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Josh Allan Dykstra
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LegacyJuly 3, 2006

All God Needs Is Gravity To Hold Me Down

Why does travel sound so good? Behold Alison Krauss & Union Station, in "Gravity":
And the people who love me still ask me When are you coming back to town And I answer quite frankly When they stop building roads And all God needs is gravity to hold me down
Ahh, that sounds pretty nice... It's quite nearly time for me to visit some other lands, see some new things. Here's hoping I'm able to do it soon. //
LifeJuly 14, 2005

Reality & TV

Sometimes I hear people criticize a movie or a TV show for not being realistic. But the truth is, we don't really want realistic, do we? I mean, if we really wanted REAL real life, we'd set our lawn chairs outside the neighbors' house and watch them every night. Hm. No, I think want we really want are romanticized snapshots of what real life can be. We want those ideal moments when life is beautiful and good (or just more exciting). We want a glimpse out of the confines of our own lives, with our 40 hours of work and our 2 hour commute and our 5 minutes of bliss, into "that" -- that something else that is interesting and funny and magical and dramatic and adventurous. Maybe what we're looking for is meaning. Maybe well-done TV shows and movies are just condensed, time-wise, to the point where it's easier to find purpose in them, and so we gladly lose ourselves for a couple hours for the fair trade of belonging. It does make sense, I suppose; our beautiful real life "moments" are often so spaced out, it's hard to connect the dots, to make stars into constellations. Maybe we just want "friends," or for "everyone [to] love ME" (instead of just Raymond), or maybe we're even just looking for drama -- to live in "The OC" or to be a "Survivor" of something exciting. Maybe filmmakers and TV writers are just packagers of purpose. If they're guilty of anything, perhaps it's creating some kind of thematic gravity that pulls us in and allows us to see life at its most simple and refined -- life that actually makes sense, most of the time. Or maybe I'm a complete whack-a-doo who thinks too much. I suppose it could be both. //
LifeJune 30, 2005

Storms

Today in Michigan it rained; The sky turned a blue the shade Of a deep, angry ocean And the atmosphere cracked Like someone quite large was Ripping the sky in half. It Was Beautiful. //
LifeJanuary 14, 2005

Just A Bit Of Silliness, Really

I'm not sure what happened to me.

You should know, before I begin, that I'm one of those people that saves every email they've ever written or received. So, as you can well imagine, approximately half of my 40GB hard drive is taken up with email (just kidding, but it's really no laughing matter how far back these things go).

I was looking through my Sent Items folder and realized that I had doubles of every email I sent between the dates of March of 1999 through October of 2000 (or thereabouts). Being the technological guru that I am, I realized that was a rather large amount of emails taking a lot of space that didn't need taking.

But that's not really what happened to me.

So I'm scrolling down using the clever little wheel on my mouse (those Microsoft geniuses!), selecting every other email so I can rid my sanity of these duplicate space-takers. As I scroll, I am reading some of the email subjects... and they're funny! I never knew I was funny!

There are emails with obscure Austin Powers' references like, "No, Mini-Me, we don't gnaw on our kitty," nonsensical crap like "Wadaladabingbang," and even frightening apocalyptic things like "IT'S THE Y2K BUG - WE'RE ALL SCREWED!!!!!" I've even got one with this subject: "Mini-RE: It's a flu shot, I don't want you getting sick..." -- can you even stand the wit?? Mini-RE:... man, I just crack myself up. (Keep in mind these are just subject lines; can you even imagine the infinite depths of humor that could be contained in the email body!?)

But that's not what happened either.

As my wheel continues it's journey upwards toward the more recently written emails, I am getting the impression that I am, sadly, getting less and less funny. I am just not as jovial... I might be getting actually, kinda, boring.

What happened to me? (There's the question.)

I'll tell you what happened: I "grew up." I started conversing with quote-unquote "adults" and thus, had to obviously rid myself of the extraneous wit. Professionals have no time for such nonsense, you know.

The only problem is that I think I liked myself better before -- that person who wasn't afraid of smiling, of being a little goofy.

In a fantastic movie called Finding Neverland, Johnny Depp's character, J.M. Barrie, has a conversation with a boy named Peter that has adult syndrome — he's grown up too quickly and acts older than he actually is. Barrie creates an imaginary world where Peter's dog Rufus becomes a bear in the circus, and Peter says "This is absurd. It's just a dog."

Barrie replies, "Just a dog? Rufus dreams of being a bear, and you want to shatter those dreams by saying he's just a dog? What a horrible candle-snuffing word. That's like saying, 'He can't climb that mountain, he's just a man,' or 'That's not a diamond, it's just a rock.' Just."

It's just a bit of silliness, really.

Well, I should hope so.

A little more silliness sounds pretty good right about now.

//