random

other

I have climbed highest mountains
I have run through the fields
Only to be with you

I have run, I have crawled
I have scaled these city walls
These city walls
Only to be with you

But I still haven’t found what I’m looking for

I have kissed honey lips
Felt the healing in her fingertips
It burned like a fire, This burning desire

I have spoke with the tongue of angels
I have held the hand of a devil
It was warm in the night, I was cold as a stone

But I still haven’t found what I’m looking for

I believe in the Kingdom Come
Then all the colors will bleed into one
Bleed into one
But yes I’m still running

You broke the bonds
And you loosed the chains
Carried the cross
Of my shame
Oh my shame
You know I believe it

But I still haven’t found what I’m looking for
But I still haven’t found what I’m looking for

funny, other

Here in Guatemala

1. Possums eat chickens, and in return folks eat possums. You know how possums love to play dead? Sometimes they’ll decide to play dead after they’re caught and clubbed. Then sometimes they come back to life after being skinned. Can you say angry-zombie-possum?

2. Common courtship process:
i. Boy and girl meet
ii. Boy decides he likes the girl, drives up to her house sometime after one in the morning and cranks a love song on his stereo for some indeterminate amount of time
iii. Girl goes to window and swoons for this indeterminate period of time, or goes to window to glare briefly then goes back to bed.
iv. Depends on the result of iii: (negative) the boy repeats step iii until he goes back to step i, or (positive) the boy and girl start to date.
v. After some time of going out, they become “novios,” something pretty similar  to being boyfriend/girlfriend. Then after being novios for a while, they get married.

…at any point in the process, either the boy or the girl can tell the other that they do or don’t like him/her; often neither this event nor whether or not it’s reciprocated generally affect any of the five steps.

3. It is not a meal if there are not tortillas. Literally, like it doesn’t count as a meal without them–if you eat what we United-States-ians would usually call a meal, and it’s without tortillas, you actually get to eat another meal (with tortillas, of course) because the first time around didn’t count. This is pretty awesome, although may bode ill for my health if I don’t play a ton of soccer…and number four…

4. Soccer is different. It’s like…eating a meal or walking to work. I’m used to “oh cool, yeah lets go play soccer!” Here it’s not really something to get stoked about. Not that people don’t love it…they really, really really love to play soccer…it’s simply a part of life. Just about everybody has a brother who’s played semi-pro, or plays semi-pro.

5. In the U.S. if we’re going to make a gesture to signify the person we’re talking about, we generally point with the hand or nod with the head. What’s the most common way to do this here? A kissing-like-gesture with the mouth. This one took a while to figure out.

6. They drink lots of fruit punch. It’s very delicious and very specific: apple and pineapple juice with a bit of sugar and cinnamon, only served hot and with little pieces of coconut floating in it.

7. Coffee’s like this: brewed light, heavily sugared and always with sweet bread to dip. Once in a blue moon somebody in a restaurant will order coffee with milk–beyond that, coffee with any sort of dairy product mixed in is purely out of the question.

8. There are tons of motorcycles. They all–
1. Look different
2. Have nearly the exact same Chinese chassis and engine

9. There’s more of life and death and heaven and hell than you can shake a stick at.

ideas

I love stories–I love to tell them, to hear them, to think about them. Huge bonus points for stories told around a campfire or while having beers with good friends. That’s the majority of what goes up here on my blog, stories.

To me, storytelling is a pure and unique thing. It’s an act, but really it’s not acting at all; all stories are always stretched, but yet somehow within nearly every story is more truth than a old veteran mathematician can shake a stick at.

This isn’t storytelling though, this is a personal note; there won’t be a “this may or may not be” statements at the end.

A few quick and relevant facts:
-I believe in god; to label myself, “christian” fits best. Important note: Jesus wasn’t a Christian! Oh snap.
-If my faith was just a little bit less puny, I could tell a tree to walk and it would. I could probably levitate, too. Yeah-huh, levitate. But my faith is really, really really small, so I can’t do that stuff–but I think that’s ok for now.
-Jesus is important regardless of what one thinks of what he said. He changed the entire world for all foreseeable time in less time than Obama will have for his first term.

