I found out this week that the owners of my apartment complex, who have never talked to me, don't want the property management company to renew my lease. I wasn't told why, but I have a few guesses. It doesn't matter. Though this came as an unpleasant surprise, I was trained for it five years ago, when I had to move three times before ending up at this place. I accepted it right away. I happened to read the email in Garden City during a detour from a camping trip with friends, the only interval when I had access to my cellular network. By the way, that really needs to be fixed. I'm all for leaving technological distractions behind, but anyone who has a medical emergency in most parts of Logan Canyon or the surrounding areas is screwed. The point, though, is that I was in the middle of this camping trip with friends. Most of them had actually gone home by then because they had jobs or colonoscopies or whatever.
But I love these friends. The last time I was in the wilderness with them - I don't say camping because it was cold, and we all chickened out and went home - I stared up at the Milky Way and ached with the desire for our friendship to continue after our deaths. I wasn't confident at the time that it would. Now I am. It's been all but proven by science. We know for a fact that people have died and remained conscious, despite their brains being shut down, for a couple of hours before they come back. I want to shout this fact from the rooftops. Actually, I'm working on a children's book with the working title "Everyone Dies." I've had the idea for this book for a while, but I didn't know how to go about it because I didn't have any solid reassurance to give children about what happens after death, and I'm not willing to lie to them by implying that death is always peaceful or that it only happens to old people. Now at least the first problem is solved. I feel a strong desire to write this book, and I hope it will spread a message of hope far and wide. As random as it sounds, it feels like part of my calling in life now. To reiterate: I love these friends. At this time in Garden City I remained with Steve and his wife. Not for the first or last time, here's the story of how I met Steve, which I never tire of. I used to sometimes visit this girl who lived next door to him. She texted me, I dropped everything, and we sat on her balcony and talked. Then Steve got home from work, and she said, "Steve, come join us!" I didn't like that very much, and consequently I didn't like him very much. At least once, we had three chairs on the balcony, and I put my feet on the extra chair and hoped he would take the hint, but he didn't. I feel so bad about that now. Steve is a really great guy. This whole friend group that I love so much has coalesced around him. In 2019, I jumped at the chance to become his neighbor. I used to ask him for priesthood blessings all the time. Then I didn't because he moved away and I stopped believing in the Mormon priesthood. I still think, of course, that any God who may hypothetically exist can communicate through a Mormon priesthood blessing as well as any other method, but I don't know if that actually happens or how to tell. I've been told things in priesthood blessings that the speaker shouldn't have known, and I've also been told things in priesthood blessings that were simply wrong, and I'm not interested in making excuses like "Maybe it was talking about the next life" or "Maybe it meant something else because God likes to intentionally mislead people." Anyway, since I was there with Steve I asked for a blessing to help me not spiral into depression over this email. And he mentioned something that he shouldn't have known, and something else that I may have discussed with him some time ago, but I don't remember. So that was interesting. The point I'm getting at in such a roundabout way is that because I fortuitiously happened to be with these friends at this time, it took me less than two hours to decide that I would move to the Salt Lake City area to be closer to them. Most of them live there or will be moving there soon. If I move somewhere else in Logan, I'll continue to live with twenty-year-old college students, and that gets weirder with every passing year. Logan is a college town. I love it dearly, but I came to realize that it has little to offer me anymore because I'm not in college or married. Salt Lake will be an exciting new chapter in my life. I'll spend more time with these stable adult friends, I'll be more involved in my adorable little nieces' lives, and since I'm there anyway, maybe I'll start a PhD in Creative Writing at the University of Utah next year. USU doesn't have that program. I am, of course, heartbroken to leave behind the town that's been my home for nearly thirteen years, but life is change, and change more often than not entails some loss. Don't fight it. Don't resent it. As Matthew Stover poignantly wrote in the novelization for Revenge of the Sith, even stars die. I felt that in 2019, a higher power had orchestrated my life to lead me to where I live now. And here I met someone whom I thought was the reason. Maybe she was a reason. As much as I could do without the trauma she brought into my life, I owe her much gratitude for getting me out of the LDS Church and sending me into an existential crisis that brought me spiritual growth that I wouldn't trade for anything. But it seems weird that God would guide me to someone to turn me into an agnostic. Another reason, I see now, was getting closer to Steve and these other friends. He moved soon after I arrived, but if I hadn't lived here, they all might have faded from my life like almost everyone else I've met in this college town. He was there for me when the other person hurt me, multiple times, and he was there for me when we were stuck at home during the early days of the pandemic. I look back on those days with a strange mixture of trauma and nostalgia. After the disaster of early 2020, and I'm not talking about the pandemic, I've felt confused and abandoned and aimless as far as God's supposed guidance is concerned. This upcoming move is the first time since then that I feel once more like my life is being orchestrated by a higher power. I'm agnostic, of course, over whether it actually is. Things happen. Coincidences happen. Human brains are wired by evolution to see patterns and agency where none exist. But I feel good about it, and that's good enough. Not because my good feeling is a guide to any kind of truth, but because it means I'm excited about a new chapter. And also sad. It's complicated.
