Stream of Consciousness #5: Swallow It

Swallow the sky swallows in the sky look like hammers flying like boomerangs which I never understood, did you? How something could come back to you, how many things have I thrown that will just be coming back in the middle of the night tomorrow and I will have forgotten all about them, I wish you were my boomerang and I know that's already a song lyric but it's a good one and it wasn't fleshed out totally. How many people will I be before I die, I hate thinking about death but it's been unavoidable recently. Talking bout nothing, not thinking bout death, I used to think that line was so mature, so good but even then I didn't think about death, or I had this haughty attitude toward it or something, or maybe I had the perfect attitude, how did I become so fucked up over time, I swear if I could go back to being 16...how did I become so much wiser in some ways but so much more like a scared little kid in other ways? I really don't know and when did this become a trip to the psychologist or me fessing up well I guess it works that way when you spit your thoughts on a page. Page, page, Steven Page, I wish you wouldn't have left BNL, Page and Robertson is a classic like peanut butter and jelly and you guys should be able to be immortal somehow and I wish people would just all love Jesus but why don't they? I wish we could all get along but I know that's foolish but not really it's just foolish to have such a whitewashed idea of peace but is it so hard to believe that it could happen and does Jesus really reach more people's hearts than we think and we're just too caliced to understand that but I guess not because some people really do reject him outright and I sound like a five year old girl but I wish I could dream like one so that's OK. I wish I was a neutron bomb for once I could go off, I wish I was a sacrifice but somehow still lived on, for anyone who reads this know that sometimes I just put in lyrics from random songs and not all of these words are mine, but most of them are, I want to run through the wormhole into the wires, getting your water through a wire like eupghsl whatever that is, it's actually a kind of soap, soap that has water in it, like a jelly-filled doughnut, a shower that comes in solid form, the floodgates open, the rainbow is buried and the color can't be found, the clouds are in the trees and they're too tired to go back up so we push them but they're just depressed man, why do you have to pressure them? I don't know why sometimes I well really all the time need to find something to despair about but maybe it's just some disease and I'll shake it off somehow, that's where it starts, the things that you think are no big deal somehow do seem to be no big deal, but when someone tells you it's no big deal and you get pissed off it becomes a big deal, but it's not your fault if they don't say it nice, and I've already thought about this before I know I know, lamp shades are interesting.

Stream of Consciousness #4: Analog

Keep freaking out like I hit someone with a car which leads me to wonder why do I drive a lethal weapon around everywhere and I keep thinking there's tiny people sleeping in snow piles but I know that's silly but why can't I stop thinking it, maybe I just need to start walking everywhere which would first mean I would need to move someplace where I could do that and still be functional like not the moon. I feel like maybe I'm coming into my own in a whole other way though, but what does that phrase even mean? It implies that what you acheive is something you already have like it's waiting there for you I guess. I don't know, I just want to hang out down here forever in my cave but I want everything to be the same when I get back, which probably is not a very original thought at all but maybe they never I don't know. IDs, keys, monkey rings, encrypted passwords, puzzles that only you know about, everything is codified, my DNA, that's crazy, the world really is written in code, God is totally a programmer, there's two versions of reality, one is in code and one is in analog, but really life is definitely in analog.

Stream of Consciousness #3: The Sponge

I'm like a sponge getting ready to do what sponges do which is burst at least in my mind but that's not what they really do is it, they just absorb some of the stuff that's around them and release some of the stuff they had already absorbed like, yeah, that's probably what I'm like and that's what I'm scared of because I've had so much to say but I've just been holding it in, thinking no I can't go there because then I've got to wade through how I'm feeling, then I've got to keep thinking that I'm not OK but if I can just make it one more day and make the time that I'm not feeling OK into yesterday and not today and I can write about it like it was yesterday and not today then I'll be golden, then I won't have to answer questions like are you OK and I can just be like I went through a time in my life when this and this happened to me but it's all cool now man, it's all cool and they'll be like cool and I won't have to cry on stranger's shoulders and I can be strong like the rugged old mountains, oh the things they've seen, and oh the storms they've endured but now they're cool man, now they got it handled, they're young and old at the same time, there's nothing that can throw them. Well fuck that because I'm sick of letting everything in my mind rot or fly away or whatever that stuff does, gonna start putting the pen to the paper, the finger to the keyboard, the fist to the punching bag. I want to build my own mountain out of these words and make you pretty jealous or something like that but I don't actually want to make you stay jealous I just want to make you think it for a minute and then I'll be like hey man come up my mountain and you won't remember that you were jealous but maybe the fact that you were jealous for just a second will mean something. Dude I really don't want you to be jealous I just want you to hang out on my mountain and not wish you were hanging out on someone else's mountain OK? So is it all cool man? It's all cool man, it was cool cool, it was just all cool, but now it's over for me and no don't say it's over, don't dream it's over, stay forever and a day, that extra day makes all the difference, it really does, that's the day when all the cards are laid out, the day we laugh about what happened and watch the tape sitting around a big old coffee table with m&ms in little bowls.

