"His love is like a drop in the ocean..." This morning I found myself standing outside watching the sun continue its rise over the land and the reflection it brought down upon the water. It was about 7:30, a few minutes earlier than I usually wake up; in the near distant a gray cloud had begun to move out from the land and towards the horizon. As I stood there, leaning against the house, captivated by the beauty of the morning, I began to ask myself questions. "Why," I thought, "With beauty like this just outside my window, do I make it so hard to open up to God?" I closed my eyes.

Moments later the wind began to blow, and the gray cloud started back towards the house. Soon rain began to fall and the sun all but dissapeared. I made my way into the house and closed the door to my room; my Bible opened to Ecclesiasties when I picked it up. The rain moved in and the wind blew it up onto the porch and the windows. I continued to read but my thoughts were busy still investigating my soul.

A few minutes passed; I took a shower and when I emerged the rain had moved on and the sun was shining brighter than it had yet for the day, something it is still doing outside my window right now. God is bigger than anything I will ever fathom. I'm starting to understand that now, and it gives me drive. It is that that also allows me to feel justified towards writing this down and sharing it with you.   ¶ 6/29/2005 09:51:00 AM 1 comments

  my life is one big semicolon.

I did some reading over the weekend from my new favorite website. Wikipedia. Check it out. Fix what's wrong. Learn something new. It's all so cool. From there I found links to some great Peace Corps sites; a website devoted to blogs and stories from the field, Thirdgoal.com, which led me to this picture and also to a blog from a man who had recently (4 mos. ago) been deployed to Haiti. He's now back home as last week the Peace Corps pulled out all their staff from the country amid rising safety concerns, but since that is potentially a place I could be sent it made me very interested to see what he said. I think I'm going to write him this week, although I doubt now with the pullout I will be assigned there; but you never know. He was only able to serve four months, but to read about how it affected him was very moving. I don't know what is in store for me, and I'd lie to say I'm not nervous and even scared; I'm also ready, and I'm also happy. It seems like so far away but my time will be here sooner than I can realize. As with everything, I tend to mute my excitedness. But it's there; everything I could or should possible be feeling is there. Trust me.

  ¶ 6/27/2005 09:39:00 AM 1 comments

  There are some things that I would change if it were up to me I've been down here on the island now for nearly three weeks. In some regards I've got a lot accomplished, I even managed to score myself a summer internship. Of course that was over a week ago and I have not heard anything back. Here's the situation: I went in and talked to a man, THE man, in the government, and he told me tha by Friday of that week he'd get back and offer me something. He did, called and sent an e-mail describing what he will offer me and even how much he will pay me (down to the cent). He passed it off to his deputy who, he said, would contact me early next week. That was last week, and Monday being a holiday I gave them until Wednesday. Nothing. I e-mailed back. Nothing. That week ended, this one began. I called. Still, nothing. Thus is island life, I suppose, and nothing gets done right away by ANYONE, from Governour to waiter. I'm not going to give up, although the ball has been in their court now for well over a week and I have tried to contact at least thrice for further instructions. I know it will work out, it has to; they've strung me along too far (and otherwise I'm screwed). Eh, it's all good, just as long as I get my internship hours done by August. Or, at the very least I guess, December.

So since I haven't been called in yet, I've turned to watching WGN Superstation in the mornings here. I know, TV on an island paradise, sacrilege. But I have been (except today) watching my two of my favorite shows, Rockford Files and Magnum, pi. First off Rockford is just the coolest cat to ever grace the television in my opinion, cooler even than McGarrett, which is saying something coming from a 5-0 fanatic such as me. But as I watch Magnum I just can't help but imagine what if that's how island life was. Screw the easy-going Jimmy Buffett songs, I want the the cars, the guns, the girls, the toys and the freedom to come and go while shacking up on some rich man's island plantation with a frustrating but lovable portly British man to keep my actions in check. I want the funky Mike Post score and the sunny beach locales, all within the confines of an America long gone.

I just knew I should have joined the Navy SEALS. I also should have been born twenty years earlier. Peace yo.

