My mission call could possibly come today or tomorrow. The sooner the better. But it will come when it comes, no earlier. I don’t think I really like waiting. That reminds me of a passage in Thomas Mann’s The Magic Mountain on waiting. That book’s discussions on time are particularly fascinating. I especially liked the metaphor of the “silent sister” — a thermometer with no markings on it. Mann compared time to a silent sister; we try to fit time into our manmade hours and minutes and seconds and days and months and years, and yet in reality it’s more like a silent sister. I’ve been noticing that a lot lately — time is far more fluid than I ever realized. This past year has shot by faster than any previous year. When I was younger, the days went by very slowly, and I seem to have spent my entire childhood in waiting. But now I wish it would slow down. Objectively, of course, one second now is exactly as long as one second ten years ago. Or is it? Einstein’s theory of relativity comes to mind. I know that to me time is dynamic, doesn’t sit still, is hard to catch. But that has always seemed purely subjective. Is it possible that perhaps there is more reality to it than I give it credit for? Here’s a quote from C.S. Lewis I found some time ago:

If you are really a product of a materialistic universe, how is it you don’t feel at home there? Do fish complain of the sea for being wet? Or if they did, would that fact itself not strongly suggest that they had not always been, or would not always be, purely aquatic creatures? Notice how we are perpetually surprised at Time. (“How time flies! Fancy John being grown-up and married! I can hardly believe it!”) In heaven’s name, why? Unless, indeed, there is something in us which is not temporal. [A Severe Mercy, Letter to Sheldon Vanauken (23 December 1950), p. 93]

I do believe in the immortality of the soul, of course, and so this may merely be an “itching” to get back to the timeless state we once lived in and will live in again. I can feel the makings of an essay here.

I’ve been reading Leo Buscaglia’s Love. The modern world makes love sound all mushy and corny, like great-uncle Bob at the family reunions whom you always try to avoid. And yet that’s not at all how it should be.

Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets. (Matthew 22:37–40)

Without love, life is meaningless. That’s what life is all about — relationships with other people. Yes, one can live in a cave all one’s life, secluded and cut off from the human race by choice. But that’s not living. One may as well be dead. Any fulfillment in life comes through caring for others, through loving. Riches don’t bring fulfillment. No material possessions could ever come close to it. Life is not to be found in selfish pursuits. Life is to be found in love.

By this I of course do not just mean romantic love. I’m talking about charity, the pure love of Christ. The kind of love that makes you want to help another, to bear one another’s burdens, to mourn with those that mourn, to comfort those that stand in need of comfort (Mosiah 18:8–9). Trying to face life alone is intimidating. We need each other. If we try to go it alone, we’re doomed to failure. Man is a social creature.

My, today seems to be a day for waxing philosophical. I don’t write in this blog nearly as much as I’d like to. Today I discovered the online diaries of Alan Cox (Linux kernel hacker) and Telsa Gwynne (Alan’s wife). I’d forgotten how much I enjoy reading journals and diaries and blogs. This is why I’m going to be a historian. I think finding those diaries was the impetus for this rather long entry. Now that school is out I can spend much more time writing. It’s in my blood.

Speaking of writing, a few summers ago I had aspirations to become a writer, so I read all the books I could on the subject and started freewriting a lot and doing other writing projects (online groups, etc.). I’ve been keeping a journal for ten years now and with that plus all the other writing I do, I can now write very easily. I hardly ever have writer’s block. All I have to do is sit down and the words start coming. Sometimes this is a problem (the pink Energizer bunny comes to mind), but usually it turns out okay. At any rate, I’m going to start writing some essays to put up on here. And I need to start on those tutorials…

Last night I spent two hours at the piano, composing a piece. It’s been over a year since I did anything like that. Wow. I’ve only done a page and a half so far, but it’s going well, and hopefully I’ll finish it today or tomorrow. I’m going to try to get Cheese Tracker to compile so that I can put together a small MOD. A month or two ago I tried to compose a piece using SoundTracker, but it didn’t work out well. I’m not sure if that’s because I just wasn’t in a moment of inspiration or what. At any rate, when I finish this piece, I’ll enter it in with Denemo (I downloaded version 0.5.9 yesterday and found to my delight that it finally loads files again without segfaulting) and make it beautiful with Lilypond. To do that last bit I’ll need to research TeX fonts and figure out how to get the results I want.