It’s quiet and loud, busy and peaceful as I sit outside Starbucks this afternoon. Caffeine from the Clover-brewed Ethiopian Yirgacheffe courses through me as the clock turns 6.
I’m reeling having watched The One I Love. Like, back on my heels reeling. Watched that at the Kentucky Theatre with a small matinee crowd, attempting to shut-down a few brain cells to prepare for crunch time ahead–crunch time at home, at work, etc. I wasn’t successful, the movie’s a mind-f@#%. Like, your mind rejects it, refusing to suspend disbelief, right as the main characters…have to suspend their disbelief.
Anyway, Chevy Chase area, Lexington Kentucky. This is exactly where I always wanted to live, some place like this, or the Bardstown road area of Louisville: Urban, but green, old but renewed. Cars exist here, but they’re optional…it’s very walkable, and people seem fit, especially on a glorious no-humidity day with Fall in the air.
Mostly, I just like listening and smelling. When I was out in Seattle in April, I enjoyed walking down to Pike Place market in the early morning (3 hour Jet lag, yay) and smelling and hearing the bustle, the life. You can see how writers of the Lost Generation had to have a place like Paris, a nexus of people and ideas, of cafes and places to meet to exchange ideas.
Seems like we’ve forgotten that, the agora, the forum, the square, the Sunday afternoon bandstand. Maybe America never had it, obsessed as we are with our manifest destiny to subdue a continent. We have important STUFF TO DO. “Shut up and get out of my way, buddy,” shouts our houses, cars, clothes, and our noses buried in our phones. “You” are not important. *I* am important.
We’ll find out some day we got that last part wrong. We were all important, to God. The “gift” of Neitzsche seems to be the pervasive belief that we’re not. The nihilism and chaos that’s resulted shames us all.
The world seems ready to blow itself apart more than usual: Russia and Ukraine read from Archduke Ferdinand’s script–or something worse. If every generation invents sex, we surely invent war, too. “We’ll look back and see that Malaysian Air 17 was the start of World War III,” a friend opined on Facebook. She’s looking more right by the day.
On my front, lots of goodness: I continue making my way through Cottrell’s The Faith Once for All. I’ve never had a systematic treatment of theology from the Ontological argument through a tour of doctrine, and this is my first foray at Tom LaHue’s suggestion. I’ve long be trying to reconcile freewill and God’s omniscience and Cottrell has the first convincing argument I’ve seen that’s not TULIP Calvinism or shackling God somehow.
At church, I’m taking a class on Apologetics with our music minister, Daniel Stephens. I often look for people who “geek out” on a topic, be it dentistry, optometry, or car repair. Like when you’re interviewing people, you like people with passion. Daniel gushes over philosophy and reason, to a degree I didn’t even see in the Philosophy profs in college. Class #1 was interesting, and I look forward to class 2.
* * *
Last, a bit of DIY: This week my wife announced our fridge was broken, registering ~60 degrees F on wednesday. All our food spoiled, but curiously the freezer was colder than ever, frosting over. We prepped to swallow purchase of a new fridge, but scheduled a call to an appliance tech anyway. He patiently explained that what we actually had was a frozen-over ventilation system from our freezer to our fridge.
“Has anyone left your fridge door open?” Why yes, the darling three-year-old before you, kind sir.
So basically, he reformatted my understanding of how refrigerators work…at least the mechanical kind. There’s one thermostat, and it lives in your fridge. There’s one compressor circuit and it lives in your freezer. There’s airflow between the two, and whenever the fridge gets too hot, the thermostat tells your freezer to kick on. However, there’s a catch: If the fridge stays open, it’s possible for the freezer to run so long as to frost-up the channels between them.
That’s exactly what happened to us. So, 30 minutes of steam-defrosting later, we have our fridge back, at 10% the cost of a new fridge. Tidbit: “This fridge will outlast any new one you buy. It’s completely mechanical. They made this fridge for 20 years. If you want to get rid of it, call me and I’ll take it.” Fellow seemed credible. Again: “Geek out” effect.