Steam of Consciousness #2: Oh OK

So much on my mind, so much in the air, why is air invisible, why doesn't it smell, I can't wait to hold something solid, I can't wait until I'm standing in the sun, the sun, why doesn't it seem real when I can't see it, am I really that simple that I could buy a happy light at the store and it would make me happier, I guess that's OK because I'm starting to drop this bullshit notion that love is emotional and sex is physical and not the opposite at the same time, I wish I could just run vertically and take a step back and I think computer programming is a good masculine thing to do, don't you? What do you mean you want a man who cuts down trees for a living, oh ok whatever you want, oh ok you actually want someone who looks like he's 12 years old, well I can be that too, oh ok you actually want someone who looks rugged like they've got some experience, oh ok i'll try, oh ok you want a man who can provide for you well don't you worry i've been trying real hard, oh ok you really just want someone who will make you laugh well ok i can make my sister laugh, oh ok why don't you want me i swear i'm trying my best oh ok you don't want someone who tries oh ok well i guess i'm still just a kid and i thought i'd have this figured out by now but it's hard to figure out how to be in a romance when you're never in one and it's kind of like not being able to get a job when you don't have experience and i guess i shouldn't show my cards but what else have i really got to go on so i guess i'll fake it til i make it and bla bla bla and i really just want someone to build sandcastles with and tear them down well really i want someone for much more than that but i wish i could make you get what i mean. i wish i could know what you want, i really do, i wish i could just know with quiet confidence that i have enough to make you happy and you're not just that ever-just-beyond-my-reach suited person with a clipboard, i swear one day i'm gonna steal that fucking clipboard and everything will be better and you and i will draw stupid little doodles on that lipboard but for right now you stare at me over it and i get it because sometimes i'm the one behind the clipboard and i'm evaluating people too and i'm pretty picky myself but if i can't hold it against you that you don't like me and i don't want you to hold it against me that i don't like you then where does this end? What is the last thing before the drain at the bottom of the ocean? What will catch us? What will catch us? Who programmed this? They didn't cover all the bases.

Stream of Consciousness #1: Fragile Eyes

My eyes are so fragile could there be the one thing that would make me see forever straight and narrow like an arrow don't want to be tied to the ground unless the ground is the only place I can be want to be tied to righteousness like a ship going to the top of a mountain during a flood where the heavens came through the roof of my imagination like a painting I drew when I was just a kid it's finally over on a rollercoaster like a drop of paint in my veins bleeding like a hurricane in a mansion where we're playing hide and seek riding my bike up a stream of smoke into the clouds and riding around like Super Monkey Ball and super funny crawling on our hands and knees trying to find our keys, whispering things to each other and getting tired of each others' jokes, need to go back to school to figure out some new tricks, some new lines, why didn't they ever teach me how to talk, how to walk, how to use drafting software, how to talk to girls, how to talk to girls, how to do all these things and now I'm walking out the door again at the end of the party and I'm not saying goodbye because I finally realized that no one cares I'm leaving and it's OK and why is it OK and does it ever get any deeper than this and I'm driving home and there's a faint dim light from the highway lights and it barely scratches the sky and why does it seem like the darkness is winning, like we just carved out a little corner of the darkness and we're all huddling together but any day it's going to fall down, and we're all just scared to talk about it, not the darkness like evil but the darkness like the cold, unknown, the blanket that keeps slipping over your foot and you know you could get a good night's sleep if you could just get your shit together and your brain would cooperate, is there any kind of curse worse than waking up like a dog, like an instrument that just got played too much, like a tape that somehow didn't rewind?

