Summer Nights

(500) Days of Summer

I really should have my lawyer contact Zooey Deschanel.

After my divorce, I realized I needed to make some changes in my life. I had become too insular, content to just go home in the evenings and spend my time there. I had almost no social life outside those walls, which had been one thing when I shared them with someone, but was something else entirely then. So I decided to do something about it.

Specifically, I decided that I was going to accept any and all invitations. If someone asked if anyone wanted to go see a movie that night, I did. Wanna come by the house for a bit before the Cowboy Mouth concert? Sure. Waffle King after an improv show? OK. Kayaking? Check. And on and on. There were some evenings I’m just as glad I don’t have to repeat, but some of my best friends and favorite hobbies came out of that, as well.

So late last year, I went and watched Zooey Deschanel in Yes Man. Basically, the idea of the movie is that Jim Carrey makes a pledge to say yes to anything anyone asks him to do.

A funny coincidence. But then, this weekend, I went to see her latest movie, her next after Yes Man.

The one-line description on Fandango got me interested — “After his lover dumps him, a writer tries to figure out where their relationship went wrong.”

Well, yeah, OK, I can empathize. Tell me more, please.

You see, “After it looks as if she’s left his life for good this time, Tom Hansen reflects back on the just over one year that he knew Summer Finn. … For Tom, it was love at first sight … Soon, Tom knew that Summer was the woman with whom he wanted to spend the rest of his life. Although Summer did not believe in relationships or boyfriends … Tom and Summer became more than just friends.” Sure, sure.

And, yeah, there is a part of me that was amused when an EW columnist described the female lead as “an infuriating, commitment-phobic young woman.”

My curiosity piqued, I went to see it Sunday. And it’s nice to know that my life is pretty much interesting enough to float a movie.

Oh, sure, there were differences. The ex-Beatle that played a role in the movie story was Ringo Starr instead of George Harrison; the Regina Spektor music in the soundtrack was different. The circumstances around her catching the bouquet at the wedding they attended were not the same. But there was still a bench.

It actually was kind of funny, in a surreal way. In all seriousness, there were a lot of differences — the timetable of the 500 days of their story, for example, was very much not that of the last year and a half of my life. If we’d been very different people, it might have played out more that way, but we are who we are. On the flip side, the similiarities — it was odd to hear words I’d spoken, words spoken to me, play out almost verbatim as movie dialogue. And, ironically, the movie’s out-of-order chronology, that let you see a glimpse of the reunion before the break-up — well, even before the meeting — made me assume for a huge chunk of the film that it was even more like my life than it turned out to be.

A friend asked me afterwards what I got out of it. And, hey, you know, it is just a movie. Similarities in story aside, there are pretty substantial differences between the characters and their real-life equivalents, though I’ll admit I did see myself in some aspects of Tom, giving me things about myself that I’ll have to ponder.

But for the big picture, I guess, if anything, there’s this — life is life. Yeah, this was just a movie, but it was a self-aware one in that respect; acknowledging that this is not a typical love story, because real-life love stories don’t always come with Hollywood endings. There are no guarantees, only possibilities.

For those that aren’t me, I would still recommend the movie. It was funny and heart-wrenching and real.

And, of course, Zooey Deschanel doesn’t really have any insight into my life. The coincidences are just that. In fact, there’s even a disclaimer at the beginning noting that the movie is a work of fiction, and any similarity to real people is just a coincidence.

Still … care to guess how many days it was between the first time we had dinner together at P.F. Chang’s and the day that she last broke up with me?

An Ill Wind

Me, at the Walls of Jericho

I feel a bit guilty for enjoying the experience.

I remember being outside that night. I remember the wind and the rain. I remember how glorious it was — the raw experience of being in nature, with all its power and majesty. I remember enjoying it.

Elsewhere, people were losing their homes. Elsewhere, people were dying.

That night was Monday, August 29, 2005. It almost slipped past me this weekend that Saturday was the fourth anniversary of Hurricane Katrina making landfall.

Four years ago, it was the most remote thing in the world. Sure, it was a big deal, but not one that affected me. I felt guilty that I had enjoyed something — the remnants of Katrina that blew over Huntsville — that had caused such devastation elsewhere, but that was it. It just wasn’t part of my life.