Note 1
Why the do we Christians always pray for bad things to not happen? From all I’ve seen and known, we predominately pray for bad things to not happen. Sure, we pray for good things, for safe travels and…wait…that’s actually praying for a bad thing to not happen. How about for financial stability–oh nevermind, that too. Dear god in heaven above, I pray that you would help my marriage continue strong and health–oh yup, there it is again. What about cancer? We always pray for cancer to be cured. Same thing again…but who am I to look at a man in the middle of life’s journey and tell him it’s silly to pray that his wife doesn’t die this weekend? I’m confused.

What’s a good thing to pray for then? What’s an honest and good thing to talk to god about?

Where’s my treasure, and where’s yours?

That’s what I’m going to pray for, for now.

Note #2 coming shortly.

other, stories

Today I rode through a little town in the middle of nowhere in a developing country in Central America on an old dirtbike, to my desk inside of a warehouse-building-turned-office.

photography

This community, Maxbal (spoken Mash-bal) is a two and a half hour rough-road (anything without low geared 4wd can’t make it) drive away from the town I live in.

This is the first group of students, ever, to graduate from 9th grade–the community was proud.

The teachers had the students go out into the soccer field to take their picture while the game continued.

Throw in
Soccer and school
other

Well, here it goes: this is my first whack at building a website.

Rough draft:

http://www.porchcoffee.org/lifeandhope/Home.html

The buttons don’t work (unless you’re an IE-user), there are no pages but the main page and the two boxes below the slideshow have absolutely zero format/style/font/zing/content. Ok Kelvin, fine, maybe it’s not absolutely zero, but it’s dang close. And with respect to being edgy, hip and cool (beautiful examples: Amnesty International, RED or Kiva), it’s simply not even an attempt.

But it’s a website, which is a new thing in dave world :). Also, for its audience the only need is easily available content. Once we here have made some orders-of-magnitude epic growth, then it’ll be time for a slick website to draw in more publicity and viewers. For now, I think it’s time to go eat a delicious two dollar lunch of carne asada, Guatemalan veggies and an orange.

Edit:
The buttons work now. Done son, wOOt, boomshicka-wow-wow and all that jazz, I’m pretty stoked that they work now. Apparently the slideshow div was messing with the button bar (?). A switch from relative positioning to absolute positioning did the trick. It’s probably a hack way of doing things (I don’t know enough about webpage code to even know if something’s hack or not, haha), and I don’t really understand why it worked, but it worked and (I’m pretty sure) it works in chrome and IE and firefox. Close enough.

funny, stories

Guatemala is a land rich in culture and history. There is war and violence, poverty and pain, pride and love and more variety than you can shake a stick at; its anthropology is deep and rich.

With this deep and rich anthropology comes a particular thing: you generally can’t tell a Guatemalan by hair color or skin tone–there’s lots of variation. There’s only one quick way to tell if someone’s not of Guatemalan heritage: eyes, brown eyes. There are immigrants, African or North American, but they’re not too common.

Today was absolutely stunning. This weekend was a national holiday weekend for Guatemala, along with many other Catholic countries of the world. My unofficially-adopted Guatemalan Uncle, Profe Jorge, invited me to travel with him for the weekend. Not wanting to be stuck alone in Barillas, I traveled with him. Today we went to Santiago Sacatepequez, which I guess is the go-to place to see the celebration of Dia de Todos los Santos: they have an absolutely wild and beautiful crazy kite-festival celebration in the cemetery each year. Of course, there’s also delicious and cheep food aplenty.