Intentions, Traditions, and Seasons

Well...I'm now a college graduate. Although to be honest that's been a sort of small thing on my docket compared to the enormous mental, emotional and theological mountains I've been scaling since March. When I am finally through all of that I am going to write so much about it that it won't even be funny. But that will be later and not now.

For right now...I will recount something that happened today and reflect upon it...

Today was Memorial Day, and my family went to the Tigers' game. There were tons of ceremonial things going on at the game, starting with a huge procession of veterans who gathered around the edge of the outfield grass prior to the game as players from the Tigers and the opposing Pirates came out and greeted them and stood among them during the national anthem. Then a vet threw out the first pitch, and a few other things happened to remember and honor veterans, and so on.

Then, in the middle of the game, and in fact in the middle of a half-inning, a "moment of silence" was recognized at 3 pm to remember veterans who had sacrificed their lives for America (it wasn't much of a moment of silence though, since a video with sound intended to remind us what to think about was playing on the stadium scoreboard). As the "moment of silence" began and everyone stood up from their seats, I found myself looking around for a few seconds to see whether men were removing their hats, as I sensed it might be customary to do so just as it is when the national anthem is played--but I was not sure, never having participated in a public "moment of silence" on Memorial Day (does that make me a bad American?)

I had only looked around for literally a second or two before I hear a woman behind me shout, "Take off your hat, you ass!" Startled, I turned around as I snapped my hat off my head, trying to see who had shouted and exchanging bewildered glances with a couple in the row behind me, who through their simple eye contact graciously sent me assurance that I was not the one totally out of line here.

I turned my attention to the video screen along with everyone else as it played. When the video ended, I turned back again and stared at the woman who I was fairly confident had shouted at me. The fact that she firmly returned my gaze all but assured me it was her--a dark-haired, middle aged woman of average height and average looks, maybe a smoker.

A part of me wanted to just stare her down for an indefinite period of time, but thankfully the part of me that knew such behavior would accomplish nothing was victorious, and I turned my head back toward the field as the game resumed. I kept my hat off my head and in my hand, though, in some sort of strange, silent, perhaps slightly immature protest toward this woman. I suppose I just wanted her to see that her words have weight and that she shouldn't have thrown that weight around so carelessly, calling someone a name for failing to immediately know the protocol for moments of silence that aren't even silent while standing in a baseball stadium in the United States of America on Planet Earth. I know, I should have studied beforehand, lady. I should have easily been able to follow that path of delineation to have looked it up last week when I first found out I was coming to this baseball game. Just like I should have always read the text before showing up to class all throughout college and all that jazz, but old habits die hard, so you got me again.

Of course, sane people like the gracious couple behind me know that one's actions do not always reflect one's intentions in situations involving rituals with arbitrarily assigned meaning. But, is it then arbitrarily assigned? Or is it connected to God's instructions in 1 Corinthians 11 about men not having their heads covered during worship? Is this something universal? I must confess I doubt I will ever understand or know.

But all I can say from that whole experience is that, in retrospect, that woman was basically a fun little representation of some of the things I fear most about God...that he's saying, "come on Brad, you should have figured this out by now--hasn't my grace led you to a place where you are diligent in knowing my ways? Or has my grace not affected you that way?"

I will refuse to believe that God is like the woman who yelled at me for not taking my hat off. I will not seek a handbook of ceremonies filed by situation...at least I don't think I will. And yet as I write this, I think, how nice to live ceremonially, and have all things marked off by clear, physical symbols--no going by extreme introspection as the primary means of determining when a season has passed, no: you are given a clear visual signal that you are out of one stage and into another, as clear a symbol of a season's end as a touch of orange on a leaf in September. I want that kind of confirmation.

A Practicality Joke

Had a cathartic experience tonight complaining about how impractical my civil engineering department is with my senior design teammates...like, why the heck is the extent of our AutoCAD education a few short lab sessions in 312 and a little project...when this is in fact something very practical in our field, in pretty much every sub-discipline?