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This week I had the opportunity to present to USU's creative writing club, the Bull Pen. I was honored to receive the invitation. As the meeting approached, I got ridiculously nervous considering that I taught writing classes at that university for years, and very briefly considered hiding somewhere instead of showing up. When I did show up anyway, I got more nervous because my former thesis chair had come to hear me speak, so now I had to impress him and not just the students. It went great. I'd intended to try to talk for twenty minutes and then let the students write stuff for the rest of the time, but then I started late to wait for some who got out of classes late, and then from the third slide onward they asked questions and made comments during my presentation, so that it turned into more of a discussion and filled up the entire remaining time. Someone told me afterward that he would incorporate my advice into his writing. That made me feel good. At least this one time, I had an influence on someone somewhere, and my existence wasn't pointless.
Here's my slideshow. I can't figure out how to embed it, though that should be possible with today's technology. I talked about incorporating humor into writing, and I used quotes from Douglas Adams' The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series instead of my own writing because it's less egotistical and I don't like being the center of attention. I know, I'll have to get used to that if I have a successful career. I'll have to give more presentations, interviews, autographs, that sort of thing.
Of course, I had to plug my own book a little too, and I'll plug it again here. If you like humorous sci-fi fantasy adventure novels, check this one out at the following Amazon Affiliate link:
And tomorrow is Earth Day. Happy Earth Day. I'm going camping with friends. I expect that I'll have a lot of fun and lose a lot of sleep, leading to a lot of regret.
Here Follows Some Verses Upon the Burning of Our house, July 10th. 1666. Copied Out of a Loose Paper.
In silent night when rest I took, For sorrow near I did not look, I wakened was with thund’ring noise And piteous shrieks of dreadful voice. That fearful sound of “fire” and “fire,” Let no man know is my Desire. I, starting up, the light did spy, And to my God my heart did cry To straighten me in my Distress And not to leave me succourless. Then, coming out, behold a space The flame consume my dwelling place. And when I could no longer look, I blest His name that gave and took, That laid my goods now in the dust. Yea, so it was, and so ‘twas just. It was his own, it was not mine, Far be it that I should repine; He might of all justly bereft But yet sufficient for us left. When by the ruins oft I past My sorrowing eyes aside did cast And here and there the places spy Where oft I sate and long did lie. Here stood that trunk, and there that chest, There lay that store I counted best. My pleasant things in ashes lie And them behold no more shall I. Under thy roof no guest shall sit, Nor at thy Table eat a bit. No pleasant talk shall ‘ere be told Nor things recounted done of old. No Candle e'er shall shine in Thee, Nor bridegroom‘s voice e'er heard shall be. In silence ever shalt thou lie, Adieu, Adieu, all’s vanity. Then straight I ‘gin my heart to chide, And did thy wealth on earth abide? Didst fix thy hope on mould'ring dust? The arm of flesh didst make thy trust? Raise up thy thoughts above the sky That dunghill mists away may fly. Thou hast a house on high erect Frameed by that mighty Architect, With glory richly furnished, Stands permanent though this be fled. It‘s purchased and paid for too By Him who hath enough to do. A price so vast as is unknown, Yet by His gift is made thine own; There‘s wealth enough, I need no more, Farewell, my pelf, farewell, my