ADDENDUM: anyways I wrote that around 10:30 this morning. Around noon I received an e-mail, I'll be starting my internship on 5 July, a week from next Tuesday. Now all I need is a red Ferrari and a bushy mustache.  ¶ 6/22/2005 11:04:00 AM 7 comments

  Father of the Son I’ve never been on a trip. Just never been into trying those drug things. I find enough things in this world while sober to blow my mind. But that’s neither here nor there. However that being the case, perhaps one of the closest to a trip I’ve been came this afternoon as I lay back underneath a warm gray sky, the sounds of waves crashing into the shore in the background, and filled my ears with Brian Wilson’s SMiLE. The beauty of it is a bit perplexing; so I just find myself closing my eyes and letting it take over my senses. If you are like me as the music progresses so will your mind, in any multitude of directions, and so that by the time the final track ‘Good Vibrations’ comes around one can’t help but find themselves on another plane of existence, yet still within the limits of their own physical being. It is so, though, as we all should know by now, that our physical attributes really mean nothing; our mental state of mind and our spiritual condition are the reason for our existence.

"Easy my child, it's just enough to believe (I believe, I believe, I believe)

Out of the wild into what you can't conceive

You'll change..."

  ¶ 6/19/2005 07:15:00 PM 7 comments

  Stop the Carnival. (I want to get on?)

I'll let you know from the beginning, this is Draft #2.

This afternoon, having still not heard back from my prospective employer, and having grown bothered beyond belief by the pressurevfrom my grandparents to contact them yet again, I sent another “nagging” email to find out what I should be doing. This was despite my best convictions that I should give them yet another day because, well, it is the islands. I respect my grandparents and how they work through life, I really do, but I do feel in many areas of life they are really out of their element in regards to life down here. Island life is not island vacation life, and it’s not American life. I guess this can be summed up by a quote from Churchill I stumbled upon recently (via Alex Trebek) where the PM said something to the effect that anyone who’s not a liberal when they’re 20 has no heart and if they’re not a conservative by the time they’re 40 they have no brain. So I’m pretty sure it is the youth in me that is saying and feeling all this. It’s just like when my grandfather and I were walking the other day and he said he had assumed that if I were offered a job here after my internship (or anywhere for that matter) that I would take it because the Peace Corps is voluntary. I don’t know why he thinks that, because I can’t see anything from getting in the way of not going in January. For me the Peace Corps is not an excuse not to work, nor is it something I’m doing simply because I don’t know what I want to do for my immediate future; what it is to me is an excuse to serve. That is what I feel I have been led to do with my life in my immediate future.

I know they just want the best for me, and I see us not agreeing on this in the near future, but that’s okay. I love them like I love no other people on Earth, and I know it’s vice versa, and they just want the best for me in my life; and again vice versa. And the thing is they're probably right, having like fifty years more life experience than me; but again, I'm young and more than likely pretty stupid. I know also that my family reads this, but that's just fine.

I had been writing on a story idea I’ve been working on when Grandaddy approached me again about not hearing back yet, but after sending the e-mail I really didn’t have the creative juices to write anymore. So I sat back in my rocking chair and tried just listening to my music and watch the ocean, but I just felt like an old man rocking his life away. So I listened to the youth in me again and walked over to the back wall and jumped over, where I just climbed down and sat on the rocks for a while and turned up my music and just let the waves make everything all right. The rocks felt much better that the comfortable chair, and the ocean seemed more alive than from up on the porch.

So I sat there for a while and calmed myself down. I would like to start working soon, if only to get away from the house during the days. But I know it will happen when it happens. Again, I’m young, and I’m naive. But I think I found a new favorite seat on this Earth of ours.

So how gay am I for, as I was sitting out there on the rock, actually trying to compare aspects of my life to the lyrics of a Lisa Loeb song? On that note, how gay am I for having Lisa Loeb on my mp3 player? Well I’ve said it once and I’ll say it again, it’s her glasses that do it for me. I guess I just need find a girlfriend; then I wouldn’t need this damn blog.

  ¶ 6/16/2005 10:52:00 PM 4 comments

  Happy April 21, two months and four weeks later Well I shouldn't be updating today since it is a holiday (Her Majesty the Queen's Birthday...this joint is closed up) but we've had a storm move in right now so I'm inside uploading pictures. Giddy-yup. Compare the water from Sunday (last) night (blue sky) to a few days ago when Arlene came by (gray sky).

Friday afternoon I heard back from my interview-ish with the government. I will be working here through August as a Student-Assistant with the Department of Emergency Management /National Hurricane Committee down here. I'll start sometime this week, but no idea what I will be doing. They will be paying me, which is nice; who says college doesn't pay off? And...they gave Dude a beeper, but I told them that if a hurricane comes during a league game that, well...

Anyways other than that not much is new. Just reading (Cry, The Beloved Country is a much better book when English teachers don't force you to read it...which I didn't do anyways, I watched the movie with a girl), writing, eating, and playing progressive rummy or dominoes at night. It's been nice, but I guess work will start soon. I have to get back in that zone.