Why don't we have a class that actually teaches us how to read/prepare engineering drawings and site plans? Seriously? All we have is a construction management class in which we're given a stack of drawings and are more or less left to figure them out on our own, and that's only a small part of the super-crazed and rushed lab section; it's not even the focus of the class.

A bigger question: why don't we ever have design projects in our classes at all until senior design (apart from maybe a feeble notion of a design problem in the homework sets of some of the senior/grad level electives--at least in my concentration)? Surely it would be possible to invent a little project of designing a water treatment plant, or a piping system, or a simple structure, or something along the way, and not just at the end.

I refuse to accept that such a curriculum is not possible because we "only get our feet wet" in a lot of topics. Sure, an undergrad program in civil engineering isn't the same as a master's in a sub-discipline...but what's going on here if we really don't have time for design in an engineering program. Like, hold the phone, sister--what's the actual definition of engineering? Is it learning a bunch of methods that will solve for some nebulous quantity or parameter? Or is it actually about applying science to solve problems, in a way that involves volition and sometimes some creativity?

What would really make sense would be for classes to have a major design problem to, effectively, be the narrative thread through which the class is taught, in order to contextualize new topics and integrate various methods into one overarching purpose. For example: Hello, welcome to the first day of CEE 421, Fundamentals of Hydrology and Hydraulics! My name is Professor Helpful. So, to get us started, let me introduce a scenario that will point to the need for us to study hydrology/hydraulics and that will help us understand all the topics I'm going to introduce over the course of the semester. [Brings up diagram on PowerPoint slide.] Let's say we have a small office building with a 20,000 square foot parking lot. The building is at the bottom of a hill, so it's going to gather a lot of runoff when it rains, right? Why is this a problem? [Waits around for a response...] Well, we don't want there to be flooding around the building, right? So we're going to have to find a way to drain it, and in order to do that, we're going to need to know how much water we're going to have to handle--in terms of a total and in terms of volumetric flow--in order to design a system that will take care of it. That, in essence, is what hydrology's about. Now, once we've got our water collected--it's flowed into our drain and now it's in a pipe, and it's flowing down a pipe...do we know how the flow will act? Do we know how fast it will go and how high the water level will be as a function of the velocity? How is this related to the slope of the pipe, the shape of the pipe, and the roughness of the pipe? These are the kinds of things that hydraulics is concerned with. We'll use these things to figure out how best to design a system of drains, pipes, and detention storage for the excess runoff to best handle the water. Throughout the semester, we'll come back and refer to this example as we solve each component of our problem of how to deal with this runoff. First, let's figure out how we can know how much water we'll be dealing with by using the rational method...

Here's more of what actually happens: Hello, welcome to the first day of CEE 421, Fundamentals of Hydrology and Hydraulics. So, here's a video of a flood. [Plays video]. Yeah, so floods are pretty bad, right? This class has to do with dealing with floods in some general way that can be understood very shallowly by the way I'm going to scratch into some surface material that sets up some definitions that you expect are going to build the foundation for a very logical proceeding into deeper material, but then I'll actually just start throwing some methods at you willy-nilly. OK, first, let's define a watershed...

Look, I've appreciated a lot in all of my classes and there's a good number of professors whom I've enjoyed learning from, and I know I have learned a solid amount that will be useful in the future...but the sad thing is that when I think back to all the classes I've had in my department, the second scenario seems to have been true most of the time. Maybe I'm being unfair and the professor was really trying their best to present things in a way that would make sense, and I was just too dumb to get it, and now it's easy for me to take shots because everything's 20-20 in hindsight, right? I know I haven't been the perfect student either...far from it, really. I've showed up late for more classes than I can count, and I've missed and rushed homework assignments.

But I don't think that's the case. I think I actually would have understood it even less had it not been for a bit of exposure I had to storm sewers in my internship. I think the burden of this academic life would feel a lot lighter if I had a sense of cohesiveness between all of the things I was learning. If I wasn't just pounding out math problems night after night, problems that technically aren't purely theoretical like in a calculus class, but that are so pigeonholed and narrow, that they're analogous to learning how to bake a cake first by taking eggs and putting them in the oven, then separately taking some sugar and putting it in the oven, then separately taking chocolate and putting it in the oven...I think you get the picture.

