No Wonder I Never Sleep

I stay up too late getting my mind blown by things like this and enjoying it nearly as much as this guy.

Chant

||: Dew drops drip down, down into the dark :||

||: The bees buzz, buzz, buzz, buzz around my brain :||

||: Whish, goes the wind as it whisps around the bend :||

The world grew dark, and dark, and dark

on command of the enveloping twilight.

Lengthening shadows chased me well,

trying to touch me whilst in my flight.

The noise grows louder, a messy crescendo

growing heavy on my eardrum, lead

slowly settling onto my brain

as each thought vied for attention inside my head.

I turn up the radio, hoping, pleading

that it would quell the images, vivid;

my heart broken, blood and love spilling out.

Those things that made me livid:

Pain, and incompetence, terror, and apathy.

Serpents hissing behind self-made shields

of grass and fig leaves. “Where is your brother?”

“I left him in the fields.”

My heart aches in cowardice,

restrained by fear, and ambition,

growing colder and musty,

rank in its own detention.

That’s why I spill it. I want to know it’s still warm,

still wet, still beating.

“Teach me how to love!”

My cries become pleading.

The gregorian chant drones upward

from the engine, hot metal.

And despair closes in, hot and sticky;

I sink my shaking foot straight into the pedal.

The world is dark, and dark, and dark

by command of my twilight.

My shadows chase me well,

reaching out through my flight.

And in my despair, I finally remembered

that I am a human, susceptible to stings,

and wind, and water, life and death,

and the blessing of dreams.

I’m so small, and so not in control,

my car groaning against the force of my will.

There’s something bigger happening here.

There has to be.

A Little Weak-Kneed

‎These saints greet relief from their sufferings, when wrongs have been righted, with deep emotion....These saints are not stoic but are robust and authentic in expressing their emotions. It is a sign of their strength, not weakness. ~Bruce Waltke, on the reunion of Joseph and his father in Egypt

Because anything that presses you into the Lord will take you into the refuge of His strength.

I Like Studying Music, Part III

I Like Studying Music, Part II

I Like Studying Music

Too bad I'm a music major.

Well, maybe it's better said that too bad I'm a music education major with an emphasis in secondary instrumental education...in Texas. Which means I spend my time studying ensemble (band) techniques, budgets, marching band, and marching band.

I will post soon as to why I think marching band (at least marching band in the sense that Texas observes it) is leeching away the already osteoporotic music education system. But for now, I have the threat of test to battle over classroom management (sorry; I meant band hall management, which isn't a bad thing, but it's not the Bartok quartets I've been trying to get at for a year now).

Summer, come, but juries, stay away.