ah chills

I was really fixated on this song as a kid, and even now I think it's one of the best songs of all time.

This is my prayer for today.

I know I make fun of 9/11 a lot, but that's just in reaction to people being such melodramatic d-bags about it. But in reality, I can't believe it's been 9 years since all of it happened. I guess this is the first time I've noticed nearly a decade pass by with such speed. Or maybe its just the trauma of that particular time, I don't know. Either way, whenever I really think about that day, or see news footage from the event, its as if it just happened. All the emotions are still very vivid and fresh--I don't think I'll ever be able to forget that helpless terror, in those few hours before anyone really knew what was going on. Wondering if this was the beginning of the end, and then chastising yourself for being so naive and bible-y. But still wondering.
And then there was that sick sense of unity. One of my most haunting memories from that day was sitting at a stoplight on my way home from school. I looked over at the stranger in the car next to me, and I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt exactly what they were feeling, exactly what they were thinking, and exactly what they were listening to on the radio. It's a unity that I am pretty confident I will never feel again, that sort of anonymous connection between countrymen born of an epic and uncommon tragedy. I hope I never have to feel it again. It was beautiful in a way, but above all it was terrible, and cost way too much.
I suppose that was my generation's tragedy though. The way Pearl Harbor was for my grandparents. Or the way JFK and John Lennon were for my parents. Its the thing that will define the moment we all grew up. And its the thing that will age with us, as future generations fail to understand because they weren't there, or begin to forget entirely. There will come a day when the average teenager won't know the exact dates of the World Trade Center tragedy, the same way that I don't know the exact dates of the bombing of Pearl Harbor, even though I should. But we as a group will carry it with us forever. And it will always feel like yesterday.

I heart Carl Sagan

I've been a sort of lapsed Christian over the past several years. Most of this is due simply to development of logical opinions and moral beliefs that seem to be excluded from the realm of Christianity, more often than not in what I believe to be extremely short-sighted and ignorant ways. Lately though, I've developed a popular-type interest in things like physics and special relativity (god that looks so nerdy spelled out, but it is beyond fascinating if you give it a chance), and this interest has led to to a lot of stuff by Carl Sagan. And, strange as it sounds, I feel like Carl Sagan is leading me back to God. In reading his books I've noticed 1. that he had an extremely high regard for women and was very sympathetic to their struggles with sexism, especially in the scientific community, which in turn gives me a lot of respect for him, and 2. he had a larger scope of imagination and vision for humanity as a whole, including religion, that I have ever read in a scientific author. The oddest thing about all this is that he himself was a self-proclaimed agnostic--he was quoted as believing most in Einstein's description of God as the sum of all physical laws in the Universe. Fair enough. But in reading his fiction, I feel as though he wrote out all of the questions and feelings that I have about religion versus science and allowed his characters to wonder open-endedly about all of it, without being so vain as to think he himself as an author could ever answer those questions. In the end he gave the reader all the evidence he could and simply allowed them to decide whether their faith is enough to take them the rest of the way. I, being a trillion times less intelligent and much less scientifically minded than he, have realized that my faith is not only enough to take me the rest of the way, it is actually strengthened when I allow myself to question it in the first place. The entire reason that I have had such qualms with religion in the past is the unwillingness of the church to allow people to use their brains (which are, in my opinion, themselves a miracle). Its as if they know that if people think too much about it, they will come to their senses and leave. And this is true for some--but in the end isn't it better for believers to be followers of their own will rather than prisoners of ignorance? It's amazing to have found that luxury in a very unlikely place.

black on black (on black)

Kelly showed me this like a year ago and I watch it about once a month. So amazing.