on their French while they were crossing

the Atlantic by reading Moliere, and John still sucked at it when he got there.

It will be interesting to see

if I can be any more successful than

this man who clearly towers over me intellectually

simply because I have access to the internet and the ability to

instantly ascertain the information I need both in written and sonic form.

Woot.

Prince Andrey's Sky

I'm reading War and Peace and what started as some truly obnoxious exhibition in erudition (for a definition of the previously used term, one need look no further than the sentence in which it is included) has become a really exciting read.

There's a reason

that

this book is famous

One of the main characters continues to have these epiphanies after doing nothing more than looking at the sky. I'm not done yet and I have to imagine that Tolstoy is going to keep coming back to this idea but he has only done it twice so far.

I guess for me, the individual revelations that the

character experiences aren't that important but I'm really interested in the way that the sky can change someone.

This infinite umbrella that never leaves us can go from the most inconsequential, and unimportant piece of our lives and then, the minute we remember it, it somehow becomes the most profound thing we have ever encountered.

Whether is it hiding behind the roof of a market in Jerusalem.

Or it's riding along with us to where ever it is that we are going. This same sky forces us outside of ourselves and demands that we consider things beyond our own concerns. It's a trite consideration but that same infinite sky sustains us and shrinks us.

Gives us life.

and more importantly,

Perspective.

Plus, it's February in Michigan. Most of us have forgotten that the sky even exists at this point so I figured some pictures would be pretty helpful.

Ok, so I'm all kinds of bad at this

I had a pretty serious feeling when I started this thing that it would not work out. That type of attitude upon entry into this little plan to write a book in a month probably had a ton to do with its failure, but that's ok.

I spend all day reading the essays of college applicants.

These kids are given the option to discuss a setback they have experienced. I read one somewhile back to which i relate pretty easily. The student said that his setback was that he procrastinated. That's why his grades weren't good.

That is not actually a setback.

You are just Lazy.

I'm just lazy.

I don't like doing things when

I get home from work.

So with this kid in mind and the fact that like him - the kid who has nothing to blame for his academic shortcomings but himself - I have thus far found reasons to not do the things that matter, I intend to buckle down soon.

I wish I could say that

with more conviction.

I will keep you posted. Promise.

And now, I shall write about writing

So, November is National Write a Novel Month.

No one told me.

So I'm making December into Lincoln Moore Writes a Book Month. I decided to do this almost 24 hours ago, so that would officially make this day 2 of my month long journey and I will be tracking my progress for the whole world to see.

The truth is, I don't really publicize this little thing

and I'm really writing to have a record of what I was

doing, so that I can take a look back on it in a few

years.

I already have an idea and an outline figured out, so at this point I have a simple goal to write ten pages a day until I am finished. I'm on day two in the journey and I am sitting at the Caribou at Sheldon and Five Mile at 8 pm.

I have not started yet.

I thought caribou would be ideal for its calm air and comfy seating. Not true. It turns out that all the good chairs are taken and the 'air' I expected is being seriously dampened by the wonderfully patient man who is tutoring an absolute tool directly to my left.

"And why is there a halo around the moon

as opposed to the rainbow we see with the

sun? Do you understa-"

"You know what? I need to make a phone call

really quick."

"I don't understand why that couldn't wait

until after we are done. This is the last

question."

And then I flip my table over and demand a bit more respect for that wonderful wizened old man. Now, I'm out one coke and have accomplished nothing towards this book.

Yes, I got a coke at Caribou.

On to writing. Maybe I will go somewhere else tomorrow.

When I become employed, I boogie

Last time around, I made certain promises. Promises regarding comical videos. Do not be afraid friends. I won't disappoint.

I recently found out that I will become an employee of the University of Michigan and after hearing about the employment opportunity, I immediately decided to go the library to get a DVD, do an homage to Heath Ledger, and do a cartwheel at a fountain. This all happened whilst I was getting down, shaking my tailfeather, backing that thang up and committing general acts of boogying. This is the story of me completing said tasks.

I hope that watching this video brings as much joy as making it brought to my friend Daniel and me in the production.

