Stage Check (without the mics and spotlights)

So there's this thing we... wow, I can actually include myself in this... we pilots must do which is quite similar to, yet far more terrifying than, a driver's test. It's called (drum roll) a stage check. I know almost nothing about it except that everyone has a sort of hushed reverance and honest sincerity when they tell you about them and it consists of an oral examination followed by, well, basically taking a total stranger up in a plane with you and performing the maneuvers they tell you to do. I have a little outline study guide that's only two pages long and little over ten hours as pilot in command of an airplane and now I have to do a stage check! (I'm including a very adorable video by pixar that most precisely portrays the feelings that accompany such a time as I'm in.
I've been studying my ass off and I still feel clueless. I'm constantly confusing whether I need 5 miles visibility in Class D airspace or 3. And are those statute or nautical miles? I know faaar more acronyms than any one person should ever have to know: TOMATOFLAMES, AV1ATE (yes that's a 1), DRAW Fighter Planes... the list of acronyms is endless. If there's a way to turn something into an acronym or abbreviate it.. oh we do it.
I recite emergency procedures in my dreams "Fuel shutoff valve-on, mixture-idle, fuel pump-off.." I find performance charts everywhere! in all my clothes pockets, in all my drawers... i'm swimming in weight and balance calculations. I check the metar even on days when I'm not flying just because it has the most accurate weather conditions. Life goes on pause the moment I hear an engine overhead, I just have to see it, have to see if I can make out what plane it is. I spend late nights in airplane hangars asking mechanics questions about carburetor intake manifolds. I don't even know me anymore. All I know is planes.
And yet, I don't feel I know enough to pass my first stage check... I'm going absolutely insane with anxiety as though this one evaluation determines my whole life. Perhaps it does, but I'll never know till I soldier my way through it. Let's hope I don't kill my stage pilot!
"Those who hope in the Lord will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles, they will walk and not grow weary, they will run and not be faint."

Strangers Know Me Better

I was shaking

clean as hell

close to breaking

you could tell

words I tried making

only failed

till you said the words

I needed unveiled,

"Stars fall from greater heights,

you're still up there, you're still bright."

and all the faces I'd seen on the way

all the places that made me feel insane

crumbled under your confidence

that I was bound for more than this.

"Pity, we never knew each other."

"In a way, I prefer this brief encounter."

"You mean I'm not something you could see enduring?"

"I mean unfamiliarity isn't past curing."

I'm Not Bold Enough to be Noble

(500) Days of Summer is a perfect example... of what I'd always thought I'd never do. Summer had, in my opinion, the perfect man: Joseph Gordon Levitt, a quirky-sweet boy with an icredibly classic yet edgy style. and for goodness sakes, he role played in like... walmart or wherever with her! Yet she said, "I'll pass." this has always boggled my mind, yet I've done the SAME EXACT thing on multiple occasions.

Where does this come from? This inability to see something so clearly in front of me, or rather, to see it and ignore it. I just enjoy reeling them in and then tossing them back... what the hell is wrong with me? And I'll never admit it, I'll never admit I was ever emotionally attached and I just want to know where this came from!

I'm not unfeeling; I'm not un-observant. But I try to play it off like I am. You know what, I feel safer if I'm the one saying 'no', and if I say it first they don't have a chance to say it. Fear, it comes from fear. I fool people because I'm not noble enough to tell them the truth.

I am, in essence, a terrible person. Or perhaps... i just haven't met someone who makes me want to risk myself. Is that such a bad thing? Can I help it if the people I know just don't inspire me to say "even if I get hurt, the wholehearted attempt will be worth it" ? It's not their fault either... it's the fault of fate.

My bookbag weighed at LEAST ten pounds, I had to make it from one end of the campus to the complete opposite end in 15 minutes, got to class 3 minutes late, had the very last seat in the room, couldn't see the professor or the board, followed only by ear, finally got back to the dorm with incredibly sore calves only to find that my student ID is lost, nothing gives a clear explanation of the shuttle times or where they depart from. I want to say F my life... but I have a peace in God. He's gotten me through thicker forests than this and I know he's got an amazing plan.
I'm going to fight my way through this, no way am I giving this big of a dream up!!

I've ALWAYS wanted to go away, far away, for college. And I always considered my near and dear ones, and how unselfish people give up their dreams to stay with the people they love. But I figured it was too soon in my life to make those kind of huge choices: stay or go for it.
I guess I just never considered MY side... you know, the part where I'm left alone too. I don't want to say I have regrets, it's too soon for that too. But this is the first hour being truly ALONE. I never understood alone-ness, not till now. There is quite literally no familiar face that I can sit down in front of and feel understood when I talk to. Damn, I have to build these incredibly trusting relationships all over and get a good education at the same time!
Life is exhausting. But I chose this. I need to keep reminding myself of that, cause now, if I fail I'm failing myself. I also need to keep myself excited for this. If I'm energetic and pumped for it, it'll be soo much easier to be successful. Constant prayer and self discipline are going to be my best friends for the next six months.