store. The world no longer let me love, My hope and treasure lies above. I was introduced to the poetry of Anne Bradstreet in a college course on early American literature. Her relatable emotions and vulnerability made an impression on me and humanized the Puritans, whom I, like most people, am otherwise inclined to regard as stuck-up, joyless bigots. The professor made us read between the lines and explain how maybe Anne Bradstreet was secretly expressing doubts when she affirmed her faith. I wondered then, as I do now, whether that was really in there or the professor just wanted it to be. Anyway, I've liked this poem even more ever since my own beloved childhood home burned down. I wanted to buy it back someday, but the new owners apparently didn't know how to use a woodstove. And thanks to the previous generations who thoughtlessly screwed mine over, I may never be able to own a home at all. At this time I can't even save up enough to cover summer rent for one of the cheapest places in town. I have family members willing to help me, but if you want to help too, consider buying my book. I've shared this poem at a gathering of friends on the theme of change last fall and at a poetry-sharing meeting of the Cache Valley Unitarian Universalists last week. It's all about priorities, and that message remains strong even though I'm now agnostic about the attached theological claims. If Anne Bradstreet's house hadn't burned down, she still wouldn't have it anymore because she's dead. I'm pretty confident that consciousness persists after death, but I won't try to guess what the afterlife looks like, and I won't assert it with certainty because I'm not dead. I think it's a safe assumption, though, that the only things we can take into this hypothetical vague afterlife are knowledge and relationships, so those should be our top priorities once our basic needs for survival are secured. And if we can't get our basic needs for survival secured, well, at least we won't have to worry about that forever. I don't mean to be flippant, but it's true. We might have healthier perspectives on our suffering if we keep in mind how short and impermanent this life is instead of trying our hardest not to think about it. I also like the part of this poem where she goes full Yoda: "And them behold no more shall I." It's so random. This week's post is rushed because I'm very sleep-deprived and busy. Tomorrow and Monday I'll be hanging out with friends in Salt Lake. We were going to go camping in Bryce Canyon, but literally today something came up with one of the friends' fiancée's visa process that's already been going for well over a year and would be delayed even further if he didn't do the thing on Monday. So he wanted us to go camping without him, but we voted to hang out at his place instead. Awww. After Donald Trump's fourth set of indictments, which is four more sets of indictments than any other former U.S. president has ever gotten, we finally get a mugshot. He looks like a petulant toddler. He's probably thinking, "ASK ANYONE AND THEY'LL TELL YOU, WE'VE GOT ALL THE BEST PEOPLE AND THEY'LL ALL TELL YOU I'M MORE INNOCENT THAN JESUS. NOBODY INNOCENTS MORE BIGLY THAN ME. WHEN I WEAR MY ORANGE JUMPSUIT, I'LL LOOK NAKED. VOTE FOR ME IN 2024 AND THEN BUILD ME A TEMPLE, YOU IMBECILES. I WARNED YOU THAT BIDEN WOULD LISTEN TO THE SCIENTISTS. IF I DIE IN PRISON, TELL ALEXANDRIA OCASIO-CORTEZ THAT I'VE ALWAYS WANTED TO GRAB HER BY THE HEART. COVFEFE" I'm looking forward to his convictions, but I'm not looking forward to how his sycophantic ass-kissing cultists will react to his convictions. Every Trump supporter who says they're going to start a civil war or "take this country back" should be taken at their word and put on a domestic terrorist watchlist immediately. I'm sure January 6, 2021 only scratched the surface of their delusional anger.
