Father and Son

My father listened to Reading My Book Aloud 002 last week, and commented that while his poetry is self-explanatory, I tend to explain my poems. That was an intriguing observation, and I’ve been thinking about it all week. I’ve come up with a couple of, um, explanations.

1. I write to organize/categorize/energize/exorcise my emotions. I feel that my father already has his feelings organized when he sits down to write.
2. My father writes poems about things he already knows, values he believes in. My poems help me understand things that I didn’t understand before. As I explain my creative process to myself and to my readers/listeners, I learn more about myself and more about writing poetry.
3. My father writes poems to help people understand important things more clearly. My poems are not about explaining to brains; my poems are an attempt to transmit my feelings directly to the reader/listener. (You know those moments in songs when you recognize the emotion the musician is describing, because you had that exact feeling once? Or those moments in movies when you immediately recognize the situation or the conflict, from your own personal experience?) I try to transmit my feelings via the textures and interactions of the words I choose.

I’m speaking for my father here, and I hope I’m understanding his writing motivations correctly. Kind of pretentious of me, ain’t it? But I think our different ways of writing are fascinating!

Fallback

I have failed, I have sinned,
and this is my fallback position.
I’ve got my back against a wall,
but it’s a solid wall,
my favourite wall in the whole wide world.
My wall is wallpapered with favourite photographs,
inspiring poems,
challenging Bible verses
and the occasional amusing doodle.
I think I’ll just sit here for a while, planning for the future.

Reading My Book Aloud 002

Here are the next five poems from my poetry book, desiring to touch sky. The themes of these particular poems seem to be friendship and vulnerability.

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6. The Troubadour’s Quarry Speaks
7. Uncommon Senses
8. How Can I Help?
9. Horizon
10. Difficult Letter

Reading My Book Aloud 001

I completed my poetry book, desiring to touch sky, some time ago, but I haven’t done much with it. Also, in recent months, I have not consistently followed my passion, which is to record MP3 files of my voice and give them away to people.

In order to start 2009 on the right foot, I want to podcast my way through my poetry book. I’m going to adopt the quick-and-dirty recording style used so effectively by author Cory Doctorow of the craphound.com podcast. So, without further ado, here are the first five poems from desiring to touch sky.

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1. Old Man Snoring
2. Stages
3. Homeless Man, Queen Street West
4. Walk Ing on Snow
5. Disquiet

Knowing God’s Will for Your Life

I’m speaking to the sr. youth group on Tuesday, and our youth pastor asked me to speak about knowing God’s will for your life. Never a bad topic, whatever age you are. I thought I would bullet-point a few thoughts here, to get my brain and heart warmed up .

• God has a general will for everybody. For example, murder is bad! We discover God’s general will by studying the Bible.
• God has a specific will for your life. For example, I believe it is God’s will for me to speak to the youth group on Tuesday. We discover God’s specific will by praying for guidance and being sensitive to the Holy Spirit.
• God often doesn’t show us the whole picture at once. Often He gives us guidance based on our obedience.  The parable of the three servants in Matthew 25:14-30 is one example of this. We get the next instruction once we have obeyed the previous one.
• By paying attention to our own God-given talents and spiritual gifts, we can get an idea of what kinds of activities we should be pursuing. Yet, at the same time, God likes working with people who are outside their comfort zone. Moses was passionate about helping his nation, yet according to Exodus 4:10, he had a speech impediment.

Okay, those are my initial thoughts. Feel free to comment, especially before Tuesday, September 23, 2008.

Buzz Cut!

My head is egg-shaped?

Finally, after weeks of talking about doing it, I got a buzz cut. I went ahead with the buzz cut because my friends Michael, Jamie, Matt and Tom have all had it, and it looked cool on them.

Last time I radically changed my haircut, I got a girlfriend for a while. I wonder what’s going to happen this time?

Don't fear the razor!