Daniel

He came from England

to thrill our senses, filming

the wonders he sees.

We made this in about two hours after we both got done with our current jobs as an exponential babysitter and culinary delivery operator. Thanks for watching and again, we hope that you enjoy it.

Sitting on the edge of a job

So my life has been full of sitting about for the past year and moping about employment. I spent an atrocious amount of time looking for work and submitting resumes and applications everywhere that I could find one.

No bites.

My final tally puts me at over 100 attempts to work and no one was interested. I have applied to be a janitor, a barrista, a tree cutter (which given my lankiness and vertical dexterity, I have to assume I would have excelled at) a temp, various secretarial jobs, an English Tutor, and an English Teacher. The company I interviewed with to teach English in Japan was shady.

Caribou Coffee interviewed me twice and then wasn't interested.

Brutal.

One day my dad saw that I was looking particularly dejected in the car. 'Lincoln, you know this has nothing to do with you. You are talented and there is work out there for you. No one can get a job now, especially in Michigan.' I will spare you the rest of the conversation.

The truth was that I had been buying into valuing myself based on my employment status, which meant that I was taking a year long dump on myself. I didn't even know it was happening until that moment.

At the beginning of May I landed a part time job at The Home Depot which helped out some and then mid-June I started working at a day care facility. I'm pulling down about 65 hours right now. So far, I'm managing it. I'm sleepier than usual, I don't last much past midnight these days but that's ok.

Whilst all this is going on, I have gone through the interview process with UMICH for a position in the Admissions Dept and I am waiting to hear back from them. The job would be really great, I would get to brag on my alma mater all day and welcome a whole new class of Wolverines to the Greatest University out there. I WILL do this if I get the job:

Guaranteed. I will tape it and repost the new video.

Remember kid from

10 things I hate about you

watch his film called Brick.

Now I'm going to read The Abolition of Man. Who doesn't need a little CS Lewis on a warm Sunday.

Things I Do Not Understand: Singing and Instumenting Simultaneously

So in the interest of trying to be original (my eternally and rarely accomplished desire) I think that it would be funny to post a blog about things that I don't understand. Most people that throw one of these things up here do it in the interest of voicing their opinion on something that they feel particularly knowledgeable about. This makes them feel smart and lets them find other people who have achieved their same level of mastery in their favorite field. Bloggers would seek this out so that they can avoid conversations with you who make them want to tear off their face when you discuss their passion whatever it may be. Sports, theatre, music, coffee, Jai Alai, I don't know.

Bloggers are a proud and arrogant people.

I can be too.

One thing that I can not do is play a musical instrument well and simultaneously produce non-painful sounds with my voice.

I can sometimes sing.

I can play a hot lick too.

Never together. <----Haiku

Believe me it is not for want of effort. I sit around my living room and play this little tiny guitar that I stole from a friend and try to sing 'Blackbird,' and either one of two things happen. The

guitar part sounds fine, but i then realize that notes I am singing have very little to do with the melody that Paul sang, or I put tremendous effort into nailing that melody down and the sounds of the guitar start moving like a poorly handled sitar. Everything goes wrong.

There is a primary disconnect somewhere between my hands and my voice. I feel like I'm doing this:

But everyone else is doing this:

o well.

The right to be ridiculous is something I hold dear.

U2 said it first.

It was revelatory and I totally buy into it.

Here is some evidence:

This is me and some ladies that decided to reject me. They are laughing about how entirely weak my game was as well as the disturbing patchiness of my facial hair. Another reason for them to laugh is that I was allowing myself to be photographed only in shades of black, white, and

blue. OK, fine, maybe they didn't know that that part was happening but they would have laughed at me anyway.

And now for something slightly different. Lincoln impersonating a young child - this happens frighteningly more frequently than you would expect - who had just that day done his darndest to pull our store's dividers down on it's head.

Clearly, the child was not having a good day, but fortunately Lincoln was there to dive between the child and its impending doom as the big metal pole started to topple.

Uh. Oh.

And this here is one of my most glorious pictures.

Yes, I am in Jerusalem.