I've been to six movies in the theater this year. That's like thrice as many as I usually go to. This past week, I went to see The Last Voyage of the Demeter because my friend Katie wanted to see it before it left the theater due to its underperformance. I hesitated. I'd never seen an R-rated horror movie on the big screen in the dark before. Was I brave enough? But I realized pretty fast that it couldn't possibly be scarier than the real world that I have to live in every single day. This week I learned about Howard Schneider, a pediatric dentist in Jacksonville, Florida who got millions of dollars in Medicaid funds by needlessly drilling and pulling impoverished children's teeth, settled over a hundred lawsuits, then got all criminal charges against him dropped because he went senile or something, even though a society that valued justice would have executed him as slowly as possible with his own tools. When people like that exist in the real world, how the hell can I be scared of a CGI vampire? The more Dracula looks like a demonic bat creature instead of a human, as he does in this movie, the less he looks like the real monsters. On a more general level, it's difficult for me to be scared of exactly what I came to see. If a vampire had started stalking and murdering people during the Barbie Movie, that would have gotten my heartrate up. Last night I watched Monsters University, which I had only seen once, when it came out ten years ago. At this time of year I felt nostalgic about both the movie and about college itself, and that ended up making me kind of depressed. I can't believe it's been twelve years since I started college. It seems like yesterday. There are so many things I wish I'd done differently, but it is and forever will be too late. I only got one life. I wish I could go back and talk to my freshman self and warn him about everything. 1. Earlier this week I noticed a slightly higher than average number of hits from cities in Germany. The only German-language content I have on this site is a translation of my former LDS testimony, so I assumed it had to do with that somehow, but actually what happened was that someone shared my fan fiction based on the rejected screenplay "Indiana Jones and the Saucer Men from Mars" on a German Indiana Jones forum. It says "Interesting novel variant that also functions as a prequel for [Kingdom of the Crystal Skull]. Monkey King has also been rewritten, but is incomplete." I feel flattered and attacked. I never finished Monkey King because, while I love writing out the funny dialogue and the worldbuilding, writing out action scenes that were intended for a movie is difficult and tedious for me. I suppose I ought to get back to it and just push through. Indiana Jones and the Saucer Men from Mars Indiana Jones and the Monkey King (unvollständig) 2. I made a joke in a GroupMe chat and nine people thought it was funny. 3. It was already a given that under no circumstances will I substitute teach children for another year, but another disaster happened this week that sent me looking for other jobs immediately. I found the exact perfect one that I wanted a day before the application deadline. If I get the job, I won't be able to prove that this turn of events wasn't a lucky coincidence, nor will I understand why God should do me such a favor while allowing millions of his other children to starve, but I will, nonetheless, freely acknowledge it as a miracle. If I don't get the job, then I'll just acknowledge it as an unnecessary kick in the crotch from a capricious deity or an indifferent universe. But anyway, in the application I had to provide student feedback from one semester of my last (and only) two years of teaching. So I picked my feedback from spring 2022 and I actually looked at it for the first time. Yeah, I was graduating and I just wanted to relax all summer and I was scared to read what students had said about me so I didn't. This week I did. The numbers from the quantitative portion were good enough, but the qualitative comments made me cry a little. English 2010 (067)Comments -
English 2010 (074)Comments -
So maybe I have a chance? 4. I was going to watch Darby O'Gill and the Little People with a couple of my neighbors on St. Patrick's Day, but for some reason we watched the first episode of DragonTales instead. Nostalgia overload. We discussed the possibility of an edit/dub to make it a horror series, and/or a companion series to follow the adults as their children keep disappearing. |
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- Amelia Whitlock "I don't know how well you know Christopher Randall Nicholson, but... he's trolling. You should read his blog. It's delightful." - David Young About the AuthorC. Randall Nicholson is a white cisgender Christian male, so you can hate him without guilt, but he's also autistic and asexual, so you can't, unless you're an anti-vaxxer, in which case the feeling is mutual. This blog is where he periodically rants about life, the universe, and/or everything. Archives
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