The First Single

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HQ3bftUReSc

I think I'm going to name every post after a song title. This one fits pretty well for the first post! I've been rollin down windows to "The First Single" for a few years now and I love it! It has just the right amount of angst, some nice harmonies, and I like the way the drummer drums. If you recognize his voice it's probably because you've heard that sickly catchy "TONNNNiiIGIITHHT WEEEE ARE YOUUUUNNGGG" song. Same guy but a different band.

Anyways. This past year, since switching my major to English, I've realized several pretty important things:

1) To be successful in the NBA your team needs to have a strong defensive presence in the paint.

2) Regardless of how much I ever learn about Catholicism I will still never know how Jesus becomes the Eucharist and therefore who am I to judge anyone's level of Catechesis?

3) After 6+ years of Spanish I really haven't learned much of anything

4) I'm in college! WOW!

5) I'm graduating college very soon! WOW!

6) I like to write

I wish it'd never happened, but somewhere in the maw of hot cheetos, 3 AMs, and stairs that was to be known as my freshman year of college I forgot how much I loved to write stuff down....

Haiku's

Messy Apartment

Paper rains green counter top

Sleeping Bryan G

Stream of consciousness

These allergies are really bothering me today Betsy called I have stuff to do today green is a good color the N64 controller is green I used to want one so bad an N64 I mean at that point in time I probably didn't care what kinda controllers it came with as long as they worked and I still don't these allergies ugh

Lyrics

Bryan

He's my friend

Bryan

Til the end

College Stuff all bottled up

in plaid, and beards, and rent

Bryan Oh Bryan

My friend

Journals

Dear Diary,

Today was good. I woke up and had breakfast on the couch and watched Sportscenter with Harry and John. Then I went to class. It was boring. Then I fell asleep because I'm kind of sick and didn't sleep well last night.

Love,

Mike

Essays

In her essay, “Feminist Criticism, ‘The Yellow Wallpaper,’ and the Politics of Color in America”, Susan S. Lanser crafts a unique critique of Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper”, framing the story in several different contexts and then expounding upon them. Throughout the work the author confronts several different interpretations of “The Yellow Wallpaper”, chief among them the feminist perspective, however by framing the text in a historical context Lanser is able OAHDISAHFIOHWIUFHE THIS IS SO BORING

Blogs

So writing a blog kind of scares me. I really think if this blogging thing is to be done right I have to truly commit to writing. It's like a plant, if I want it to live I have to pay attention to it, except my blog isn't going to sit there turning brown on the window sill letting me know it needs my love, it instead will hide out here on the Internet between 84,101,943,080 pictures of cats and 2,000 other distractions.

And...

Not only does a blog require commitment it requires putting yourself out there! I have to express an opinion on things! Writing is so much different from speech in the sense that you are so much more conscious of what you're expressing. When I'm talking, at my standard clip of 6.5^90 words/sec, I miss a lot of the stupid/wrong/misguided/judgemental things I say...whereas on here it's all written out with middling grammar glaring me in the face.

Blogging involves making yourself somewhat vulnerable, and for that reason it somewhat scares me, but I also thinks this provides an awesome opportunity to learn, grow, and discover.

If you're still reading at this point sweet! Happy to have you here! Let's talk in the comments!

Leggo...

"Thou Mayest"

The summer before my Junior year of high-school I read an incredible book. John Steinbeck's East of Eden wrecked me. It's not as well known as The Grapes of Wrath or Of Mice and Men (and its movie is probably nowhere near as good as the former) but about halfway into this 700 page triumph of American Lit, something stirred in my 16 year old soul.

The book itself is a lot of things, but basically it's a modern retelling of Cain and Abel

Boom Wikipedia...

The book explores themes of depravity, beneficence, love, and the struggle for acceptance, greatness, and the capacity for self-destruction and especially of guilt and freedom. It ties these themes together with references to and many parallels with the biblical Book of Genesis (especially Genesis Chapter 4, the story of Cain and Abel).

Steinbeck's inspiration for the novel comes from the fourth chapter of Genesis, verses one through sixteen, which recounts the story of Cain and Abel. The title, East of Eden, was chosen by Steinbeck from Genesis, Chapter 4, verse 16: "And Cain went out from the presence of the Lord, and dwelt in the land of Nod, on the east of Eden" (King James Version)

So, like Wiki says, East of Eden places a lot of importance on Genesis 4...and that's evidenced all over the place...character names, themes, etc... I'll spare you the rest of the boring literary analysis. Anyways, the part that just wrecked me , the real central part of the book, happens somewhere in the middle. The main character Adam, his Chinese butler Lee, and all around bad-ass Irishman Samuel Hamilton, are sitting around talking about scripture, specifically Genesis 4. These guys had all talked about this verse about ten years prior and everyone except Lee had just about forgotten about it. Lee on the other hand, became pretty obsessed with this one particular part of the chapter, verse 7 to be precise:

