oneeyedmonsterr

“Is this how Marilyn Monroe felt?”

‘Kind of Perfect’ - Armor for Sleep.

Stumbling across my old mp3’s that I dished a long, long time ago locked away in a little folder of old memories, I fell across this blithe little song. Actually more like a reminder of my old fragile self. I don’t recall who this song was for, just remember the old faint meloncholy that stained my heart as I listened to this song. Does anyone else remember the sadness of youth? — even the lack of direction, uncertainty, and thus the all-too-familiar pangs of sorrow that was an old friend that visited me constantly.

Emo is a state of being I no longer find myself in but a state that I often-times visit infrequently out of obligatory nostalgia or for old pete’s sake, like that friend you lost contact with and no longer have much in common with. You begrudgingly hold on, your attachment becoming weaker and fainter as you go on with the hope of each new day. You occasionally visit Emo through the whirl of an old song rediscovered, before you switch to something new and upbeat, or a helpless character from a film moving in slow motion, before you switch channels. You still talk on occasion from time to time, but sometimes it gets awkward and forced, because you know you outgrew him. Emo is that friend that tells you that you sold out and look unrecognizable at times, and you can’t help but feel that pang of guilt and obligation. 

I would never listen to a song like this again. How times change people. How God changes and frees people.

Today, the man sitting next to me at a restaurant came up to me and told me I looked exactly like a dancer he danced with at a company. He almost refused to leave me alone and couldn’t stop smiling and asked me if I knew her.

Last night, my friend and I sat at Saxby’s coffee shop. We sat next to the warm glow of an Odwalla vending machine, which cast a surreal, Edward Hopper-like overtone of neon shadows that hit our faces. She sipped her hazelnut frappuccino, while I dug whipped cream out of mine with my straw and used it as a flying saucer that muddied my lips. I’m not sure how much time had passed, but in that time, we talked about her struggles at home with her mom, the effectiveness and power of prayer, the accessibility of God, and our small group sisterhood. It was an outpouring of all the things I wanted to impart into her life, despite how imperfect and confused mine seemed at times. It was the only thing I knew to do, staring into her questioning face as she sought answers. “The least you can do is pray, and keep praying, because God honors persistent faith and obedience.”

Suddenly, I noticed a girl with an auburn pixie cut, wearing a pseudo-peasant skirt and stockings, stand up with her stuff and slowly walk over to us. Our conversation stopped mid-sentence as we froze. I was a little scared of what she would say next. “I don’t mean to be eavesdropping,” the girl said - as her mouth opened to a benevolent grin. “But I happen to come to this coffee shop a lot and hear conversations around me all the time, but I have never heard one like yours. I have never heard two friends lift each other up and encourage each other from the Gospel like you just did, and I just want to tell you how encouraged I am!” We were at a loss for words - stricken with shyness, even flattery. “Keep it up!” My smile became uncontrollable, as it spread widely and clumsily across my face. I couldn’t help but mutter “thank you” to her several times, save for looking back at my friend for an explanation.

The girl thanked us again and left the coffee shop. I had never felt so encouraged by another girl’s feeling encouraged by what I was saying. Usually, I keep my advice and encouragement small and intimate - my sister, best friends, and my youth group students on sparing occasions. I could not stop smiling for the rest of the night. Sometimes, it’s really nice to know that your beliefs inspired a complete stranger - even if it’s not so much a person of authority, a missionary, pastor, or church leader. It’s easy to fall through the cracks and feel like you have very little purpose in furthering God’s kingdom. Maybe it’s the fact that you’re not trained and have another vocation, and you’re swimming through the humdrum of daily living, career building, and scrutinizing things most people in their mid-twenties scrutinize about.

But sometimes, it’s nice to know that your words touched another human being while she sat writing a thesis paper and randomly was reminded of God and how He can still be glorified over whipped cream and caffeine.

Basically, this is the handbook to my personality and how to communicate with me:

Do: talk about me/my goals/stimulating opinions, be warm and friendly, relate, be solid/tangible/straightforward, take your time and be persistent.

Don’t: drive on facts or figures, be dictatorial, “stick to the agenda”, kid around too much, talk down, legislate, be flimsy/unreliable, or haphazard. ..So very insightful.

“Toy Story,” for example, took four years to make while Pixar struggled, yet Mr. Jobs never let up on his colleagues. “‘You need a lot more than vision — you need a stubbornness, tenacity, belief and patience to stay the course,” said Edwin Catmull, a computer scientist and a co-founder of Pixar. “In Steve’s case, he pushes right to the edge, to try to make the next big step forward.

Coming on the scene just as computing began to move beyond the walls of research laboratories and corporations in the 1970s, Mr. Jobs saw that computing was becoming personal — that it could do more than crunch numbers and solve scientific and business problems — and that it could even be a force for social and economic change. And at a time when hobbyist computers were boxy wooden affairs with metal chassis, he designed the Apple II as a sleek, low-slung plastic package intended for the den or the kitchen. He was offering not just products but a digital lifestyle.

He put much stock in the notion of “taste,” a word he used frequently. It was a sensibility that shone in products that looked like works of art and delighted users. Great products, he said, were a triumph of taste, of “trying to expose yourself to the best things humans have done and then trying to bring those things into what you are doing.

Regis McKenna, a longtime Silicon Valley marketing executive to whom Mr. Jobs turned in the late 1970s to help shape the Apple brand, said Mr. Jobs’s genius lay in his ability to simplify complex, highly engineered products, “to strip away the excess layers of business, design and innovation until only the simple, elegant reality remained.”

- NYTimes, John Markhoff, Oct. 5, 2011