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The Empty Vase

February 23, 2006 – 11:08 am

I woke up the other day thinking about a vase. I have no idea why. I wasn’t even entirely awake, and the first thing I thought was,

“What goes in a vase?”

Then I carried on a conversation with myself while still quite content in bed.

“Why, you can put anything in a vase. Mayonnaise, a ferret, marbles, water, trash, absolutely anything.”

“But that doesn’t make sense. Why would you want to do that? Vases are made for a purpose. Ask any child what goes in a vase and they will most likely say ‘Flowers.’”

“So you’re telling me vases were made for one reason?”

“Yes. Just like you were made for one reason, even though you try to fill your life up with all kinds of crap. There’s a reason you’re empty, and there’s a reason you try to fill that emptiness with everything that won’t fulfill.”

And then I woke up.

I couldn’t get the thought out of my head for the rest of the day. I also started to think about the Friends episode (because my wife watched it incessantly) where Monica dates a guy who writes a poem called “The Empty Vase.” She’s led to believe by her friends that he’s referring to her as the empty vase. When she confronts him, he says it’s not her, it’s all women. That’s the punchline.

But I’ll go farther. It’s everyone. We’re all empty vases waiting to be filled with something much more beautiful and glorious than what we actually are.

Teaching No Longer, Heading to the Apple, and Shooting with Newness

October 24, 2005 – 11:40 pm

It’s been a while since I’ve verbally vomited here, and it makes sense that I would tonight because my stomach is turning tonight due to the various concoctions of caffeine and chocolate I’ve been pouring into it all day, for no reason whatsoever, aside from the reason that I can seldom say no to caffeine or chocolate.

I haven’t written because I haven’t felt newsworthy of myself. Is that lame? Or just lazy? Much has occurred in the interim.

I quit the online teacher certification program I’ve been in for the past year and a half. I missed a deadline (by a weekend) to do a required internship for this program, and was forced to either remove myself from the program or find a fulltime teaching job as soon as possible. I had a frantic night of “Oh crap what am I going to do with my life,” which was quite nicely resolved the following day. (I wish all troubles had such quick Brady Bunch endings). I had even applied at a school 60 MILES SOUTH of where I live to become an English teacher because I thought I had to. Fortunately, the church I work at said they would do almost anything to keep me there. We worked out a few things and I quit the teaching program, much to my delight, and much to the church staff’s delight (as far as I could tell…). I’m indefinitely working at the church and learning to enjoy every minute of it. Knowing that there’s a future for me there and that I will be allowed to do more than my what I do now is promising, especially with the rate of growth of Georgetown and the church itself.

In other news, my wife and I are going to New York City for Thanksgiving. My alma mater is sponsoring a trip that includes airfare, a hotel, transportation, 3 Broadway shows, a couple of tours, and a large amount of free time to see the Big Apple. I’m extremely excited to be going again (I went this summer for my first time), but my wife is absolutely overjoyed at the prospect. She’s always wanted to go during Christmas, but she also loves the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. Even if we miss it at Christmas, everything will be decorated for Christmas, so it works. I had some inner turmoil and deliberation about whether or not we should go (money, time of work, etc.), but decided that this would be our Christmas present to each other. We’re both stoked, for lack of a better word (although I feel justified in using it because I was born in California). It doesn’t hurt the trip at all that we’ll get to go see Spamalot, the most popular Broadway show right now and consequently the hardest to get tickets to, on the first night we’re in New York. If you see me and I start talking about this trip, just tell me to shut up. We’re way too excited about it.

Going along with that, we bought a new digital camera (a Sony Cybershot DSC-T5), so expect some impressive shots of my beautiful wife in front of such backdrops as Central Park, the Empire State Building, Tiffanys, and the apartment where “Friends” took place (sort of). Oh, and don’t forget big, giant, tall balloons in Garfield-esque shapes.

That’s all for now. Rest beckons.

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Stepping Off the Bandwagon

October 3, 2005 – 4:13 pm

“But because we are human, every move of God is eventually turned away from truth and into formula, and God has to go about breaking our misconceptions and coming at it from a different angle.”

- Stepping Off the Bandwagon

I googled my friend Daniel Whittington from California and found an article he wrote about Christian music, the CCM industry, praise and worship, and why he’s in a secular band and will never go back. Worth the read, if not just for the quote above.