I hate myself for this

so... I, like a few other strange book nerds, began reading the twilight series before the movies because the cover and the synopsis on the inside of the front cover intrigued me. And i mean, a good two years or more before the movies... and I, inevitably, as a teenager, fell in love. However, I had a very realistic opinion of my twilight infatuation and I hated myself for loving Edward Cullen. He was everything so typically perfect and Bella was everything so boringly normal that no poor helpless girl could avoid idolizing the whole situation.

Truthfully, NO ONE would stick around with Edward Cullen. He's faar too possessive, he can never let Bella do anything on her own, he's impulsive, he WATCHED her SLEEP for a month before knowing her, and I just don't believe he'd be any heartthrob in real life.

Yet, I continue, as an adult, to read the books, to see the movies, to swoon when Robert Pattinson delivers those tragically romantic lines and to what avail? to further skew my vision of the standards a guy should live up to? No real-life male is going to have 19th century manners, quote renowned and long-dead authors, own nothing but records of classical music, be ever attentive to your every movement, or sparkle in the sunlight!! Twilight is just as bad for men as fashion magazines with flawless models are for women.

What must it have been like in the Garden of Eden when Adam looked at Eve and Eve opened her eyes to Adam and the both of them saw each other as the individuals they are and loved one another without any preconceived expectations? Oh right, it was perfect.

Makes our sad attempts to love each other look pathetic. We give to each other just a little and then wait to receive something in return before giving more. We seek affection for our own self-esteem and forget or neglect to build our partners up. We mistake physical attraction for love. We base attraction on superficial things, understand that mistake, but continue to be shallow.

I believe in love, but I don't know if true love can exist in our world. I think we're just partnering up because we all need a teammate ... do we even understand love? It's really late (for me) and i'm only getting more tired and progressively less coherent and I've gone from twilight to the begininnig of the world and I'm going to bed now. I'm not an anti-love narcissist ... i just have cynical tendancies when I think too much.

Train Station Folks

I love people in train stations, they're either blurs through boxcar windows or statues waiting to get somewhere. I once attempted to write a story about two people who met in a train station, but like most of my literary endeavors it lacked a plot and didn't go anywhere. Your story has to go somewhere if it's set in a train station. So, when I saw a most interesting boy sitting in the Eurostar station in London, I imagined his trip back to Paris. Imagined him reminiscing the whole way about his English adventures... and I invented reasons he'd come to London, lovers he'd left in France, and new faces he'd met in the U.K. I pictured a few souls mourning his departure in downtown London flats and French souls anxiously awaiting his return... then the mourning souls turned into brief aquaintences he'd knock horns with and was now running away from the trouble he started in a foreign country and the anxiously waiting souls were anxious because they didn't want him back. Aso I'mnd the story twisted and turned like this for a while till I couldn't make a decision on his story and settled to just paint him... but I couldn't capture him the right way either... so I'm perpetually frustrated over a boy I don't even know who I took a picture of in a London train station....

I hate that song "realize" by colbie callet(sp?)

There are summer nights, chilly summer nights, on freeways at about 10 at night... when you've just separated with whom ever you've spent the day with and you think to yourself why am I alone right now? I hit realizations all day everday. I volley in a violent way, like a pinball, from realization to realization and often the lightbulbs that appear over my head contradict each other till I end up, late at night, on an inner city highway without a conclusion and alone. It's the kind of sensation that makes me want to pull my car over, hell maybe even stop it in the middle lane, get out of my vehicle and shout out over the overpass "I AM RIGHT HERE!" as though the whole world were looking for me and I'm indignant upon its blindness. Amongst my daily realizations there's really only one I'm looking for and it's the realization from something out there beyond that overpass, further than those streets can take you, deeper than any person sleeping through any window. I have my redemption and my glory in my Lord, but every now and then I want to be acknowledged by the world. A selfish, foolish craving... and attention-seeking motive, but if the majority of your life is lived passively... is it too much to ask?

It doesn't count yet

I have a terrible sensation that nothing I've accomplished in my life counts, and it's brought upon by my leaving. Living somewhere where no one is going to know me, where I don't have a reputation yet, almost erases my entire past. Almost... what a chickenshit word; it does erase my past. This should thrill the overbearing temptation to attempt to be someone else, because in a world with no familiar faces I could be anyone. But instead I'm dreading the chance to be the foreigner. I am not me these days.

The furniture for my new living arrangements is awkwardly sitting in the living room of a house that I am living in but is not mine, which is exactly how dorm life will be. So you'd think the dorm-style pieces wouldn't strike me as so out of place, yet I can hardly look at them very long without feeling uncomfortable. Those aren't my things; my things are in an oriental-red room with a south facing window on the corner of Gatewood place and Gatewood court. But to actually find that location would prove my things are not there and to confirm that I am in a most uncomfortable state of limbo. I am a baby bird without a nest to fly from. And on top of it all, I use horrible metaphors.