We parked about a half mile away from the downtown area and began to walk. Not five minutes later we passed a pretty blonde and blue-eyed girl walking the other way. “Well that’s curious” I thought to myself–a little part of me inside said “hey Dave! There’s a good chance she speaks English. Go talk to her!” It’d been a long time since I’d talked with a pretty girl in English. “Nah, that’s silly, I won’t bother” I thought to myself. We kept walking, and a few minutes later made it to the downtown area.

Not more than ten minutes later, I saw a group of three that didn’t quite look Guatemalan, but I wasn’t sure–they were at least thirty feet away and I couldn’t see their faces with the way they were standing. Two of them, a guy and a gal, were dressed somewhat tourist-ly. The third, another gal in a rose colored shirt, looked less like a tourist then the other two but didn’t seem dressed like a local. All three were fair-skinned, so I figured they were probably not from these parts…but I couldn’t see their eyes so I didn’t know. I should also add that (even though I don’t ever think think much of how a girl looks without having seen her face and smile) the gal in the rose colored shirt, she looked pretty.

Just as I was turning away, something caught her attention and she turned her head and glanced over her shoulder. I saw her face and her eyes and my jaw dropped. I was mildly paralyzed for a moment or two, jaw dropped. Think of that one time when you were walking along and noticed that the sun was getting low. You turn to look at the sunset behind you and see the most beautiful thing you’d ever seen in your life, and your jaw actually drops and you gasp a little bit. Yup, it was like that. This girl had the prettiest eyes.

A few moments passed and my mind was still in “pause” mode. In all my life I’ve never seen a girl with eyes like her eyes. This girl’s prettiest eyes were somehow a glimpse of her self, a little bit of curiosity and contentedness and happiness. I don’t remember if she was smiling at the moment, but I do remember that her eyes were.

“Ok Dave. You need to go talk to this girl, right now” I told myself with conviction.

I didn’t.

Half an hour later I knew what I had to do.

I wrote my phone number on a piece of paper and held it in my pocket. My hopes, jittery, unsure and unsecure, written on a little piece of paper in my pocket. Eight digits. Maybe by some wild providence, maybe by a miracle or other act of God I would get a second chance. Is it okay to pray to God to get to talk with a pretty girl? I wasn’t sure, but I might’ve prayed just a tiny bit. One hour passed, I didn’t see her again. Two hours passed, I didn’t see her again. We left the cemetery where the incredible kite-festival celebration was and began the slow return to the downtown area–the road was packed with people.

We were walking on the right side of the road and there she was on the other side. Somehow I’d missed her when we passed and now she was a ways up the road from us. I saw her and my mind started to spin like a wobbly top. Shoot shoot shoot, she’s all the way over there. I can’t get over there in time, there are too many people. She was a long ways away, and I would’ve had to suddenly take off  running and pushing, chasing through a very dense crowd and–

“Ok Dave, you know what? You missed one chance at what might become the most beautiful thing that’ll happen in your entire life and you’re about to loose your second chance because you don’t want to get pushy in a crowd. Man up Dave, man up.”

I threw myself into the crowd, people glaring at me left and right. One man cuffed me in the back of the head as I stumbled by him. Well, ok..I may have actually crashed straight into him when I was acrobatically avoiding body-checking an old woman. I got close to the girl with the prettiest eyes, close enough for her to hear me.

The crowd was noisy, I had to almost shout: “Excuse me! Miss!”

She turned and looked around, only mildly confused, saw me and said with a smile: “Why hello! Another gringo!”

“You have the most wonderful eyes and smile I’ve ever seen!”

She looked at me, eye contact for a moment that seemed longer than a moment, and with her smile said: “and you do too, chico!”

I just about lost my balance again, but recovered and reached over the sea of people between her and I, the piece of paper in my hand, that scrap of paper with my hopes and thumping heart scribbled on it, 8 little numbers.

She stood up on her toes, reached and took the piece of paper, glanced at it and slipped it in her pocket. The crowd had gotten noisier. I shouted my name to her over the noise, and she shouted hers to me. She turned to keep walking, but then paused for a moment to glance over her shoulder and wink at me.

I definitely nearly lost my balance again.

