KGBlog

well i'm writing from just outside of el paso texas...basically its mexico. i've only got a few minutes on a welcome center computer so this'll be a quick update. pictures will have to wait for another. we started this roadtrip thing out with a 24 fourth season marathon in monroe. 8am till 3am the next morning. then off to dallas to visit with wake folks. good times. then to hueco tanks (the biggest bouldering area in the us) which is just outside of el paso. now we're on our way to santa fe. that city just makes me think jack kelly. newsies reference there if you missed it. from there to the canyon. woohoo. cant wait for that. sorry to be rushed but i promise pictures are on the way along with a photo novel. ok maybe not. peace out, k&j

ps: west tex should be the landfill of the united states

Posted in: on Sunday, May 28, 2006 at at 3:18 PM 3 comments  

tomorrow (5-22-06) i will drive what should be the longest day drive of the summer. starting in winston i will be meeting james at his house in monroe LA and we will proceed west within the week. looking forward to crawfish, the norris fam, and this thing really getting started. the link is the mapquest of my route...maybe i'll keep those coming so you can follow along with us visually.
also fyi, ideally posts will come once a week-ish throughout. one post with our path and event details and such, along with any typical posts that would have ocurred from my usual meandering thoughts. (for those tuning in late...see the "bip" post to be enlightened as to what i'm rambling on about.)

in todays post you get the map of the first leg (above). also, you get my thoughts on road trip budgets. they are interesting. a week ago i finished working for the year. my budget imediately switched to road trip mode. i try not to buy anything anymore. food has come to me from various families, wedding festivities(of which i was a part), and friends. every tank of gas is precious to me. it's amusing but until we really get things underway i feel like every purchase is detrimental to the tail end of this adventure. were there a job waiting at the tail i might not feel so...but as there is not at present i cannot help but feel that what we are doing is a bit rediculous. so, yes mom and dad i know what youre probably thinking, but it' s happening and i'm going to be ok. dont worry about us. this is not wasting our lives or anything like that. its being stretched. seeing something new. receiving a new perspective on things. a larger one. finding out a little more that its not all about us. that the world is in fact apparently large. it's about a lot of other things too i think. but it's mostly about god teaching us something if we're willing to put ourselves in his hands. i dont think i'm usually willing to...but with something like this i'm hoping he can get through my fear. as "bip" sugests i feel that my senses have become dulled. i brush against time not recognizing the beauty around me. occasional brushes with the painful side of life have taught me to avoid contact with the world. but that is not gods way. he suggests that we seek out beauty and truth. in the past i lived for these things. i want to get back to that.

two comments to close:
a good friend once noted that i was putting myself into situations that were necesarily going to cause pain. that i should avoid those and seek out ones that would produce joy instead. david gray sings, "It takes a lotta love/ It takes a lotta love my friend/ To keep your heart from freezing/ To push on till the end". without too much detail i feel that those situations were mostly unavoidable but have indeed cooled my heart and passion for life to some degree. i want to put myself in a long thaw. surround myself with life and beauty so that i cannot avoid it. granted that can be done anywhere but what the hey might as well be on a road trip.

ps: i keep speaking of "we", james and myself...so far these have been all my thoughts...so i promise to include his idea of what this trip is soon. or anything else he has to say to the two of you out there reading this.