Some of you have expressed interest in coming down here. And leave the beautiful Metroplex? Cater, come on, look around. You have beautiful...concrete...and boarded up gas stations...and bigger & bigger SUV's and fast food joints, as well as all the joys of suburbia that include...well, Kohls! You guys have plenty of Kohls! The closest Kohls here is prob. Miami. So consider yourselves the lucky ones. I'm going to go back outside now.

Hey so my cousin, Kevin, just called from France...that's cool. Forget all the above guys...just leave. Pack it up and leave right now. We're young. We're not supposed to be setting roots.
  ¶ 6/13/2005 11:33:00 AM 9 comments

  A is for Arlene. That's all. Well it's official. We welcome (with fists shaking) the first troipcal storm of the season: Arlene. As it is right now, she is slowly moving over the island outside the house. So far only a few leaky doorways around the back of the house and...oh yeah, they're in the process of putting the roof on still so it started leaking in from everywhere upstairs. A good chunk of the ceiling in my grandparents bedroom fell in last night, and their bed was pretty much drowned. This slow construction is really taking their toll on them, as it is with most people on the island, but here at the house it seems when one thing gets done another two things get screwed up. Just trust me; it's not always hammocks, cold drinks, and paperback novels when you live down here. My family doesn't even keep alcohol at the house; though they may start soon. The Canadians workers are all going home, shoulders shrugged and wallets full. Don't stop the carnival, eh?

Still in the midst of it all we must be so thankful we have a house, a bed, a tv, food, air conditioning. Freedom. Health. Life. So often these get overshadowed by problems and other factors that makeup our daily lives; we must find time constantly to stop and give thanks. All good gifts around us come from heaven above, despite the Wal-Mart price tags on most of them.

More as it comes, just like the rain.  ¶ 6/09/2005 08:41:00 AM 10 comments

  Home for a while
Do, do, do, looking out my back door.

I came down to Cayman last week and arrived amidst beautiful gray skies and thunderstorms. Over the weekend it cleared up a little, although another tropical wave is coming our way which just means more storms and rough waters. Good thing the house is at one of the highest locations on the island.

Anyways I met with my contact down here, a Mr. Donovan Ebanks, who is the Deputy Chief Secretary here in the government. He said he is still interested in finding me something, I just need to give him a few days. So it looks like all will be a go, and I get to stay here for the summer. I can sort of relax now, although I still don't know what I will be doing.

I'm settling into my routine of walking in the morning with my grandfather and playing cards or dominoes at night with the rest of the gang (my grandmother and little sister, who will be here for a few more weeks) so that is nice. I've read a pointless John Grisham book on Sunday just b/c I needed something to distract me from...well, nothing, really. But alot of nothing, and not in the good way. My mind is doing strange things lately, it seems full, but full of nothing, and I can't seem to get a handle on any of it. Something to work on, I guess. One of many things about myself I plan on working on this summer.

The house looks a little different than I remember. But in light of some cicumstances down here, a good nine months post-Ivan, perhaps one shouldn't complain?

That's all for now. Peace.

Oh wait, one more thing. Down here for some reason we get our local news from Detroit and at night we get the CBC. So if anyone needs updates on what's happening in Central Michigan or our great neighbor to the north of Canada, just let me know. I'm your man.  ¶ 6/07/2005 12:05:00 PM 5 comments

  Leaving on a jet plane, don't know when I'll be back again Well tomorrow morning early I head out to Grand Cayman, hopefully to stay for the next three months. Still no "real" answer on the internship, but the way I look at it I haven't been told not to come either. So I guess I'll go and just see what happens. "Tough life this guy has," you think to yourself as you read this.

The past few days have been interesting. It was a long process moving out of my apartment in Denton, but I finally got it done. I turned in my graduation application to the College of Community Service office and then just walked away. Nothing unique, nothing special. I decided today I'm not going to walk across the stage whenever I do get the internship done and have the go-ahead to graduate. I decided along with my family that it's not that big of a deal to us, just as long as I can hold the diploma in my hand. So it looks like I'm done at North Texas, just like that. I don't do goodbyes very well so I'm glad it worked out this way. Just walk away like you'll be back tomorrow; that's proved best for me in the past.

Hurricane season officially began today, and Deep Throat was heard projecting that it is going to be another big one. So wish me luck that it works out in Cayman; not that another hurricane hits there, but that the internship works out. I don't want to come home for a long time.  ¶ 6/01/2005 09:51:00 PM 7 comments