cameron/colby

Today is my father's birthday.  Or rather, it was...  It is now 7:50am. I called, but couldn't get a hold of him.  He is off in Morocco or Jordan or somewhere in transit, being the father that I love.  In honor of his birthday, I taught myself how to play some blues guitar.  I love jazz and the blues, and I know how to address a guitar, so it worked naturally.  I read last week in a friend's text that there is a certain scale for playing the Blues, a particular algorithm if you will.  And it's so true, I almost cried.  I want jazz to be one of those few things I will be unable to teach a computer to perform better than a person.  I love playing a song for someone who imagines I am following a set pre-planned pattern, only to know inside that it just came as I played it; which is from nowhere.  I'm not much of a musician, but my best songs come from nowhere -- out of some sort of intense passion or zen-like absence.

I read the book "Blue Like Jazz" today, and it gave me a bit of a new perspective as well.  I'd sum it up as the brutally honest and colorful confessions of a confused and experimental Christian writer, struggling to mesh his ego and his intellect with his religion.  My guess is, if you're a Christian, it will re-affirm your Christianity...and If you're not a Christian it will re-affirm your not-Christianity.  Either way, it gives you great psychological insight into the human condition and offers some inspiring lessons learned by the author despite his endearing weaknesses.

"I believe that the greatest trick of the devil is not to get us into some sort of evil, but rather to have us wasting time. That is why the devil tries so hard to get Christians to be religious." - Donald Miller, Blue Like Jazz

I have a good time swapping books with people I admire.  Titles that there's no chance we'd read otherwise.  It's a good life strategy to prevent narrow mindedness, and there is always the unexpected waiting.  Which is why I enjoy talking with people sometimes.

Lately, I have an intense desire to meet and communicate deeply with brilliant and interesting strangers who are very unlike myself in some important way.  That is, when I'm not turning off my phone and locking the doors so I can accomplish something.

For a calm and emotionally stable person, I can be a bit extreme.