Empty 2.

I've written a bit more of that story I started mid-late last year. Here's the link to the earlier bit: http://modnarama.blogspot.com.au/2012/09/empty.html Sorry it's taken me so long to post up some more. Only actually gone back to it twice; so I've got two sections here, one from today and one from a bit before.

And you feel it. If people don't know me, when they try to come and share with me, as soon as they touch they recoil - as if I've got some sort of disease that they could catch. And the thing is, it's kind of a big thing in society if you avoid contact with people. Because it means you don't want to share with them, don't want to be with them, you want to keep everything to yourself. You get a couple like that, but they don't get very far. 

But everyone stays away from me. They don't even try to hide it any more. I have no family. No friends. I'm a hermit by force rather than choice. I don't want to live like this. This isn't . . . life. It's not really living. It's just a half-life, a shadow of one. A shadow of a life is barely a life at all. A footprint on a beach, an echo in a seashell.
  

Perhaps you don't quite get it. Try this image. Have you ever played with water droplets before? They're quite incredible, actually. The surface tension holding each droplet together gives it some interesting properties. For example, if they get to just within touching distance.... shloop! They clump together. Clump is a bad word, because it's a liquid, but you know. Water droplets love each other, that's the point. But you put an oil droplet in.... the water droplets don't want to know. They leave that little oil droplet all by itself. 

OK, so maybe you didn't play with water and oil when you were a kid, but you get the point. Water and oil don't mix, and I'm the little oil droplet. Or maybe think of it this way: it's like being mute. And deaf. Nothing comes in, nothing comes out. But you get to see everyone else communicating perfectly fine, and being happy, and loving each other, and... yeah, you get it. 

It's not that I can't communicate. Obviously I can. But it's a thing. Think of it like shouting all the time, instead of just talking. Now it's talking instead of touching. You still talk, but only when you need to communicate far away or to lots of people at once. It's considered somewhat rude to use if the situation doesn't actually need it. Some people, if they really concentrate, can actually almost completely eliminate the need to talk at all - they can project their thoughts, when they really focus. It's a pretty rare talent, but those who have it really don't talk at all. Of course, it is then difficult to tell then if they're actually able to speak or are just mute. I've considered stepping on a couple of toes to ascertain just that, now and then. 

It wouldn't be so bad if people tried to make it easier for me. Actually talked to me now and then. But they don't. By and large, I live in a silent world. And since nobody talks to me, I tend not to talk very much either. Just a word or two now and then, to make sure I haven't gone mute as well.

Cars, pianos and rocks.

So, a lot of stuff has been happening lately.

This whole week I've had to go into TAFE, because that's a part of my traineeship. For this week, I had to go up to Lithgow, which is about two and a half hours away - up and down and up a mountain. Pretty winding, steep and dangerous road. Most of the guys decided to camp up there, save the trips and such. I needed to come back on the Monday and Thursday nights, for stuff I was involved in.
On the way back on the Monday, it was raining pretty hard. So the road was quite wet and slippery. Couple that with steep downhill, and a tight curve.... thankfully, I wasn't hurt, and the car didn't get much damage. I just went slightly off the road, and thankfully not into the other side, where the thick cement barrier was. And, I could drive away from it, which was good. But yeah, that's the first time that's ever happened. Hopefully the last.
Then when I went in on the Tuesday, the car broke down. Badly. It had to go to the service station, and they're saying it will take about a week and a heck of a lot of dough to fix. Which is....annoying. I'm thinking I may be using a lot more public transport than car these days. I'm just not liking cars, and cars aren't liking me.

On the Tuesday night, we went out to the local bar/hotel/thing there. And they had a piano. And not just a piano, but a grand piano. And not just a grand, but a one hundred year old grand. I was...possibly drooling. OK, not quite, but close to it.
And I got to play it!
It was pretty out of tune, I must admit. Had to avoid certain notes. But, I got to play Piano Man, Hallelujah, and Angel in the Alleyway on it before the customers started to say it was too loud. But it was pretty cool :D

Then we had TAFE. And just outside our classroom, we had rock climbing walls. Rock climbing walls. We didn't get to really harness up for them, so we had to stay below a certain point. So what we did was went across them - it's apparently called bouldering or something. But it was pretty cool.
Apart from that, this week was pretty much an intro to all the stuff we were doing this year. All looking pretty cool, though time is something it looks like I'm going to be quite short on. But I expected that anyway.

So yeah, big week. Didn't bring all the stuff I needed for everything, so that made it difficult too. Managed to make it work, but it was more difficult than it could have been. Had some fantastic views too. :)

Live Loving.

Sorry that its taken me so long to do this. Work has kept me really busy, and now our Internet has been down. But this is the final one in my series that I started near the end of last year, on what we consider to be most important, or central.

If you can remember; I've considered wisdom, touched on happiness, investigated individual independence, and looked at trust, integrity and honesty. Each of them had their various positives and negatives from my point of view, and none were necessarily wrong or right. However, I would like to put forward my own ideas, as I am rather wont to do.

A couple of weeks ago, a very good friend of mine did a short talk for communion. In it, he mentioned how he had been looking for something to put on a Kung Fu Teacher's Patch; that is, he would have that patch on his uniform, then whoever he taught would get the same patch. He came up with these two words: Die Fighting. They were quite apt, and suited him to a tee. He then linked that into Jesus' frame of mind with the cross, which is how Kung Fu crept into a communion talk.

But that got me thinking inversely, as these things can do. And I came up with two words of my own, which I think both oppose and pair nicely (though the latter is a point for another post) with the previous: Live Loving.

To those who have been fairly regular readers if the blog, those two words probably aren't particularly surprising. But I think they're quite profound. Keep in mind, this is within the context of that which is most important to someone; central. It's not just saying that we're going to be loving. Or that love is a good thing to show or have now and then. But to actually *live loving*.

I'm certainly not the best example of that. If that's what you're looking for, try Jesus. You'll find him in the four gospels; I like John particularly. But that's the ideal that I always strive for. That I constantly remind myself of. I'd almost call it my measuring stick of sorts - my plumb line, to know when I've deviated a little to the right or the left.

I even reckon that, if you really know and understand what Live Loving means - and practice it fully - that you can never be in opposition to God, because he is love. But, of course, we never can, because of our imperfections. I still find it a good idea to remember, however.