Yes, I am playing with a velcro catching mitt.

Why, yes, I did buy it in the market in the Old City.

What's that? Why am I standing that way?

No, I don't have an answer for that.

Just an unfortunate moment for a picture.

Being ridiculous, silly, and absurd is something that is completely essential in my life but from time to time I lose sight of it. I get serious for extended periods of time and somewhere in the I stop dreaming. Alright, that sounds extreme and cliche but I'm speaking in two senses. 1) I stop coming up with grand schemes. I get practical and the minute I become practical I stop getting things done. 2) My sleep is completely empty. I actually stop having dreams. So I was totally pumped the other night when I had a dream, because it had been a quarter year dreamless slump and that is not good for me.

So, the line in the title of this here blog is in U2's song I'll go Crazy If I Don't Go Crazy Tonight and in the song it goes like this:

Is it true that perfect love casts out all fear?

The right to be ridiculous is something I hold dear.

It's kind of like Yoda's 'fear leads to anger...' proposition but in the opposite direction. Love destroys fear; the lack of fear allows one to be ridiculous. This makes me glad to have people around me who enjoy silliness; people who would rather choose to laugh at something childish than to call it immature.

I'm doing silly things, but I believe in them. This includes writing a script that is completely absurd, but even in this script with its absurdities and quirks there are moments in which something worth doing is being created. The creative process has been really interesting for me. A friend and I have written the majority of the meat of the script and it is only since then that I have had moments of some type of real inspiration. The printed pages are covered now with additions and new lines and wonderful adjustments. For me it's been like going to Yellowstone and not knowing there are geysers. All of a sudden the real show begins. The greatest moments are the ones that I didn't see before.

Be silly today.

You may need to write some hai-

kus. Do it Here, please.

Really though. My friend

Mike Haddad made this great face-

book application.

Have fun with some words.

Write a few dirty poems

then you show your friends.

Learning about credit scores and movie making the hard way

This is not going to be a downer entry. That needs to be said at the outset. 

I am a substitute teacher. This means that from time to time, I sit down in classrooms full of students whom (<--- Bringing it back) I have never met. Today, I have the honor of sitting in on a class that is working on a design project and the teacher left me his computer that has internet access and I can get onto blogger. Gmail is not an option. 

I was simply sitting here when one of the young ladies shouted across the room and demanded that I give her a dollar. I would love to I said, but I'm broke. The class was mystified. I don't think that they had ever believed that someone could be out of college and not have some hard currency on their person. I'm sure most of their parents normally have cash for them. From the information they had about how money works, the only logical conclusion was that I was a big fat ungenerous liar. 

After a few minutes of harassment, I felt the need to defend my status as a man of my word, even if it meant showing everyone in the room that I was in truth a total bum. To my disappointment, they seemed to be more interest in my Burt's Bees and my lucky baseball card (Willie McGee) than the fact that I was a truth teller. You win some and you lose some. 

Anyhow, the job search continues. Get at me if you hear of some amazing opportunity, so that I can take advantage of it. It really doesn't need to be amazing. Homeboy just needs a paycheck.

In other news, my friend Daniel and I have been exploring the bottom rungs of the Detroit film industry together. We were unpaid PA's on a film project shooting down on McNichols earlier this week. We learned a lot and the guys making the movie were really friendly. Because there wasn't anyone else there to help, we got to try a lot of different 'jobs' while we were there. We supervised the script, noted sound and camera times, worked the boom and dressed the set. 

The following day we were extras on a major movie shooting in Dearborn. Big names, lots of people, lots of professionals. It is incredible to me how much footage gets shot every day on these sets when compared with how much actually makes the film. I will leave you with an equation:

An average film shoots for 9 weeks 6 days a week.

An average film in 1.75 hours = 105 minutes

How many minutes are accomplished on an average day?

Organic Cigarettes and Other Signs of the Coming Apocalypse

Hokay so,

I was just flipping through a magazine and saw an ad for American Spirit cigarettes boasting that they have ORGANIC cigarettes. Why why why why why?