The rest, as they say, is history.

Every single bit of this story is true, all the way up to the part where I saw her again.

The End.

——–

*I don’t know much of genetics or anthropology, but I’ll hazard a guess anyways. The indigenous people have brown eyes, so maybe in the world of eye-color-genes the brown gene is most dominant and the others are recessive.

other

I left Seattle last tuesday at 10:30pm ish, arrived at Barillas late friday night. Here’s a list of things that I’ve done since stepping off the plane in Guatemala City.

One of them is … FALSO! As the old song goes:

One of these things
Isn’t like the others

1. Eaten at Pizza Hut
2. Eaten at Pollo Campero
3. Played soccer..while having absolutely no spanish-soccer-vocabulary at all (with the exception of “GOALLL!”)
4. Made italian food for dinner
5.  Driven country highways and a little town at nighttime, dodging people, boulders and buses
6.  Not gotten sick from anything…with the exception of the oatmeal I accidentally dumped italian seasoning into. Mmmmm yum.
7. Watched a truck drive sideways (well, not completely, but pretty close to it. That rear axle was seriously out of wack.)
8. Taken ~500 photos
9. Used facebook
10. Acquired 5 (female) body guards. Yessir, one very safe gringo.
11. Read The Old Man and the Sea by Hemmingway
12. Switched to using Google Guatemala. I don’t mind it, but it’s not really by my own volition. Google is very persistent about it.
13. Become…EL MATADOR DE INSECTOS DE MALARIA (yeah you Guatemalan mosquitoes, you heard that right. BE AFRAID.)

other

PACKING/CLEANING/THROWING-STUFF-AWAY!

There are a few things I’ve been working on getting written these past few weeks and I may try to get one or two up before Tuesday. Maybe I’ll post one from Miami (layover on the way to Guatemala City)? Here’s a rough list:

1. The salvation of a century old Bohemian gypsy violin
2. Football (yes, I’m using USA-English here. Pigskin, first downs and hail mary passes, that football)
3. Old hearts breaking
4. The surreality of reality-setting-in
5. Batch of film pictures
6.  Three languages every soul speaks
7. Facebook, and more importantly why I won’t be using it for a while
8. Why math and music are legit and photography rarely is
9. Coffee-mug-problems
10. A bittersweet farewell letter to two bicycles
11. Why I believe what I believe about life, the universe and everything (that one’s a humdinger. I really want to git’er done though, it’s long overdue)
12. Stitched-up panoramic photos
13. The most powerful lesson I’ve ever learned from a coworker
14. My short lived MLS soccer career (well..um..not really. but kinda.)
(Edit: two more)
15. Film vs. Digital
16.  What it’s like to fly away from the city I’ve lived in for all of my 22 years (another humdinger)

Shoot, that list is longer than I thought it’d be (and there are yet more rough drafts laying around, too). Fourteen things–I’ll aim to finish them all by November. *crosses fingers*

stories

My friend died a year ago.

The phone call I received at 8:30am one year ago lasted less than twenty words, and it’s etched deep and forever in my heart. I can’t say much more–I wrote about it some months ago, and what I wrote then for memorial day was all I had to say, and still is all I have to say, about that day and that phone call.

After an IED claimed his body and life here on earth, it was months before I could sleep right. Nightmares? No, and I thank God for that. I honestly don’t know if I could’ve handled nightmares without spiraling downwards with utterly crippled emotions and mind. I simply couldn’t sleep right. I would try to stay at school and do homework, but couldn’t focus; I don’t mean that I wouldn’t, or didn’t want to..literally I could not focus. Months passed, and than one night I slept and woke up rested.

That was the single most bittersweet morning I’ve known in my life so far.

Some time later, one night after a long week and one particularly long day, I was still awake in the early morning, really troubled.

Joe believed and understood more than I do and likely ever will who God is, what redemption is, and the both heart-crushing and soul-saving beauty of the death of God himself, in human form as the carpenter’s son. I knew that Joe was in a better place.

