As if you couldn't figure it out, I've been having tremendous bouts of writer's block when it's come to posting on this ol' LJ.

So, my solution was to start a new blog, one that's a bit more thematic in nature. So far, it's working.

The project is called A Year of Thanksgiving. The goal is to post at least once a day for the next year, each day sharing about something for which I'm grateful. Think of it as a one-[white]-man Stuff White People Like, except with 95% less irony/funny, and 1,002% more wide-eyed earnestness (the stuff I can do pretty well).

I hope you'll take a look.

Will 300+ posts of schmaltzy, heart-warming gratitude get old? Probably. Which means it should be a good challenge for me to keep things interesting.

That said, I'm not officially putting the LJ out to pasture. Not yet, at least. I just needed to shake things up a bit and start writing daily (or near-daily) again.

We'll see where it goes. So far, I'm liking it.

I posted this on twitter this morning, but it bears repeating here:

- Average monthly cost of transportation in LA (gas, car payments, repairs, etc): ~$800.

- Average monthly cost of transportation in NYC (one monthly MetroCard): $81.

And they say New York is the more expensive city to live in? I call [hogwash] on that.

...

Moral of the story: My opinion of LA would rise dramatically if the city had a half-way decent public transportation system. Something more akin to this as opposed to this (the current configuration).

...

Aaaaaaand, hi. Sorry for yet another extended absence. But I'm back...for now.

It's been a good couple of weeks, by and large.

Last week might've found me the happiest I've been in...I don't know, months? Just lots of wonderful little uplifting moments: time well spent over hot chocolate with an old friend; time well spent with another dear friend as we engaged in vinyl therapy (i.e. shopping for records at Amoeba) and then played Rock Band into the wee hours of the morn; buying and listening to lots and lots of fantastic new music (MGMT, why hadn't I paid attention to you sooner?); exciting developments (i.e. progress) with the VW project; new opportunities presented, namely in returning to Iraq to tackle a project I've been kicking around for a while; new friendships forged and encouraging words exchanged, even if only over the internet; AGO+AXO winning Songfest for the 5th time in 7 years; Quincy Miller signing up for facebook.

You get the idea. It's been a good run.

I'm pretty sure I'm not bipolar, but if I were, this was probably a good swing over to the manic side of things. It was a pretty productive few weeks, but more in the sense that I found myself so energized with ideas and work to accomplish; for the first few nights of this week I got an average of 4.5 hours of sleep, as I was up late working on ideas and projects.

As it stands, I came up with several great ideas for some new writing endeavors that I'm going to put into play fairly soon, revisited some interesting ideas I'd dreamed up months and even years ago (in one case, going so far as to buy some tools and wood from Home Depot and building a model to see if one of these crazy ideas could actually be a patent-worthy invention...jury's still out, though), and took stock of a few potential opportunities (including the aforementioned one regarding Iraq) I have before me.

I write all of that with thanksgiving--knowing what a blessing it's been to not feel so unmotivated and uninspired, but rather, to feel excited about the future and the richness of possibilities that lie ahead. But I also write all of that with humility, aware of the truth in Robert Burns' line about "the best-laid plans of mice and men," and of the fact that this all could very well just be a temporary high before the next low comes. Even now, I'm starting to feel the slightest sense of the pendulum swinging in the opposite direction, and while things certainly don't appear as dire or devastating as they were a few months ago (financially, emotionally, etc), I'm getting that ominous sense of feeling overwhelmed, even suffocated, to the point of paralysis. It all seems so daunting, so intimidating.

Not to mention, despite all the encouraging moments I previously mentioned, it's been a lonely road, one that I'm ever painfully aware of. I thought that returning to LA would mean the end of quiet Friday or Saturday nights spent in solitude, the end of feeling unable to reach out and connect with new people (or even old friends), the end of looking around in desperation and wondering, "how long?" It's surely not for a lack of trying. It's just that the trying becomes so disheartening sometimes, and on top of that, I'm realizing more and more just how many barriers I put up so that people don't get to know me on a deeper level. It's probably a defense mechanism, a way to keep myself from getting so badly hurt again. Again, I write that fully aware of the words of a wiser man than I: in this case, C.S. Lewis' statement that a heart hidden from the potential for pain will itself become cold and hardened and unable to love.