Now we arrive at one of the most egregious suspensions of logic that I have seen in a long while. American Spirit advertises its Organic Cigarettes while simultaneously saying that they are not actually healthier in any way. This is actually mandated by a court ruling, which says that in their ads which boldly proclaim their Organic cigarettes they must also put these words:

No additives in our tobacco

does NOT mean a safer cigarette.

Here is an example of someone doing the exact same thing:

I really don't mind tobacco at all. I love me a nice cigar every now and then and when the weather is nice, nothing beats sitting on my porch with a nice pipe and a book. (I'm building up my old man street cred.) I guess what scares me is some magical power that advertisers seem to have over us. We are told over and over that we must purchase and consume organic goods so that we will in turn be healthier and we buy into it so much that someone can run a campaign selling us one of the most deadly products out there and because they slap a big certified organic sticker on it, someone is beating down the door to the nearest liquor store to pick it up. yikes.

Here's one kid who knows something about cig uh rets.

why is today creepier than every other day? Lincoln's fifth question.

for some reason, I am absolutely on edge today. Here are the contributing factors:

caffeine
three dimensional stop motion animation
the looming prospect of grad school
my first adventure in screenwriting.

So, I am sitting in the Caribou at five mile and sheldon right now. The hilarious part about this is that I do not drink coffee, but I applied for a job here a few weeks ago and I feel like if I keep coming in they will think that I am dedicated or something and just give me a job out of a sense of pity. Thus far, no luck. The truly unfortunate thing is that I feel compelled to drink a coffee beverage whenever I'm in here. I mean, could I really show up here and order a coke and sit by myself. That simply wouldn't make sense. My brother and I saw Coraline this afternoon. It was both the coolest 3-d movie I've seen as well as the coolest stop-motion flick. A lot of the time, I feel like when those mediums are used, it isn't a natural outgrowth of the story, but just becomes some kitschy little gimick that advertisers want to force onto a narrative because they believe that it will fill seats i.e. the Home Improvement 3D episode and the stop motion James and the Giant Peach. This however, was great. I was basically sold from the opening credits in which the screen was framed with a type of lace pattern that resembled old footlamps, but instead of just hanging out at the bottom of the screen, wrapped all the way around. It fascinated me. The movie though, IS REALLY CREEPY. If you didn't know that you shouldn't take young children to see Tim Burton flicks, take note. I may have a few nightmares tonight.
After the movie, I went to the library and started doing research for my grad school applications. The whole process just feels like a gigantic mountain to me. It takes up a lot of the space in my head after I think about it and makes it really difficult to focus elsewhere. So, there's a lot to get accomplished there.

And as some of you know, I am taking my first tenuous steps into screenwriting. It's a really fun project for me based on the life and struggles of Luke Haddad. At this point it is kind of following a Waiting for Guffman style arch. It is a lot of fun though because it is a medium that I have never worked in and at times I feel really not up to the challenge because there is so much that I need to start learning about how to make a screenplay that people would be interested in.

So I am doing all of that and right now I'm listening to the first time to U2's new album. they have it streaming on their myspace. How great would it be if this could be another Joshua Tree? Here's hoping. I'm also going down to the D tonight to see Medicine for Melancholy tonight. Given the frenetic, caffeine adjusted state of mind that I am in right now, I think this movie is going to be just what I need.

Peter and I

So, this is a story that works as a journal entry as well. It really discusses how I am seeing/feeling right now. I wrote it a few days ago and have basically just stared at it before I finally decided to put it out there for viewing. I hope that you enjoy reading it, I hope that it means something to you. Tell me about it. I want to know what is good/atrocious. Let's discuss.

-Linc

I think it was the rain that woke me and I found myself in the keel of a sinking boat. The oars were gone. The water splashed on my forehead and chose either the left or right side of my face to trail down. I lay still for a few moments before I knew the danger that I was in and began throwing handfuls of water overboard, while searching for land. The rain was heavy and the wind drove. As my boat was thrown to the crests and troughs, I searched for safety and found only a low haze that blocked everything more than what would be a block away.