Somehow I didn’t have peace about his death though. “Why the hell wasn’t that me?” I would ask. I could’ve joined the army, I could well have been in that Stryker instead of him. He was married and wanted to help troubled kids after he finished in the army. Joe White was larger than life.

I didn’t have peace.

That night, restless and painful, I sat on the deck stairs looking up at the stars as the wind spoke through the trees, and peace came.

Peace came.

Like the small wave that reaches just further than the rest, to where you’re standing, cool fresh salty water splashes over the tops of your feet cleaning off the sand, and it comes far enough past your heels to even wash away the footprints behind you.

Peace came.

Joe loved and he loved with more depth and soul and power than most folks will ever imagine could be..except for the folks that knew him. Those who knew him knew that there must’ve been something bigger, something else. It was something more, oh you bet it was something more: it was god. Full, real love–something so damn big that it doesn’t fit in this universe, but sometimes when someone actually realizes it, gets it, and decides to live by that, when you meet and come to know one of them, you catch a glint of this light, a blinding beautiful shimmer. That was Joe. His life shone with a glimpse of eternity.

I can’t write anything else, but I want to put something else here: notes he wrote. I copied these off of his facebook account, and they’re some of the most moving things I’ve read in my life–because he poured himself into what he wrote, and he had a lot of soul to pour into things. Some of them are also some of the funniest things I’ve read in my life.

I’m going to have a Rockstar, today, for Joe. He always had one in his hand–everybody’s got their vices, his was Rockstar. At the end of the day was it even a vice? I’m not sure, but I don’t think so. You should have one for him today, too.

—

BOB! go to sleep.
Tuesday November 18 2008

at first i considered him a mouse problem (i’m assuming he’s a dude mouse because i’m uncomfortable with the thought of sharing the room i get naked in with a female). anyway anyone (even if it is a mouse) who steals cookies that my girlfriend makes for me is a problem. but he just helped himself to them like his mother never taught him manners. so i trapped him under a pillow one night and punched it as hard as i could (it was on my couch and i’d rather get rid of a couch pillow then have mouse guts all over my hand.) i heard something pop and thought it was the mouse but i’m pretty sure it was just my knuckles now because when i lifted the pillow he was no where to be seen. i took it as a sign to leave him alone (well more like i didn’t want him thinking i was a problem and bite my johnson off while i was sleeping at night… well sleeping anytime really i’m not sure why i put at night.. whatever. i have serious ADD) so i named him bob and told him to help himself to MY cookies. i’m such a nice guy. i’m sure bob’s forgiven me for trying to turn him into mouse sauce with my fist. at least i hope he has. i am sharing my cookies after all.

—

Simple?
Monday April 7 2008

God is good. God is merciful. God is faithful. and God is love. sometimes it’s just that simple. everything else is only matters for the brief moment it is relevant and then disappears for the rest of God’s eternity.

photography

This hung out in the “photo” page for a while, it’s time to let it stick for good.

Adidas propped up on the train-ride home
funny, stories

(from a few weeks ago)

Observation #1: when sleepy, it is very easy to misplace things and very hard to find them.

Observation #2: coffee helps this. It helps a lot.

…now I’m off to go slog around the office to find where I left my coffee mug.

This may take a while.

ideas, other

It seems that in Western culture (well–Seattle culture, the only culture I’ve lived in) that us people–humans–we define ourselves by three main things, in varying proportions:

1. What we do (hobbies/sports maybe)
2. What we make/contribute (could be nine-to-five?)
3. What we own

I’m not sure what to think about that, more will follow. I have this knee jerk reaction that I’m either missing something, or that there’s some wrinkle in the way things work, and there should be something more to how folks..ah..well…are.

ideas

“There’s always that one guy [in the boxing club] who’s willin’ to run..willin’ to run hard. That guy’s gonna win.”
-Coach B.

Note: you don’t have to watch out for that guy if you are that guy.