I want to be real; to no longer hide who I am when I fear--as I so often do--what others will think of me. I want to find that sense of belonging that has more or less eluded me my entire life; does it even truly exist this side of heaven? I want to feel a sustained sense of: "Yes. This is what I'm capable of doing. This is what I'm capable of offering to the world. Nothing less, nothing more."

That, and I want to go buy tickets to watch the Dodgers play on a semi-regular basis. Who's with me?

...another online forum for me to wax pseudo-philosophical. Or whine. Or talk complete nonsense:

twitter.com/torsty

It's called micro-blogging: 140 characters or less per post. It's basically a site where all one does is post facebook statuses. If you feel so inclined, you can follow along as I twitter away. At this point, it's really just everyday nonsense...though I can't imagine it getting to be much more than that.

(Truth be told, I'm giving some thought to putting this LJ out to pasture. Maybe twitter will end up being the "next big [web] thing" for me.)

Well, maybe not my absolute favorite. But I like it a lot:

It's called muxtape.com. It's the Web 2.0 take on crafting the mixtape/CD, one of my all-time favorite things to do for people I care a great deal for (example: the last girl I dated received no less than four mix CDs from me).

And because I care a lot about you, dear readers (yes, all six of you), I've created a muxtape for your listening pleasure. Those of you that browse the web all day while at the office (I know the feeling, since that's what I did back in the day) can listen to this in the background while checking e-mail/facebook/etc.

Or you can just take a quick glance and say, "Huh. That's nice."

It's all of a week or so old, so we'll have to wait and see just where this website goes. But for now, I like the über-simplicity of it all. And I like that you can only pick 12 songs to upload. It makes for a good challenge, which is part of the fun of making the perfect mixtape.

I was going to break the tracklist down and give a song-by-song explanation--I had already written up a good portion of them--but decided against it, at least for now. Partly because I feel like the blurbs I'd written for the songs weren't particularly good (then again, is any of my writing these days?), but partly--and more importantly--because, really, the music speaks for itself.

Maybe one or two of the tracks will even grab you in the indelible way that they grabbed me. I certainly hope they do.

Or, do. Whatever. SPIN goes so far as to call it a resurrection (which I'm cool with, given that it's deemed worthy of a cover story):



Either way, starting today, April 1st, 2008, they're officially back. And nearly everyone (save, of course, for Pitchfork) thinks this one is a pretty damn good album.

Me, I'm absolutely loving it, now two weeks in. I can't wait to go to Amoeba and pick up the vinyl version sometime during the day.

And now, to close this delirious fanboy posting, a few more of the album's choice lyrics that really strike a chord with me: ( click here )

I was all set to post this on Easter Sunday; it's a passage from "The Relentless Tenderness of Jesus," a fantastic book by Brennan Manning (one of my favorite authors) that I've been working my way through as of late. I guess I got stuck trying to figure out what to say to preface the quoted passage, so instead I'll just get out of the way and let Manning's challenging, thought-provoking, but ultimately comforting words speak for themselves:

The Father calls us to be like His Son, Jesus, to become "another self," for His risen Son. Well, the life of the historical Jesus as presented in the Gospels is largely a life of failure, sorrow, rejection and loneliness before the final victory. On the eve of His death, Jesus had failed to convert anyone, even His own disciples. As he knelt in the Garden of Gethsemane, He was in an agony so intense that His beads of sweat became drops of blood. "My soul," He said, "is ready to die with sorrow." His reproach to Peter, James and John, "Couldn't you watch even an hour with Me?" reveals how on that night Jesus longed for human companionship. The following day, the hallowing cries of acclamation of the previous Sunday turned to harrowing cries of rejection: "Crucify Him!"