I first felt the wings of the butterfly that weekend, in the smallest of ways, and, looking back on my attitude, the pettiest. We had made plans for friends in Jackson, Miss,. to come visit that weekend. Given the situation in Jackson, which was still without power and would be for a while, where gasoline was a precious commodity when it could be found at all, and where people were, even that far inland, dealing with substantial damage, my friend decided not to come to Huntsville, and to try to help out there instead. And I, I’m ashamed to admit, was annoyed by the inconvenience.

I’m also a bit ashamed to admit that the next time Hurricane Katrina blew into my life, it was in a positive way. My then-wife Nicole got a job on a state contract working with Katrina evacuees in north Alabama. These were people who had been transported out of New Orleans; basically, they all boarded a bus, and were driven up Interstate 65. Along the way, they were dropped off basically randomly based on how many people could be housed there. Based on the luck of the draw, they might end up somewhere like Birmingham or Huntsville, or they might end up somewhere like Cullman. Nicole’s job was to help those people adjust to life after Katrina, either by helping them get settled or helping them move back. (I joked at the time that her job was to go around and be Tom Petty for her clients: “You don’t have to live like a refugee.”) It was a good job for her, and a contract that paid rather well.

The next significant time Katrina and I crossed paths was in October 2006, when I visited Stennis Space Center, the first time I’d been to the coast since landfall. It was very odd seeing the changes in Biloxi and Gulfport, where I’d visited several times during my Mississippi days. In some ways, it was hard to believe it had already been a year, in others, it was hard to believe it had only been a year. Some buildings looked like they must have immediately after the hurricane, while others (like, of course, casinos) had impressive new structures designed and built from nothing post-Katrina. It was interesting talking to people at Stennis about how their lives had been, and continued to be, different after Katrina.

Katrina would arguably even affect my life substantially at least one more time — the hurricane played some role in Susanna moving from Louisiana, and thus very possibly some role in her ending up in Huntsville. Without it, who knows whether we would have ever met. And the wings of the butterfly keep flapping …

So why did I start this post with a picture of my hiking? In the picture, I’m holding a hiking stick, one I bought in May 2006 in Jackson, Miss. I was on the only week-long vacation I’ve taken in my career, the time and money for which were made possible by Nicole’s state contract job. In an independent coffee shop there, I saw the stick for sale — handcrafted from wood felled during Hurricane Katrina. Given the circumstances that had led to us being there, we had to buy it. At the time, it was just a memento. I never used it as a hiking stick until this April, when I went for my first real hike, in the wake of further devastation that Katrina had helped blow into my life years later.

The stick is a reminder — of Katrina, specifically, and all the ways it touched my life, and, in general, that no man is an island, of how something that can seem completely remote and unconnected can end up changing one’s life in ways you could never anticipate.

And that even when the winds and rains come, it doesn’t mean it can’t be glorious.

They Also Soar …

Jose Hernandez

My waiter is in space.

Now, there’s a sentence that I wouldn’t have anticipated writing a few years ago. But, there you go — the space shuttle Discovery is in orbit right now, docked with the International Space Station. And among the crew of Discovery’s STS-128 mission is astronaut Jose Hernandez.

As the child of migrant farm workers, Hernandez has an interesting story. But, for me, the coolest part of Jose (aka @Astro_Jose on Twitter) being in space now stems from my last encounter with him, not quite a couple of years ago.

Some coworkers and I were in Houston for an education conference and to meet with some officials at JSC, and asked some of our local contacts about good places to eat. Someone recommended Tierra Luna, which is owned by Hernandez and his family.

We knew about his ownership, then, before we went there, but, even so, were a bit taken off-guard when we got there. Sure enough, the guy that bussed our table was … well, I had to pull out my iPhone to make sure. (“Is that him?” “Surely that’s not him.” “That is him!”) We had an astronaut clean our table, take our order, bring our food. He was very — and I use this term too often in talking about astronauts, ironically — down-to-Earth; you would never have guessed that he was anything other than a member of the restaurant staff. When we acknowledged that we knew who he was, however, he was glad to talk to us about his “day job,” as well.

Hernandez was a really neat guy, and I’m very happy for him finally getting his trip into orbit. But, yeah, it’s also very cool to be able to know that right now, my waiter is in space.

STS-128 also has another bit of personal connection for me — this is the first flight of Discovery since I attended the launch of the STS-125 Hubble mission back in May, which means that I saw her being prepared for this mission when I visited the Orbiter Processing Facility then. It was neat to see the view of the underbelly of Discovery during launch as the External Tank separated, and remember seeing those same tiles up close earlier this year.