I know I'm no expert engineer here. I may end up looking back at this in a year when I'm working for some company and think...boy, was I wrong, and who was I to question the university's way? But when I went into my internship experience last summer, finding it to be an experience vastly different from almost everything I'd done in school, and only having made a modest improvement upon that now in my senior year...I find myself questioning...why in the world is that? I have to hope that's only natural.

Thermo.

About a year ago I entered into a cash-prize poetry contest that my engineering college sponsored. I had a small collection of poems that I'd already written, which I went through and selected from to make my 5-poem submission portfolio. I was mostly satisfied with the material I'd chosen...and yet I found myself wanting to write a new poem to submit. One just for this contest, and one specifically about engineering.

It didn't take too long to realize that the perfect way to do this was to convert the severe frustration (and ultimate relief) I'd recently had in my thermodynamics class in verse form.

I could try to be modest here, but to be honest, after I finished the poem, I thought for sure I'd written a winner, and that the judges (who I assumed would have engineering backgrounds) would eat it up and grant me an award. Alas, no such fortune was found.

Ah well, anyway, here it is. I'm still happy with it:

Thermo

I am the working fluid.

I am the working fluid and I am being spent.

What’s that, you say? I can’t be exhausted?

Something about conservation of mass?

The truth you know is flaky and frosted.

I may be water by three-quarters

But that doesn’t mean my body

Follows a textbook chart’s orders

In fact, my specific counterexamples

To this possibility are sufficiently ample

I’m certain my internal energy is not the same

As when I first started this twisted game

Of relying on my own gumption

To discover a problem’s necessary assumptions

And although the pressure of the task has remained constant

And increasing volumes of demands are repeated

I am certain this has not in itself

Resulted in any work being completed.

As I run in my state of madness

In circles through temperature-entropy space

I find there’s complete reversibility

But, alas, not a hint of grace

For those who can only take exams

At a quasi-equilibrium pace…

And so after a semester filled

With pistons tightly sealed in cylinders

And valves closed firmly on rigid tanks

I thought that I myself would never find a way out

And then you made the final do-able—thanks.

Hell on a technicality and heaven in a handbasket

A few months ago I wrote this piece...I'm not sure exactly what you'd call it. It's kind of a poem, kind of a monologue.

The hell on a technicality idea is about a sort of fear that's associated with a strict Calvinist theology, and kind of being afraid that something you did wrong in the past and forgot about and thus neglected to confess to God proves that you are actually not elect, not regenerate. (I'll note that I am at odds with strict Calvanism because I think there are better interpretations of Scripture that don't produce this fear that I don't believe would come from the God whose perfect love casts out all fear.)

The heaven in a handbasket idea is a similar thought but in the opposite sense--it's kind of like you're trying to assemble your own little basket of heaven and you sort of fear that you're forgetting about something good and that your basket is never going to be perfect unless you have every little tiny thing. It's an idea that I encountered as I was cleaning out my bedroom at home this last summer in the anticipation that I may never live there again (depending on what I do after I graduate), and mulling over what was worth keeping.

Well, here it is:

Hell on a technicality and heaven in a handbasket. The basket was woven by your mother, you asked whether it would make it down the river and said it was the same kind that carried Moses down the Nile.

Your basket is full of random stuff, the random stuff in your room that’s still there, sitting on the floor smiling at you like a stupid kid who thinks you promised you would play. Still sitting there, drooling, maybe just rescued from a corner or from underneath a stack of magazines as you go through the process of cleaning out your childhood room for the last time like you’re preparing for your own death. You must put everything in the handbasket. Heaven forbid something escapes the handbasket.

Hell on a technicality came in the 8^th inning of the softball game on that field you walked by that one time when you were twelve years old, tucked between your town’s tiny little power plant and a secluded pond but plain as day on a map so you’ve got no excuses. The ump called a balk but the batter still swung so they needed a sacrifice and you were the only one riding the pine. Actually, you weren’t there, but someone wrote your name on the lineup card, someone who had a crush on you in preschool who you didn’t share your candy bar with that one time has been writing your name on that lineup card for years, it’s always been in the back of your mind, kind of like that assignment you did in 9^th grade and you know you got away with cheating but you thought things like that just come out in the wash. Well sometimes they don’t and sometimes people remember and so they write your name down on a lineup card and you get hell on a technicality.