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ACL Festival: Day Three: The Dustbowl Cometh

September 27, 2005 – 10:51 pm

It’s tuesday night and I’m just now almost nearly fully recovered from the last day of the ACL festival.

The Sunday began with me skipping out on the last part of church. My replacement drummer didn’t show up, which wasn’t good, but…what can you do?

I raced to the show to see Eisley, a quintet of 3 sisters, a brother, and a cousin from Tyler, Texas, all of whom are still teenagers and all of whom opened for Coldplay earlier this year (or last). So I expected a lot, and, unfortunately, my expectations weren’t met.

Maybe I should have stayed for their whole show, but it was so bleeding hot, and I’d gotten a good recommendation to see Maneja Beto, a Spanish-Latin-Rock-Alternative band, who were playing in the Gospel Tent. Notice the tent part. Tent=Shade. That made my decision. I left the kids of Eisley for the rambuctiousness of Maneja Beto. I thoroughtly enjoyed their music, and the shade.

After that, I waited for my brother-in-law to show up. We killed some time, then went to see Grady. They were new to me, and we were right up front, and they were great. The drummer played a very basic set, but his bass drum was twice as long as any I’ve seen and the diameter was half of a normal bass. This created a thump unlike anything I’d ever heard before, and I, being the OK drummer that I am, loved it.

Then we saw Wilco. They were great, although, unfortunately, we didn’t stay the entire time for their show. We wanted to get a least decent seats for Coldplay….which we didn’t really…

Coldplay finished out the Festival and lived up to their status as the world’s biggest band. It was amazing to see tens of thousands of people jostle to get to see 4 guys on a stage making music.

The dustbowl came before Coldplay began. As the grass had been rubbed clean after three days of 65,000 people walking all over it, the only ground left was dirt, and as 60,000 people walked or ran to see Coldplay, a haze, more like a dense fog, of dirt, enveloped the crowd. I had pieces of an old t-shirt in my bag that I tore into more pieces so I and two others could have masks. It was so bad that I thought about leaving. Fortunately the dust settled down as everyone settled in for the show. Coldplay delivered. Go out, buy one of their albums, turn it up as loud as possible, and just enjoy.

I was sick on Monday. I even had to go home early. I haven’t felt great today, but I’m getting better. Oh – one more thing – the smell of a certain kind of smoked drug permeated my clothes and my body so much that I could smell it on myself the day after the concert. I guess I should expect that at a massive music concert in Austin.

If you’d like to see pictures that other people took, I recommed looking through the Flickr pics here.

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ACL Festival Day Two

September 25, 2005 – 12:03 am

It’s midnight and I’m home and clean, although tonight I picked up some strange red spots all over my abdomen. A gift of the festival, I guess.

I missed Robert Randolph, unfortunately, in order to go to a friend’s wedding. Turns out we missed the actual wedding ceremony as well, but we got there for the reception, and had a good time wishing the new couple good times for their honeymoon. They had a great idea too – they handed out their favorite songs on CD to everyone that was there, and judging by the playlist, since I haven’t listened to it yet, I would say they have good musical taste.

I only saw one band tonight, but that was enough for me. Ever heard of a band called Oasis? Yeah. I thought so.

My first impression when Liam came on stage was – that’s a Rock Star. A Rock Star who believes he’s a Rock Star. He even lived up to the billing and the rumors, as more than once he turned to his sound guys and told them to up the guitars in his monitor mix. They had to restart one song because of that.

Also, their organist looked exactly like the Americanized, whitened Jesus most of us picture when thinking of Jesus (i.e. the picture to the right). He was wearing white too. It was spooky, to say the least. Which reminds me -there was a Colonel Sanders look-a-like playing drums for Lucinda Williams as well.

Oasis played the three songs I know of theirs, Wonderwall, Champagne Supernova, and Lilah. They played other songs too. They were good. Their drummer was good. I would write more, but I’m awfully tired and have an incredibly long day tomorrow that involves waking up at 7:30am, playing two services at church (as normal), then jetting down to Day Three of the ACL Festival to see Eisley, Doves, Wilco, and Coldplay, and whoever else I can, although I may just camp out in front of that main stage and hope for a close spot for Coldplay.

It’s going to be madness.

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