Weekend, Etc. Update

Been meaning to write this for a while now, so it’ll be more than just the weekend, and will be more nuggety than usual, ’cause I gotta be quick.

— I played Wii for the first time this past weekend. Good fun. I played bowling and Super Mario Galaxy. Bowling was fun. While I was better at it than real bowling, I was impressed with how accurately it captured why I’m bad at real bowling. Mario made me feel old. I remember when you needed one button and a joystick to play Mario; it’s a bit more complicated these days.

— I watched The Time Traveler’s Wife last week. Good stuff. Beautiful and bittersweet. I’d always wanted to read it, but when I heard they were making the movie, decided that I would hold off and watch it instead, despite the fact that earlier this year I could have easily borrowed a copy, for which I feel bad — I’d like to fancy myself the sort who would give the book predence over the movie, but, even when I had easy access to a free copy, I still held off for the movie. I’m apparently becoming part of the unwashed masses. So sad. 😉

— I watched District 9 this weekend. Rather dark. Somewhat thought-provoking, though I was expecting more from what I’d heard people say about it. Despite the fact that I enjoy that sort of movie, I had the evil thought that I would love to see the studio give the rights to another director who would make a mindless, non-stop-action sequel to it. (Except, really, in my opinion, District 9 was really just a prequel to Independence Day.)

— Reconnecting with old friends is good, but having old friends that you don’t even have to reconnect with is even better. I visited with someone this weekend that I’d not really spent much time with in 13 years, and yet we can pick up from there without missing a beat, and that’s rather cool.

— Someday I’m going to write a blog post about what question you would ask if you could ask anyone any question and get an honest answer, but not today. Purely apropos of nothing, of course.

— I got to participate in another long-form improv scene at Friday night’s Face2Face show, essentially a 20-minute play we made up on the spot. This one started with probably the darkest, most dramatic work we’ve ever done in a show, and it was interesting to watch it unfold from there.

— I watched Man Versus Wild this weekend for the first time ever. If you haven’t seen it, it’s about a guy that pokes stuff with sticks, and bites things. We eventually started just rooting for him to do one of those two things to everything he encountered, and were rarely disappointed.

— I ate at P.F. Chang’s today and the waitress doused me with Sprite. FWIW.

— We started a new Sojourn-home-Bible-study Journey Group last night. I’ve been going to one group for months now, but agreed to be one of two people from that group to strike out and start a new one. The other person who left was hosting it in her home, and there were two people who were joining us as the leaders of the new group. As of yesterday afternoon, we weren’t sure there would be anyone there but the four of us. It turns out, there were 10; which was a pretty decent-size Journey Group. It was very cool to see how God rewarded Michelle’s faithfulness in being willling to leave her comfort zone and open up her home for the new group.

— The weather is changing. I like it.

Future History

I was having a conversation yesterday with a coworker about a writing prompt she had seen:

What three songs remind you of a specific time in your life? Describe that time and these songs’ ties to it.

She wrote a really cool blog post about it, about how there are so many songs that have a particular memory or experience or time attached to them. She enlisted my unwitting help by having me throw out titles of popular songs, so she could see how many had associations.

One that I threw out that ended up not being used was one that I’ve heard, and has come up in conversation, a few times in the last month, “Hey Jealousy” by the Gin Blossoms. And in the context of the discussion, I had an interesting thought — It’s a song that is very much college to me. It came out during my freshman year, and played constantly on the Ole Miss campus station forever. If you wanted to take the abstract of college and put it in four minutes of music, it would probably be “Hey Jealousy.”

But — there’s not a particular time or experience from college that’s linked to it; it’s just part of the ambient soundtrack and abstract emotion. In my mind, though, it is linked to a time — it was always associated with an undefined point in the future. It’s a song about looking backward, about revisiting the past; so, from the beginning, I’ve always heard it with the idea that I was living in a point I migh be looking back on, and that there would be a day when I would actually be living the point in the song.

Of course, part of the problem then was that it’s a song about revisiting an ex, and, at the time, I had no real exes, an issue that I’ve made a good start toward rectifying in the past couple of years.

When it came out, the idea of the song struck me as rather romantic — which makes sense, given how overly nostalgic I am — and I kind of liked the idea that someday that undetermined point in the future might actually be reality. Which is ironic, because I wouldn’t have had as a goal in life being at a point where it could be true. Who really wants to be able to look back and say, “If I hadn’t blown the whole thing years ago, I might not be alone”?

