i’m trying hard to remember what’s happened in the past few weeks. i guess it’s been at least 3 since i really said anything of importance.
my last week at home after portugal, before stanford, was really fun. i went up to gainesville for a few days to hang out with my brother and best friends there. we watched movies, ate big reds, smoked pipes, climbed rocks, and had an all around freakin awesome time. chris domeck went up with me, so the whole posse was there, sans andy, who’s in indiana.
a few days later i went with mawk to a rock show at the social in downtown orlando, with embodyment and blindside headlining. it was a dope show, and i totally rocked out hardcore. i felt as if i’d gone through an intense workout afterwards, when the seething suffocation of the mosh pit faded. needless to say, both bands just freakin kicked, and it was awesome to hang out with sean a bit before their set and catch up on life.
let’s see, what else…i went down to west palm beach to spend a day with my grandma, aunt linda and her new fiance peter. it was an interesting dynamic, as i’d never really spent alone time as an adult with my extended family like that (i.e., without immediate family also there). however, i would classify the time as really cool, because i was able to actually get to know them as people and not just family that gives presents at christmas. on the way up i stopped to see hannah at palm beach university for about 5 minutes…a totally random little surprise.
one of those days i went to see the sunrise at cocoa beach, which has become a solemn tradition for me. sometimes alone, sometimes with other people: whatever the case it’s always a huge mechanism for centering my life on what is important (christ) and sorting everything [else] in its right place. incidentally, the beach sunrise has become a sort of running theme or motif for myself and thereby my online presence, thus the new jonathanlipps.com design has as its centerpiece a picture i took on my most recent outing. anyways, i invited my friend amy to come with me, and that was fun. i was glad to be able to hang out with her several times while i was back, because she’s cool of course, and then also because most of my friends were away and i was pretty bored!
soon, of course, my halcyon week of summer laziness and fun came to an end. i flew back on friday the 20th, and got in to stanford that night. miraculously i got into my suite, though the move-in date wasn’t until sunday. unfortunately, i didn’t have a key. neither did i have any of my boxes which i’d scattered to various peoples’ homes for free storage. my room being more or less uninhabitable, then, i roamed around campus trying to see if any friends were around. to that end i joined the infamous orientation weekend band run, and went along with it from start to finish. ultimately i saw just about everyone whom i was expecting to be on campus there, and some besides. more importantly, it took up a lot of time and made me feel my travel exhaustion to the point where i was able to sleep on the bare mattress in my room.
saturday looked a little brighter, though smelled a little duller because of the cold that somehow sprung up then, whether because of the traveling or because of the unwise sleeping arrangements. i participated in crusade’s one-day ‘retreat’ where we planned what the quarter was going to look like. crusade planning meetings were to take up the bulk of the next week for some reason, and sunday, monday, and wednesday nights were thus occupied.
eventually i was able to get my boxes from kingscote, sammy, and the millers as they trickled in at various times and in various quantities. their arrival was coordinated with that of my drawmates, who began to arrive on sunday and were rounded out on tuesday with dave guo. those few days were filled with unpacking, getting things organized, choosing classes, and crusade stuff. from that point things have been a little blurry, and probably a lot more uninteresting to relate. basically i’ve embarked on a seriously hard quarter and between schoolwork, getting our apartment ready, playing a rocking show last thursday, and whatever else, i haven’t had time to do much of anything fun. sad, yes.
the pace seems to continue unabated, and i’m sitting here writing only because i’m waiting for my laundry to finish drying so i can go to bed, and i’m too brain-fried to continue reading “ontic decisions”, by willard quine. i really want to quote a paragraph of that text, just so you can see what an impossibility it is to actually do anything remotely considered reading to these words. better words would be parsing, translating, or deciphering. as you can imagine, 40 pages of deciphering is an amazingly daunting task, though our professor seems to conflate that with the commonplace notion of “reading”. sigh.
still, it has been fun to start classes at the graduate level and at least feel like i am not the least comprehending one in the group.
well, it seems i’ve run out of things to say. oh yeah, i turned 20. that was fun. and guess what? i actually got a birthday present from friends here! you know what it was? a GUN! a paintball gun. that’s right. i’m so excited. i can’t wait to shoot stuff with paint. “go go go!” “fire in the hole!” “you take the point” “affirmative” “get outta there she’s gonna blow!”
that should round it out. speaking of round, i missed my favorite live band tonight because i had responsibilities at crusade to lead worship. sorry, my spacecoaster! commitments come before shows, though i’d naturally cast it the reverse. i do try.
autumn quarter 2002: here goes nothing, with all the love and fury i can muster. lord help me!
virtual disc on spin: my spacecoaster | heartstrings