Jesus never explained the "why" of suffering (though we may never have known the depth of His love if, for example, He had saved us with a smile). He simply made it the indispensable condition for discipleship. Never once did Jesus ask those who wanted to join the company of His friends if they were chaste, honest, sober or respectable. Never once did He attempt to charm anyone to His service with fair promises of happiness. On the contrary, with uncompromising honesty, He said, "If anyone will come after Me, let him take up his cross daily. And whoever does not take up his cross daily (not weekly or monthly) and come after Me cannot be My disciple."

Our Christian vocation is our heavenly Father's invitation to enter into the sufferings of Jesus Christ, to share His life of humiliation, misunderstanding, rejection, loneliness and inevitable victory. Whether we be priest or layperson, housewife or husband, coal miner or research physicist, these are but the life circumstances in which our resemblance to Christ crucified is to be achieved. The Father wills to conform us to the dying state of Jesus. And this is no chance affair. It is the interior law of the Father's purpose. Suffering is not an accident in the Christian life. It is a necessity imposed by divine decree. Confronted with the evidence of Christ's life and the life of the early church, we can say that suffering is the touchstone of the Christian life, and if the cross is not in your life, then it cannot be very Christian.

Two things of note:

One.

Remember how I said in the last post that there was one thing I was really looking forward to in the future? Well, it came a bit earlier than expected, much to my pleasure.

R.E.M.'s new album, "Accelerate" leaked to the internet last weekend, and--being the rabid fan / willpowerless individual I am--I immediately pounced on it.

In the seven days hence, I have listened to nothing else. It's ridiculously short (35 minutes long), so as soon as it's over, I'll fire it right back up from the beginning (a fact my roommates can certainly attest to). But wow, what an exhilarating 35 minutes! I haven't been this enamored with a new R.E.M. release since New Adventures in Hi-Fi graced me with its presence in 1996.

And even now, just one week after that first listen, the album has already been able to underscore and speak to my life as it is in the year 2008. Take the album's opener, "Living Well is the Best Revenge" (listen to it here), which is easily one of the most rousing numbers the band has ever recorded in its 28 years. The song deftly combines a sense of betrayal-induced anger with a swaggering confidence of moving on to bigger and better things. And it absolutely laces into the intended party:

It's only when your poison spins
Into the life you'd hoped to live
Suddenly you wake up in a shaken panic...now.

You set me up like a lamb to slaughter
Garbo as the famer's daughter
Unbelievable!
The gospel according to who?
I lay right down.

If that's not a spot-on depiction of how I feel these days, I don't know what is. But the album is chock-full of these kinds of self-identification moments for me. A few other examples:

- the previously name-checked "Hollow Man" (listen to a radio-ripped version here) offers another pretty accurate sense of how I feel, now firmly-ensconced in my late-20's ("Have I become the hollow man I see?");

- the moving "Until the Day is Done" ("Providence blinked, facing the sun / And where are we left to carry on until the day is done? / Until the day is done?") conveys a sense of mournful resolve in the face of despair, disappointment, and ultimately, one's questioning of faith.

Though I can't imagine not getting excited about a new R.E.M. release, Accelerate seems to be more than a rendezvous with a band that has come to mean so much in my life. R.E.M. has once again created a work that has given voice to the emotions I experience but can't fully explain; they've created a work that I can once again identify with, now in my less-than-amazing state of affairs in 2008. And maybe that's all I needed. Because, truth be told, listening to Accelerate has proved to be very cathartic, very soothing for me. Perhaps even something of a healing experience.

---

Two.

My friend Rey facebooked me the other day and asked if I would give a USC campus tour to a group of high school students he was bringing down from the Bay Area. I was more than happy to oblige, even though it had been years since I'd given a proper campus tour in any official capacity.