But here I am, gradually closer than ever to that undefined point. And it’s just sort of odd. But, hey, the past is gone, but something might be found to take its place.

Developing Story

Polaroid film and camera kit.

Lain shared with me this story about how the last Polaroid instant film will be sold at Urban Outfitters as part of film-and-camera kits. Only 700 of the kits would be available.

I’d known that Polaroid was discontinuing the film, and it seemed tragic living in a world without Polaroid instant film. So I started stocking up, and now have a drawer in my refrigerator full of it, as well as two instant cameras. I can’t speak to the quality of the film, since some of it had been on a shelf for an extended period of time before I refrigerated it.

I also have no idea what I’m going to do with it. I started saving it just for the sake of having it later to do something cool with. Later, I’d had the thought that it would have been great for a wedding, to basically use as a guest book. And, of course, I could use it if I ever lose my short-term memory, like in Memento.

Great Minds

This is the logo that I’ve used on my business card, personal Web site, e-mail signature, etc. for some time now:

This is the logo for the new movie, “Art & Copy“:

Offered without comment.

Space Commander

I had the privilege today of attending a brief talk and question-and-answer session by Charlie Bolden, who last month became the latest NASA administrator.

I’d been particularly looking forward to the visit, since it marks the fourth time that I’ve had the opportunity to see a sitting NASA administrator in person. Prior to today, I’d attended all-hands meetings by the two previous administrators I’ve worked under, Sean O’Keefe and Michael Griffin.

Before that, in a rather neat bit of coincidence, the administrator before O’Keefe, Dan Goldin, was the keynote speaker at my college commencement at Ole Miss. Making it a bit more unlikely is the fact that I graduated after a summer term, and so attended the August commencement, which Ole Miss no longer holds.

I wish I could go back now and hear again what Goldin said that day, filtering it through my experience with the agency. I remember at the time being extremely underwhelmed by him. His vision for NASA, and his seeming lack of excitement about its mission, failed to impress me as a 20-year-old liberal arts major, but I’m very open to the possibility that was because he didn’t come to Ole Miss to announce plans to send humans to Mars that year, or something equally cool and impossible.

On the other hand, I’ve been very impressed with the two administrators during the time I’ve been here. O’Keefe was cool and personable, and clearly wanted to see the agency move forward. Griffin, toward whom I was biased because he was a friend of a friend, was brilliant and brought incredible technical expertise to the position.

Bolden is still very new to the job, but I’m excited about his tenure. Again, people I know and trust who know him speak highly of him, and that goes a long way for me. He also seems to be a real people-person, and I have hopes that will serve the agency well during this period.

And this IS an interesting period. Bolden assumes the position at a time when the entire future of human spaceflight is under review, when nothing is off the table. Nothing is sacred, but nothing is impossible. It’s frightening and exciting at the same time, and there’s nothing we can do but sit back, hope and have faith.

The next adventure is just beginning …

This Is Your Testimony

I love it — I mean, like, seriously, love it — when I’m in a church service, and it speaks to where I am at right that very moment.

The fact that happened Saturday was cool. The way it happened Saturday was even cooler.

The previous Sunday, I’d been to a church I’d never been to before. And if there’s one thing I’ve learned over the past year, it’s that the more random the church I’m in on any given day, the more closely I should pay attention. The less likely it is that I should be there, the more likely it is there’s a reason I’m there. And I was somewhere pretty darned random last Sunday.

I came out of the service utterly defeated. The sermon was about yielding to God, and promised to reveal both why we should and what it looks like to do so. I very much got the part about the fact that I should; that was a fact I was not unaware of going into it. The part about how to yield to Him? Yeah, OK, that part didn’t come through as clearly. I’m afraid I left with no simple shortcuts to the problem, and was even more overwhelmed and despairing about my inability to do so.

My final notes from that service were a prayer along those lines, about my weakness, about my despair, about no longer even having the will to try to be who I should, so convinced was I that failure was inevitable.

Not a great place to be.

Church Saturday night picked up exactly where I left off Sunday, because a fellow member of the group had the honesty to say that this was what he was struggling with, and that he was to the point of despair. All too often, we’re only alone in our struggles because none of us has the courage to admit we’re in the same place.