I decided the only thing to do was keep the boat from filling with rain until the weather broke. I reached a crest and began to descend. Just as a new wave blocked the horizon, I thought I saw someone step out from the cloud bank, which I now saw was thick and definite like the curtains of a stage. This desert is much too wet for mirages, I thought, as I kept my focus on the water inside the boat for fear of that which walked upon it outside. A haunting vision can be written off after it has passed but trying to discount the fear invoked when the vision is present is like ignoring the dog with its teeth in your arm.

“Lincoln,” He called to me, and I was compelled to look up and when I did, I knew that He was no haunting vision, but was like something I had always known, something I knew before I knew knowing. Primordial and Right and Abundant.

“O, Jesus, I thought you were a ghost.” Then and there I knew that I was living out the story of Peter. I was going to walk on the water. “Call unto me, Lord, and I then shall walk upon the water.” I was putting on my best Peter, trying to be that disciple full of zeal on whom Jesus built the foundations of his church. I loaded my voice with archaic language as if my words could make this Man or this Moment more solemn.

Jesus seemed to sigh as he said, “Lincoln, that boat will no longer hold you. Come to me on the water and we will walk together.”

My heart leapt. I had read this story and I knew precisely what to do. Peter was able to walk on the water only when he was full of faith and kept his eyes on Jesus. He fell because he was worried about the storm around him and looked away. Be like Peter, be like Peter, Full of Faith, Never doubting, I thought as I slammed my eyes into Jesus’. I blindly put my hands on the side of the boat and swung my legs over the side. What I did not see was that the boat grew taller in the aft than it was in the bow and my feet slammed into the edge. I began to tumble toward the water. At all times I kept my eyes on His and watched them turn slightly sad, the way a parents would when their unflappable child loses a spelling bee. The parent knows how the odds are stacked against winning, but the child in invincibly unaware.

Be like Peter, be like Peter. At this point in the fall, I had spun and contorted in order to maintain eye contact and found my self with my back to the water looking at Jesus upside down. I felt victorious, convinced that I had conquered my environment as well as a treacherous boat design and would shortly find myself resting on a bed of water. This is why I didn’t inhale before I sank beneath the waves.

I think that I was angry first. How could I fail when I knew exactly what to do to walk on water? I had read that story so many times. My empty lungs opened and I gasped the water. I hadn’t done anything wrong. I nearly raged or nearly wept. It was torture to see the shadow of Jesus’ feet on the other side, where the air was, where life was. I thrashed and pulled but never drew any closer. With water in my chest, I reasoned that this was where I would die and so unsanctimonious a death with physical salvation
visible and unattainable, must mean that my spiritual salvation was just as far from reach.

Lightning flashed and an eternally pierced hand shot through the water. It latched onto my shoulder and ripped me to safety. It hurt. I spat that gasp of water and it disappeared into the sea like a useless fish thrown back. The rain had stopped. The moon was out. I was enjoying oxygen, as I never had. I was on the water. I wasn’t looking into Jesus’ eyes. “I don’t understand.”

“You don’t know me as well as you think, Lincoln.” It hurt, but in the same way that the pain in my shoulder was a hurt that saved.

“But I did right what Peter did wrong. I believed that I would float and I kept my eyes on you. I wasn’t worried about the storm. I did this better than Peter did.”

“Walk with me.” It wasn’t slippery. I had always thought that it would be, but I found my footing to be more sure here that it ever was on land. I spread my toes and saw the water fill in between them. Walking on water is filled with expectation. A lake never passing the soles of your feet is like a three beat pause in your favorite song. “Of course you did those things, you had the story. But you must understand that whenever I bring someone out here, their challenge is going to be their own. Peter loved me, but he had fear and wasn’t sure if I was sufficient for him. That was his challenge. It clearly wasn’t yours, I wish you could have seen what you looked like when you fell out of that boat. Lincoln, you fail to be present. You concerned yourself with living Peter’s story and passing a test when you should have known that I simply wanted you to join me. With all that worry of being full of faith and being more impressive that Peter,” (Which is exactly what I had been worried about) “you missed the fact that I should have been both your means and your end. You should never be too busy with someone else’s story, so that you miss what is happening in your own.”