If thou doest well, shalt thou not be accepted? and if thou doest not well, sin lieth at the door. And unto thee [shall be] his desire, and thou shalt rule over him. -Gen 4: 7 (King James)

The thing that really got Lee about this verse here was the "Thou Shalt" part; he saw it as God promising Cain that he would rule over sin. This promise left him pretty unsatisfied because it obviously didn't really work out...This theory is of course operating under the assumption that we're looking at Cain as our forefather and a symbol for all of us. So under that logic, as his children, we obviously haven't really ruled over sin....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AbuaH8P-kG0

^^that monster!

Like I was saying...Lee wasn't so convinced with this translation and neither was I! (Actually I don't really remember what 16 year old me was thinking at this point but 21 year old me IS NOT CONVINCED)

So then Lee goes on and talks about how he then went and got a New American Standard Bible, and he wasn't too satisfied with that translation either:

If you do well, will not your countenance be lifted up? And if you do not do well, sin is crouching at the door; and its desire is for you, but you must master it."

He didn't love this one because he thought it was more of an order. While I think this translation is easier to accept than the King James promise, it still doesn't get my heart all aflutter and it didn't really get Lee's going either.

Unsatisfied with all the translations he could get a hold of he decided to go to the source. So with the help of his old, wise, Chinese relatives he found the original Hebrew and the word

Timshel...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RNQmIzM7Bh0

which translated means.....

.......

.....

...

..

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7hGaoyfbrsI

THOU MAYEST!

Not Thou Shalt, not Thou Must, but THOU MAYEST

It's not a promise and it's not an order. It's choice. It wrecked me back then and it wrecks me now, but not quite as much now. Because after a dramatic conversion in the summer of 2008 I know why I'm here, I know I'm loved, and I know I live to love.

But back then things were very different. I was a kid with a broken past and a broker present, trying desperately to not become another statistic but fast running out of alternatives. And then I read this short little passage written half a century ago and I started to cry, and I didn't know why. Because I didn't know I had a choice back then, and deep down it was just then hitting me. Those two words gave me a hope that I didn't know existed.

“’Thou mayest’… makes a man great, that gives him stature with the gods, for in his weakness and his filth and his murder of his brother he has still the great choice. He can choose his course and fight it through and win.”

That's what the book said. This is what I heard.

DON'T GIVE UP

KEEP MOVING FORWARD

YOU'RE NOT A SLAVE

YOU'RE FUTURE IS WIDE OPEN

And it was. And 5 years later my life isn't anything remotely close to what I thought it would be. And I'am so so so thankful for that. It is so much more beautiful than anything I ever could've imagined when I was up late one July night reading some lesser known Steinbeck.

This blog is called "Mayest" because:

1) "Thou Mayest" was already taken

2) Because I think it's important that we as a people never forget that we are always confronted with a choice. That in our relationship with God we remember that we are not slaves:

For freedom Christ set us free; so stand firm and do not submit again to the yoke of slavery. -Gallatians 5:1

Don't get me wrong. This isn't me saying that God is just like boom, you're on your own do w/e you want, I really don't mean that. I firmly believe that God is constantly reaching out to us, constantly showering us with love, and constantly calling us home, but that doesn't mean we are automatically bound to follow him. And I think that's whats so beautiful about love, it's a choice made freely. We're not puppets and we're not slaves...we're pilgrims on a journey back to the perfect father who loves us. And we need to remember that on that journey we will constantly be subjected to sin, to fear, to love, to courage, to beauty, to depravity, to greed, to anger, to remorse, to loss, to EVERYTHING and that we CAN RISE ABOVE IT...but we have to choose to. God will show you the way, he'll make it crystal clear if you let him, but YOU HAVE TO WALK IT and that's what "Thou Mayest" is all about to me.

I'm about to graduate college and I'm about to go to Ireland for a year to serve as a Catholic missionary, and I'm feeling all sorts of things. If your about to graduate college, if your about to graduate high school, shoot wherever you are in life...I bet you're feeling all sorts of things, and I bet you're staring down all kinds of choices.

This blog's about a lot of stuff. In terms of topics I'm gonna bounce around more than a half dozen five years old strung out on redbull in a bouncy castle. But regardless of what I'm talking about there's always gonna be a choice, there's always gonna be sin and there's always going to be righteousness and it's up to us to decide which one we're going to follow.

God's waiting with arms open wide but we have to choose to run to him, and we have to make that run daily. Let's run it together.

"Let's cause a scene, clap our hands and stomp our feet...or something, yeah something"

Yesssir.

Such is life.

"Been waiting all this time to be something I can't define."