"...so kiss me and smile for me, tell me that you'll wait for me..."

In about 8 hours I'm heading to Salt Lake International airport to catch a flight that will take me away to Moscow for a bunch of months. Naturally I've been listening to John Denver's Leaving on a Jet Plane to psych myself up for it. But it's not working as well as I hoped. There are some things that have always been hard for me--leaving is one of them. It's always been like that. I'm not really big on change.

I've got this thing where I get attached to people really easily. Sometimes I try to not get attached but some people are sometimes so attractive--gravitationally, not necessarily physically--that my efforts sometimes are sometimes in vain. And that's a lot of sometimes. It adds up. Then, before I realize what's been going on, I'm all wrapped up in a bunch of people that have no clue that I feel this way. I'm really good at keeping it hidden since I never really open up. These people I speak of are the ones that make saying goodbye hard. God bless them. Hard goodbyes are some of the things I like. I even said a goodbye to my favorite bench on campus.

Don't get me wrong, I'm looking forward to my travels. It's going to be quite the experience. I'll see to that. All I'm trying to say is that I love that I love some places and people enough to miss them when I'm gone. Even if it is only for a bunch of months.

Some Things I Like

• Yellow sunsets (makes me feel like I'm in a sepia tone photograph)
• When you can see the moon during the day
• When spare change from the front pocket of my backpack turns into an orange juice
• People that laugh super loud in movie theaters
• Knowing someone so well you can hear their thoughts
• Singing alone in the car so loud you lose your voice
• Singing with your friend in the car so loud you lose your voice
• Parks and their benches
• When silence is ok
• When your iPod plays the perfect song all by itself
• Getting a text from someone you're thinking about
• Keeping other people's secrets
• When it rains and the sun is shining
• When it rains anyways
• When free songs on iTunes are really good
• When you hear and like a song months before the radio beats it into an early grave
• When little kids act like grown ups
• When grown ups act like little kids
• High heels and when girls are bad at walking in them
• Reflections of me. Its cool. That's what I look like
• Deep philosophical conversations that only make a difference to the people having them, but that's enough
• Eavesdropping on those conversations
• Changing shirts 3 times in the morning cuz somehow it matters
• Having awkward conversations just loud enough to make people around you uncomfortable
• When you lean forward in church and the girl next to you just starts tickling your back
• When a friend asks you for help
• When a girl looks at you and smiles
• The way my backyard smells after the lawn gets mowed
• When someone cares about you so much that they stop being polite
• When someone that you think doesn't like you or know who you are actually does like you and know who you are
• Liking someone so much you can't put your words together the way you'd like to
• Saying the perfect thing
• Sunburns
• People that dress like its the 20's or 30's or 40's again
• Driving with the windows down in a summer rainstorm
• Knowing they would really like you if they knew you
• When the more you get to know someone the more wonderful they become
• A smile you can't help
• Deja Vu
• Dark haired girls with brown boots up to their knees
• Blonde girls with huge sunglasses
• People that forget the punch line to the joke they're telling
• Not being able to tell your own joke cuz its way too funny and you're laughing way too hard
• Seeing my friends in plays and performances
• When tears and laughter happen together
• Knowing my eyes are my eyes and only I can see what I see, but still wanting to share it
• When other people share what they see through their eyes
• Trying to think about everything and only being able to think of one thing
• Trying to think about only one thing and thinking about everything else instead
• When old people still hold hands
• When the wind blows fall leaves around your ankles on a sunny afternoon and you feel like something great is about to happen
• Making awkward eye-contact with a random stranger and noticing how quickly I look away
• Learning knew words
• Fedoras
• Moments when your life feels like a movie, except its your life so it feels real, and realizing that things like that really do happen
• The way my Grandpa's eyebrows stick out at weird angles
• Listening to his stories
• How songs and memories sometimes are inseparable
• When goodbyes are hard

To be continued someday....

"all I've got is a photograph, but it's not enough..." - Def Leppard

I spent most of my summer working for an online dating website while managing to stay single. That deserves some sort of recognition, I think.  I came away from this job with two things: a disgust for online dating and a whole lot of stories about weird online daters.
But that isn't the reason that I am posting today. This post comes about because of a picture I had to approve. Oh, did I mention that the best part of my job was approving the pictures people try and post on the site? Well it was. I saw all sorts of awful and great things. The picture I'm referring to was both awful and great at the same time. Sort of like a pizza milkshake.
So there I was on a bright summer's afternoon just clicking through the pics and making sure they were appropriate for a christian-oriented dating site, when a picture of a middle-aged man in a tuxedo came across the screen. There wasn't anything about his appearance that stood out to me. It was his caption: "I wish I would have smiled."
The man in the picture struck me as the kind of man that wouldn't put a whole lot of thought into captioning his photos. In fact I am willing to bet a Jamocha shake from Arby's that it was the first thing that came to his mind. His face in the picture wasn't angry, but he didn't look happy either. I have to imagine that he is a happy person in general, just because I doubt that angry people regret not smiling in pics.
So there I sat on a bright summer's afternoon, with my mind occupied all of a sudden with a bunch of questions. Why regret a non-existent smile? Would he still regret that smile never happening if the picture was never taken? Is it the picture that makes the moment matter?

Then I started to wax poetic and began imagining God developing film from his Nikon SLR Justice & Mercy edition with an Eternal Zoom lens [not an actual camera] and posting them up on some giant wall in Heaven. What would my captions be like? Probably a little more serious than I wish I would have smiled.
I know that a couple of mine would read like this: I wish I would have laughed. I wish I would have called that girl. I wish I would have cried. I wish I would have prayed. I wish I would have lived.  I wish I would have just told the truth. I wish I would have spoken, even when not spoken to. I wish I would have been myself.

Well, if God really does have a Nikon SLR Justice & Mercy with Eternal Zoom then there are gonna be a lot of pics up on that wall that I will wish I could un-tag myself from. Except I doubt Heaven has an 'un-tag' button.