We watched part of a video from The Skit Guys, which dealt with how we want God to change us in the ways we think best, rather than giving Him the freedom to chisel where He will. There were a couple of lines I liked, in an exchange between this guy and God:
“I can’t be good.” “I’ve made you good; be good.”
“God, I’ve let You down so many times.” “No, you were never holding Me up.”

There were two things that really struck me during the conversation, things that came to me that I made notes about that I shared with the group, though they were almost certainly mainly for me.

“Do you think you’re ever going to be there?” It’s very easy to get frustrated by all the ways we fall short of who God wants us to be. All the things we should do that we don’t; all the things we don’t do that we should. It’s easy to despair of the fact that even after years of working to be closer to that, it can feel like we’re further from it than we ever were.

But the truth is, we’re never going to get there. That doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t try, it means that we have to remember that the focus is on the journey, not the destination. If we allow ourselves to focus on the fact that we’re not “there” — that we haven’t reached the destination — then that focus will lead to an endless despair, since that fact will never change.

So, yeah, I’m not perfect. And, yeah, I screw up. And, yeah, I’m struggling with stuff. And that’s going to be true until the day I die. The trick, then, is to let Him make me better for it.

The other thing I wrote down was in response to a couple of other discussion points. One was a video, in which a believer was challenged about how he knew God was real/present/whatever. The other was the issue of living a life that is set apart. If a believer and an unbeliever both watch a horribly crude movie together, the question was raised, how exactly are they different?

And the difference is, for the believer —

This is your testimony.

This — whatever “this” is — is your testimony.

For the believer, whatever you do in life, whereever you go in life, whatever you experience in life, that is your testimony; it is the story of your relationship with God. Your life is a permanent relationship with Him, and whatever happens during that relationship is part of the story of the relationship.

There are going to be sometimes that story is all rainbows and roses — “God gave me a great spouse and a great job and great kids and I’m just so blessed!” And that, to be sure, is a wonderful testimony. There are going to be times when that story is one of healing — “I got sick and God cured me up!” Again, wonderful. There are times that it’s a story of redemption — “I couldn’t overcome my addiction to reality TV shows, but God took that vice away from me!” And that’s great, too.

But there are times that none of those things are the case. There are times that you get sick and He doesn’t cure you up the way you want. There are times that your addiction to reality TV shows is costing you everything you hold dear, and He doesn’t just take it away from you.

There are times that you know you’re somewhere you shouldn’t be, next to someone who doesn’t believe in God, and has no problem being there. And that’s the difference. You do care, because you do know. Because it’s part of the story; it’s part of the relationship. Even though it’s not rainbows and roses, even in that, it’s how you know He’s real, it’s how you know He’s there.

We focus on the fact that because our life is our testimony, we should live the sort of story we want to tell. But, the truth is, there are many parts of that story that are beyond our control.

The question then becomes —

This is your testimony. This is your love story with God.

What do you do with it?

Yet Another Weekend Update

Why do I post these? I don’t know. Does anyone care? I doubt it. Is it just narcissism? Probably. Alas.

That said — highlights, briefly, of the weekend:

Celebrated my brother’s birthday. Matthew turned 21. Jonathan turns 30 later this year. Both brother’s celebrating milestones this year; I’m 34. How dull is that? I got to see the niece and nephew again. Yay!

Cool stuff in the mail when I got home Friday. See post below.

Discovered that Matthew is in the latest issue of Popular Science, in a tiny picture. Very cool. Between that and book reviews, Jonathan is the only brother that hasn’t been in a major science or technology magazine in the past year. I’m sure our parents are proud of him anyway.

Went kayaking again Saturday with good friends. Had a good time. I’m really digging both kayaking and hiking, and wishing I’d been more open to outdoors activities in the past.

Went to my house-church Saturday night for the first time since June. It’d been too long. I am so so so blessed to have this church family. Very amazing how the discussion Saturday responded directly to what I’d heard in church in Tuscaloosa the Sunday before; my notes from the one flow directly into the other. God’s creative, you know?

Church on Sunday morning at Sojourn. My mom came; given the unlikeliness of her ever attending church in a brewery, a very very very sweet and loving gesture. They showed the video I was in, which was incredibly well done. Made me look good.

Read the last five days’ worth of newspapers, which I was behind on. I mention this only so I can use the newspaper tag again on this entry.

Mildly productive at home Sunday, but not nearly as much as I needed to be. This is becoming all too frequent.

Party last night for improv troupemate’s 30th birthday. Good time with friends.