Posted in: on Sunday, May 21, 2006 at at 7:03 PM 4 comments  

i had a good conversation with my mom the other day about worldviews. christians, it seems, tend to fall into incredibly....poor...worldviews. we speak of winning souls, converting peoples, reaching the lost, of "them" and "us". is it just me or do these ideas seem offensive, insensitive, and incredibly not inviting to anyone who would be labeled as a "them". as if they are a game to be won, a soul we are changing, a heathen that we are taming. who wants that kind of help from a religion responsible, historically, for massacres, hypocrisy, infecting governments, abusing women, molesting children, and various other miserable actions. granted thats just the bad side, but if we, as christ followers, expect people to believe we have all the answers, then we are missing something. we arent supposed to have all the answers. we dont have all the answers. i guess thats where i'm going with this. no one has all the answers. it is not "us" and "them". it is "we". i believe we are all on the same journey. all at a different point on the path. some further in understanding what its "all about" and others just starting or not even knowing that the faint unrest within is a god whispering their name gently across the cosmos. "we" are on a journey. we interact with people who are all over the spectrum on this journey but we can all learn from each other. everyone understands something better than i, and i'll have more insight into some random thing than every person i run across. that is the point in sharing our lives. we help each other. if, as a christian, i think that people with other religious beliefs or lifestyles or worldviews have nothing to offer then i have missed it. we are not winning anything over the "others", we are sharing a journey with all people. we are all on the same side deep down. that faint whisper through the cosmos calls each name. he loves us all. he is relentless. he will not weary of our turning from him...all of us. so, i say we speak to this whole worldwide comunity when we speak. the truth is for us all and loves us all and will stop at nothing to prove this to each one of us. the truth does not seek out "us" and not "them". the truth will speak into every heart words of love, reminding us that love is what we were made for. "we" are on a journey and i for one aint gonna act like i have it any more figured out than some heathen who lives in the jungle somewhere and prays to his mud hut. just because i think i know Who its all about doesnt mean i get to change people. Truth works in his own time. Love is not on my schedule...and He knows how to love better than we can begin to try to. it is His purpose and pleasure to do all of the changing, wooing, winning. and it is not to "them", it is to all of us. haha...little bit of a rant...sorry.

Posted in: on Thursday, May 18, 2006 at at 11:48 PM 4 comments  

i've been out of college for a year and yet i still for some reason have a summer. therefore i, along with james norris, am embarking on an adventure. most of you reading this are aware of our planned cross country journey. for all who are interested in following our trip i will be posting as much as our meandering path allows me access to the internet. we are headed west for over a month to see the highlights and such. grand canyon, friends in la, and only a couple of other definite stops. that leaves a lot of room for who knows what. which is what we want. in the words of donald miller (he wrote blue like jazz, read it if you havent) who also took a similar trip, "we are shaped by our experiences. our perception of joy, fear, pain, and beauty are sharpened or dulled by the way we rub against time. my senses have become dull and this trip is an effort to sharpen them." james and i have had a couple of overarching themes over the past year of our friendship. at the end of last year we were inspired by an old song, Everybody's Free To Wear Sunscreen, performed by Baz Luhrmann using the words of Mary Schmich. a line in it recommends that we do something each day that frightens us. we also took a trip to athens ga earlier this year as a sort of preview to long car rides. 4 hours down, 2 hours there for a friends birthday party, 4 hours back. it was amazing. over half way there we looked at one another and summed up, "this was a stupid decision, but clearly the right one." so we leave in a week and a half to sharpen our senses, aiming to conquer fears and make the right dumb choices (in the safest and best sense possible). i'm sure that this will provide for some interesting blogging if nothing else but i'm willing to wager it will be a summer not soon forgotten. (and we have both elizabethtown soundtracks so we're set for road trip music to fit any mood)

Posted in: on Sunday, May 14, 2006 at at 12:01 AM 3 comments  

for those who dont know, the blue screen of death refers to the blue screen your computer makes when its about to die. it may be four or five blue screens after this restart, but its coming so get ready. my computer died nearly two months ago. two short weeks later my ipod died. neither has come back to life yet. a week ago my cd player died and i realized my camera's battery was in fayetteville and i wouldnt get it back till this weekend. i have been struck with an electronic plague but i am actually surviving. it is much less painful then when i returned from guatemala last year with montezuma's revenge and lived on the couch for three days. after my fever broke my temperature was 104. (quick shout out to quail, my one friend who actually took care of me durring that quagmire of misery.) anyway, electronic failure is not as painful as montezuma. i dont get to watch dvd's to put me to sleep. i dont get to have background music everywhere i go. i dont get to snap pictures of every random moment. i sometimes have to listen to the radio in the car or nothing at all. it hasnt caused any rashes or painful welts. i'm surprised. i, like most amreicans i know under the age of thirty, would have claimed that these were actually parts of my body. that their removal could have been likened to an amputation. false. fortunately, it wasnt like amputation. it was like pulling out earplugs. everything in the actual world seemed to come in a little more clearly. no static to people talking to me. nothing to drown out the perfect blue sky. no picture to steal the soul of my gelato. just life before the invention of whatever all this stuff is. i enjoy it. most of the time. i still miss the stuff. but i think its good to remember the quiet of things when it is simple. to remember that none of the comercials are telling the truth. we dont really need to buy any of it. god gives us what we need. it doesnt matter what "they" say. we have all we need. we are enough just as we are. you are amazing without the stuff. life in the stillness is good. we're just not used to it. try it. just stop. put down your stuff. just be. love your family, love your friends, love your neighbor, love the nature god has given us, love silence, love honesty, love courage, love truth, love challenges, love art, love simplicity, love not having all the answers, love empty hands, love god, love creation and love creating, love cool mornings, love warm evenings, love rain in the summer when it comes down so hard you can swim in the little streams on the side of streets in your neighborhood, or when the hills turn into mudslides, love being barefoot in a field with a blanket and a guitar and a book and a frisbee and a friend or two and knowing that any of these options is a good option and that the field will still be there tomorrow and that you can come back with the book and the crazy creek if you choose the frisbee, love sneezing, love learning, love that you have people willing to teach you, love asking questions, love laughing at yourself, love storms, love the smell before the rain, love the smell of fires, love apple juice, love life, love life.

