You don't blog much, do you?

So here I am again. Seems that I went on a little hiatus from my blog there, but don't worry, you four or five poor bored souls who read my blog, I am still alive!

I know you probably expect some creative writing, but life has just gotten so interesting that I have to talk about it this time. I think my real life currently might be more interesting than anything creative I could come up with. At least to me.

Anyways, here's the update one me.

1. I still live in Idaho.

This is a constant source of shock to anyone who sees me on campus. Today after devotional I ran into three or four people who exclaimed "What are you doing here? I thought you graduated!"

I DID graduate.
Yes, I'm still here.
No, I guess I don't want to grow up.

To tell you the truth, though, the main reason I'm here is this:



2. My lovely girlfriend

Her name is Leisha Volmer. We've been dating for a little over 2 months now. We have a lot of fun together. She is really nice to me and goes out of her way to do things for me and I am so lucky to have her! I went away to Hawaii to visit my family and they thought I would stay there but she lured me back with her charm. You should meet her sometime. She's super cool.

Here's us after a particularly chilly mud fight at Lake Roosevelt in Washington. Oh yeah.





2. I have the coolest apartment ever.

I live in The Village now in Rexburg. It's community housing, and it's completely unfurnished. Consequently, I sleep on the floor on a mattress pad which Leisha kindly lent to me. I'm not sad that I don't have a bed. I like my mattress pad. It's comfortable.



I have a roommate, Daniel, who splits rent with me, and he has a dog named Rash. The dog is very peppy and kind of acts like a 2-year-old child on crack. He's fun to have around.

Anyways, I have a washing machine and dryer in my apartment, which I love. I have my own room, which i love. My roommate is very nice and we get along well. He has a couch and a TV and nice pictures up, and he lets me use his wireless, and he is clean. I really enjoy being in the apartment. It's just clean and nice and feels good.

3. Work.

I worked 2 weeks for A Spiderman Pest Control, but it was a fiasco. I guess I'm not cut out for that kind of work, the manual labor stuff.

Now I'm working at Melaleuca. It was a miracle really that I obtained that job... My roommate works there and he gave me the idea. Everything else fell into place within a week of quitting the aforementioned job. I am grateful to God for giving me this blessing and to Jack and Cesar and Daniel for their help and to Leisha for hers. So I'm looking forward to starting work June 13th and I think I will enjoy this job much more than the last one.

That's the main update on my life. In case you were wondering.

Until next time,

Matt

In case you didn't believe me

Freckles

small
brown
freckles
heralds of the sun
constellate upon your face
in May.
such a tasteful subtlety
from the Artist who created you
who planned for them to bloom
the day before
I sat close to you.

Inspiration

My favorite thing these days is a blank page;
a palette where my thoughts arrange themselves
in short ironic verses, or maybe
a stick-figure picture of my brother.
Sometimes I think white makes me hungry
and that's how I leave it all day
eating and wasting my time.
But the best days I have something coming,
and the whitewashed page fills with symbols
calling forth pictures and people
dressed in jeans, dresses, and suits--
Yes, these are the best days,
taking me from this homely study desk
to the place where all good thinkers go--
where Shakespeare lectures on the streets
and Thoreau has built his cabin;
where Petrarch, Confucius, and even Freud
sit chatting in lawn chairs discussing the weather.

Paint

My words are paint
dribbling from my mouth
on my shirt, staining it,
staining you.
A river of
dark blue
and sky blue
and denim
and teal--
from my lips to your ears
that gets in your hair
and runs down the back of your neck.
I paint on your clothes
and your skin like a canvas,
color your cheeks
and your silence--
then you answer with splashes
of yellow and red,
and we laugh shades of orange, purple and green
leaving their marks on the ceiling.

Abuelita

We were gathered together in the church
la familia, dressed in Sunday best and somber.
I saw her cold-looking sallow face
with its typical scowl
and her hands folded across her breast.
The priest was chanting in Latin
and everyone repeated the incantations,
the eerie drone echoing off the ceiling.
Usually Carlos and Lita were rowdy
laughing raucously as they clutched their cervesas
but today there were no cervesas, at least not now,
and nobody told any jokes.
I thought of her life, a complex tapestry of
homemade tortillas, staunchly ironed clothes
and grandchildren on her lap, whom she cared for
while their parents were out "living their lives";
how some of her daughters married alcoholics
and her husband occupied Hiroshima,
and how all she really wanted
was to leave this arid Utah valley
and go back home to México.
And I thought,
after all these years,
surrounded by us, her people
in the church she went to once a year
it must be nice to finally get some sleep.

Bringing my blog back to life

So after a long hiatus, I've decided that now I'm graduated and have some free time it's about time for me to bring the old blog back. Except this time around I'm going to try something new, and have it be more of a "creativity blog" where I can post poems and things that I create, instead of just blabbing about my day. But that's fun too. I don't know if anyone will read it and I don't care too much, but it just feels cool to have a blog.

A Year on an Airplane

Yesterday, on a plane, I sat next to this guy who looked about my age. We started talking and I found out he was born in Salt Lake. I asked him if any of his family was LDS and he said that they weren't, his family all went to the New Apostolic Church. This eventually gave way to a discussion of God, faith, prayer, and the Book of Mormon. He used to attend the New Apostolic Church, but has since left and involved himself in a movement known as skepticism. Skepticists believe solely in cold, hard evidence and the scientific method. He did not believe that things happen for a reason, but are merely a result of probability. He also believed that people who pray trick themselves into getting the answers they want. Before I had got on the plane, I was studying the creation of the world and read the following from Doctrine and Covenants section 88:

41 He [God] ^acomprehendeth all things, and all things are before him, and all things are round about him; and he is above all things, and in all things, and is through all things, and is round about all things; and all things are by him, and of him, even God, forever and ever.

42 And again, verily I say unto you, he hath given a ^alaw unto all things, by which they move in their ^btimes and their seasons;

43 And their courses are fixed, even the courses of the heavens and the earth, which comprehend the earth and all the planets.

44 And they give ^alight to each other in their times and in their seasons, in their minutes, in their hours, in their days, in their weeks, in their months, in their years—all these are ^bone year with God, but not with man.

45 The earth ^arolls upon her wings, and the ^bsun giveth his light by day, and the moon giveth her light by night, and the stars also give their light, as they roll upon their wings in their glory, in the midst of the ^cpower of God.

46 Unto what shall I liken these kingdoms, that ye may understand?

47 Behold, all these are ^akingdoms, and any man who hath ^bseen any or the least of these hath ^cseen God ^dmoving in his majesty and power.

I shared these verses with my friend and explained to him that I believe that all of God's creations testify that He is God and that He created them. I told him of my own experience praying about the Book of Mormon when I was ten, and how the answer I received, a warm, calm, assuring feeling which was at the same time powerful and clear, was from God and that He has confirmed it ever since. We did not see eye to eye on the matter of faith, but I am glad that I got to share with him my testimony. He told me he had dated an LDS girl in Oregon and that he had even been to church. It was an interesting experience.

Today I found this quote by Elder Boyd K. Packer:

"All things not only are not known but must not be so convincingly clear as to eliminate the need for faith. That would nullify agency and defeat the purpose of the plan of salvation.”