I was rusty with some (OK, a lot) of the facts, but I'm pretty sure I was able to convey the passion I have for my alma mater, and how very thankful I am to have spent four years there. And it seems like the students left the tour very impressed with the university, very excited about applying for admission there.

In giving that one-hour tour of the campus, I was reminded of my love for USC; reminded of how it still feels like "home" to me, even now, nearly five years after graduation. I may have nary a nice word to say about LA, but USC feels very much like a sanctuary, a place of refuge, within the so-called City of Angels.

My spirits were lifted that day, but it wasn't just because of the tour. I also got to meet up with Shannon, one of my dearest friends from SC, whom I worked with--along with Rey--as Orientation Advisors during the Summer of '01. Shannon now works at USC, so I got the chance to grab coffee and catch up--albeit briefly--with her. And as we sat there in the middle of campus under the protective watch of Tommy Trojan, who should walk up but another friend from our OA "Summer of Love," but Brandi (who also works on campus now as well).

So in the course of an hour, I was reunited with three friends from one of the best summers of my life. A summer that doesn't seem so distant as to have happened seven years ago now.

But even more than that: Brandi and I also worked together, in a closer capacity, as Orientation Coordinators after graduation (during Summer '03). So she was privy to all the ridiculous dreams and aspirations I had for my first few post-college years. Upon seeing me the other day--for the first time in ages--Brandi proceeded to list off the things she knew had transpired in my life since that summer, as though she were trying to assemble a puzzle:

"Let's see...you were in New York...living in an attic and playing in a band, right? OK, then you were an ice cream truck driver for a while? (The one fact I had to correct her on.) Then you went to...the Middle East?...taught school for a while, right? Crazy. And now, what's this I hear about a VW Bus you bought and turned into a movie?"

It was a very telling moment for me. A very encouraging moment. It was as though she was implicitly affirming that I had pretty much made good on all the things I'd hoped to do in my mid-20's. (Save, of course, for the ice cream truck. And the pilot's license.)

I may not be in the place I want to be right now, be it financially, emotionally, spiritually, relationally, career-wise, etc. I don't feel like I'm "living well" at all right now. But--despite the hardships and heartaches--I know that I have over the past five years.

And by the grace of God, I will again.

This may just be the depression talking, but: I'm sooooooo incredibly ready to see the day when I no longer regret every single decision I've made in the past 2.5 years of my life.

That day sadly doesn't seem to be anywhere on the horizon.



*This line comes from "Hollow Man," a breathtakingly vulnerable and poignant (and fantastic) song off R.E.M.'s forthcoming album, Accelerate. Its release in just over two weeks from now is pretty much the only thing about the future--foreseeable or otherwise--that I'm really excited about.

(from a text message a friend sent me at 11:49 pm that night)

"The law of averages says this year will be far better than the last."

My reply: "I sure hope so."

...

Some friends are taking me out tonight to celebrate. I don't feel up for it. There's nothing to celebrate.

Here's that "something glorious" I promised:



( Some background info on this tom-foolery )

Tune in on Wednesday night (Thursday morning at the latest), when I post something glorious.

At least I hope it's glorious. I'm anxious to see it myself.

...

A real update, you ask? Now why would you think I'd have it in me to do that? This blog ain't called "Talk About the Despondency" now, is it?

Not yet, at least.

Hey there, Pit of Despair. It's been a while. How's the fam?

Listen, if it's all the same to you, could we just get this over with pretty quickly? I'd like to actually, you know, enjoy a portion of my twenties.

If not, that's cool, I guess. Your call.

Anyway, have a happy Valentine's Day. Send my best to the Missus.

All the best,
dave

How long, oh Lord? How long?*

Dear old friend,

I hope you're not upset that I kept you hidden for the past month or so. It was nothing personal, I promise. I certainly am not ashamed of you; believe me, that beard's got nothing on you (well, not anymore, at least).

It's good to have you back. I missed you.

Hugs and kisses,
Dave