Heaven in a handbasket is simple for babies because they don’t need to take anything with them. But some people think if they go before their time they get hell on a technicality anyway so I don’t get how it works.

Heaven in a handbasket is something like a nomadic discipline and a suburban heritage, or anti-heritage, depending on how you look at it, the people who live in giant houses in the hills don’t know what it is. Oh, all the days you went looking for your Easter basket on those spring Sunday mornings, how you thought behind the curtains was such a difficult hiding spot, how upon finding it you rifled through each absurdly-shaped sweet snack and plush toy and pack of trading cards until they were scattered around the living room floor with thin plastic grass strewn about all of it, like someone had ripped apart a box of green cassette tapes—but no one ever told you you’d have to wind those tapes back up and play them back and that you’d be responsible for remembering exactly what had been lost in each place that the recording no longer played back clearly, that you’d have to load up the basket again at the start of autumn and the things you’d want to put in it you’d have to look much harder for than peeking in some gimme spot by the window and your mom won’t be giving you hot and cold signals, but that you’d had to find those things if you didn’t want to forget to bring the right book to study for the quiz and get the answer wrong and get hell on a technicality.

Hell on a technicality isn’t a police officer wrangling you down or a screech on the brakes, it’s not a straightforward scream in the face or a can of mace; it’s a letter in that P.O. box you forgot you even had from that city you visited that one time, or a phone call from someone you’ve never met asking when you’re coming home for dinner, it’s a bank account you opened when you were five and you didn’t know they charged you ten cents for that lollipop at the teller and so you were in the red and have been in it deep for years.

I loaded up my handbasket a few weeks ago tried to get into it and float away like Moses but there was no more room so I watched it slip down the stream. After a few minutes, I realized the one thing I forgot to put into it was my slow-pitch softball rule book. I opened it up the section on balks and started checking for exceptions to rules.

Pet Peeves

Some pet peeves of mine...I'll tell myself that these things are thoughtful critiques and not just me complaining because I'm looking for a reason to complain. If I no longer have a sense of that being true...I'll need to stop, ha ha!

1. When people put long sentences on PowerPoint presentations and then read them off word for word.
2. When someone responds to "what kind of music do you like?" with "everything." Seriously? I first of all highly doubt you've heard every piece of recorded music ever created. Second, there's something respectable and good about not being unreasonably stubborn about one's preferences, but to say you like everything suggests that you are completely unfeeling. Show that you can taste, please!
3. When people are on their phones walking along the sidewalk and are therefore completely unaware of me coming in their direction on my bike. (OK, I've actually been guilty of this one).
4. When professors explain physical processes or phenomena by ascribing human attributes to lifeless materials or processes without first giving a sufficient technical explanation. Does the clay really remember the highest level of stress it's experienced and adjust its behavior based on its memory? Or does it have more to do with, I don't know, actual physical properties? (OK, I actually have a sort of split opinion on this one--I actually think this sort of way of speaking can be used in a very helpful way to help students remember things or get a general conceptual grasp of things...but it should be done only after a reasonable technical explanation has been given when done in an upper-level engineering class. This isn't sixth grade science.)

I will probably continue to add to this list in the future...

Self-Forgetfulness and Blog-Forgetfulness

It's been a while.

I've let my mind run down its fair share of rabbit holes lately, as it tends to do...

But I'm working on how to still allow this to happen while not completely tearing myself apart and not being able to get any work done.

It has to do with worrying. That's the thing I've been neglecting to notice for so long...I have no concept of the line between staring into the pool of curiosity and wading through it, refusing to get out, like a little kid in a hotel pool.

I came up with this credo tonight to summarize a new perspective I'm going for:

Don't let the oft-repeated to command not to worry confuse you. Don't not worry because of some implication that you're so silly for worrying in the first place, and that you should feel bad because there are other people who really have something to worry about, and you're not one of them. Don't worry, not because you have nothing to worry about, but because to not worry is an act of worship to the God whose presence is encountered in the midst of one's self-forgetfulness.