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This is Caleb, Lindsey dropping me off at the airport last week. I almost decided to take little Jonas with me onto the plane, then thought better of it. :)
I ended up coming back a bit early, but it was the best timing. I don't think I would ever be ready to to leave no matter how long I staid. A todos mis amigos en Santiago de Compostela, erais como mi familia. Buena suerte y hasta luego. Me echo de menos sin vosotros. Escribed me!

I'm spending a week or so with my parents, and then I'll be heading to Austin to start looking for a job.

Overcome

Avda. Rodríguez de Virgen 12, 4º A

Beautiful drowning

This beautiful drowning

This holy water

This holy water, is in my lungs

And I am overcome

I am overcome, yeah

Heh, i, heh, i, heh, I am overcome

I am overcome lord

-"OverCome"; Collective Soul

Some times words aren't enough. Some things fade away in the broad daylight. Some days, nothing happens and it changes your life. Some people aren't all that special, but you never forget them. I think me and my words are gonna stay inside today, and we'll talk about things that really matter.

Things to Come

I've almost finished my photo exhibit. I know many of you out there didn't really think I was going to finish it, myself included at times, but not so! I've got a window of a few days between when all my friends come back from Holy Week and before Caleb and Lindsey move to Barcelona to have my opening. I want to finish making the prints before that week just in case there are any unforeseen problems. Everything is translated and nearly everything is arranged the way I want it. Just a few more adjustments and I'll take everything down to the impression shop. Two days later, I should have all of my final prints ready for display!

I haven't decided whether or not to post the images I use. I want to keep it all professional... or something. But we'll see what I can do. (Doug, this is where you offer to help!)

I just thought I would give you fair warning. I picked up another Kierkegaard book this week: Sickness unto Death. Now doesn't that sound nice and rosy? :)

This is the fire station across the street from where I live. It's small and attached to the much larger bus station.

This morning, starting at about 8:30, I was awakened by a series of excessively loud explosions. Now, I have become acustomed to the usual testing of sirens and such through out the day so that I don't even notice usually. But explosions are something quite different. I scramble out of bed and pull back the curtains to reveal...

...that the fire fighters are setting off huge bottle rockets in the parking lot!

I've spent most of the day in the apartment doing some work so I've had an opportunity to observe them all day. From time to time, a small group of them will walk out into the parking lot and fire a few of them off. But get this, they aren't using bottles as the name would imply. They are holding on to the stick with one hand while they light the fuse with the other, allowing it to take off from their hand! And these guys' are fire fighters!

Stupid Mouth

The main problem with my mouth is that I tend to open it. It doesn’t like to follow orders.

I’m having a Bart-is-incompetent week. Spanish is a readily available illustration of this. I’ve got all of these rules and conjugations sitting around in my head, but you wouldn’t know it because no one has ever heard anything come from my mouth that would give evidence that they exist.

There is a definite disconnect between the head and the heart. I know a lot of things, but that doesn’t necessarily mean much. I know that E = mc2, and I know the basic physics theory behind how a nuclear bomb detonates, but that doesn’t mean that I have the slightest idea about how to go about making one. (I’ll bet that one makes a hit on the FBI search engines.) I know a lot about Alexander the Great, but there is absolutely zero possibility that I will ever know him. I know a lot about what it is to be a good person, but that doesn’t mean that I know how to be one.

Frustration is a potent teacher. It doesn’t matter how much any of us know, we are all ultimately incompetent people. And no matter how independent any of us are, we’re all social creatures, designed to need others. To be honest, I hate this. It’s a seemingly bad combination: being invalid and connected at the hip to other invalids. I wish I had either one or the other; either competency or independence.

But I understand the reason why we’re made like this, and I appreciate the beauty and simplicity of it. Knowledge is a foreign language to my heart and it doesn’t understand one word of it. Love, joy, hate and frustration… now those are words in the heart language. They give evidence to the fact that my heart in engaged in a conversation, a very important conversation that has been going on all of my life. In fact this conversation is the reason for life: that I hear, learn to listen, and maybe finally come to understand in my heart this conversation in which Jesus is speaking in words that my heart can understand to show me who He is.

Everything hinges on this. Life isn’t about my frustrations and joys. Life is about taking part in this conversation. Maybe I do hate that I’m never going to be able to speak any more eloquently than an idiot. Maybe I do hate the way I’m made. Maybe I should. Maybe it’s ok, because it drives me to listen; it reminds me about what’s really important, about the whole point of life.