Posted in: on Saturday, May 13, 2006 at at 1:44 AM 0 comments  

cho (note the link on right) blogged about this like 2 weeks ago and i completely missed it. so, i'm slow on my pop culture. anyway, went to MI:3 a couple nights ago. it was good so check it out. but this is about the pre-movie commercials. usually i hate them. love previews, hate commercials. but, Wes Anderson made a hilarious AMEX commercial and its on the tube. check it out.

Posted in: on Tuesday, May 09, 2006 at at 4:13 PM 0 comments  

check out lily allen. she's fun. or interesting at least. i really like knock 'em out. you can download some here!

“I’d like to do 3 albums, get married and f** off to the countryside...” -lily

Posted in: on at at 12:03 PM 0 comments  

sunsets are beautiful. if that were it i would thank god for them. but not for that reason, nor for the beauty of anything in nature will i claim a god exists. i do not know him from his creation. i know him merely because he makes himself known to me. having said that, he does make pretty things. and we can see in them something about god if we are aware of him already. nature's beauty, without a knowledge of god, will only bring worship upon itself. i love the illustration that sunsets can be. the sun itself is too bright to be really seen. it hurts us to look directly at it. i watched a sunset from pilot mtn this semester. as the sun sank toward the horizon it began to drench the hills below it in a golden light. ups and downs, small hills and valleys were illuminated where before it seemed was only a jaggen horizon. as the light from the sun came to earth it brought out more and more beauty in whatever it touched. things became clearer and visible as the light from the sun reflected from them. they could be seen for what they truly were, shadow and darkness did not cover anything from sight. i got a few things (and bear with me, my connections may differ from yours...you may see equally valid things in a sunset...but on this occasion this is what i saw). god is too bright for our mortal eyes to look on. there's even something about that in the old testament. we can see his beauty most in the way his light/love enters our world. it makes whatever it touches light up more beautifully than it could ever hope to be on its own. if this is people then they become filled with love, they reflect what he is and become more beautiful themselves in the process. their hills and valleys, ups and downs are iluminated like a human horizon bathed in gods golden light.

Posted in: on Friday, May 05, 2006 at at 5:11 PM 0 comments  

phil wickam's divine romance...check him out at www.philwickham.com
you can listen to a few of his songs on myspace, unfortunately not the song of the week pick. it is on itunes though.

Posted in: on at at 11:54 AM 0 comments  

Sarah Lisson's dog, tony, is on the web!

Posted in: on Monday, May 01, 2006 at at 1:39 PM 0 comments  

ok, so my friend has a clothing company called east coast wear. dont laugh we think they tried to pick out the worst pictures they took.

Posted in: on at at 11:11 AM 0 comments  

apparently when you get engaged on facebook people still sometimes take it seriously. oops, but amusing nonetheless. several people in the past week noticed my faux-engagement and congratulated me on the impending attachment. i found this amusing as the stated faux-engagement has been in existence for several months now. why last week did it come to the forefront of attention on my profile? why did it sit all winter, when cold kept people inside at their computers, idly collectiong virtual dust only to be windexed for display on screen durring one of the warmest, sunniest, you should be outside not looking at facebook weeks of the year? i dont know and i dont care. in fact i could probably get some wedding gifts out of it if i play my cards right.

Posted in: on at at 11:02 AM 0 comments