Journal excerpt

January 27, 2010

Just listening to the theme songs form gladiator, or man on fire, brings tears. I am so easily stimulated by music…it literally transports you to another place…suddenly it is not homework, but rather the world in front of you. You are the character from this story, their life and their struggles are briefly at battle inside of your head…and you already know and accept the sacrifice immediately before you. You are riding over the sands of the dessert, justice being the wind at your back…if only life were an epic; everything is better with theme music. Is it a lie, all of it, when I hum, am I fooling myself into an extended reality? Even if this is the case, I believe that I will embrace it. A beautiful lie, because it is not fleeting, but lays seed in your soul and this will rest there and fade away so gradually that one does not notice its disappearance. Perhaps I am not an adrenaline junkie but rather an emotion and borrowed honor junkie.

Wherever you are future darling self, Ari, listen to the song 


‘Rome is the light’ by Hans Zimmerman.

I change all self-criticism into praise for god- this is something beautiful and not cheap, this incredible gift of empathy that allows us to embrace other’s circumstances so fully that we actually take unto ourselves or even into ourselves the state of another person. This is why music calls forth so much…maybe it is something platonic which resides within each of us, not merely the knowledge of the world, but the world itself; it’s people, their stories, their emotions, their pain, and their triumph. Perhaps reading, and listening, and watching, what the world calls entertainment is really a process of awakening what is inside… the entirety of humanity. Mayhaps each of us is really all of us, and all of life is simply waking that up and expanded ourselves so as to encompass the awakened nations within.

‘Battle in Chains’ – Hans Zimmerman

I am America, but I am also Africa, and Europe, and Asia, and Peru, I am the old woman who wrote in her journal with a shaking hand, and I am her grandchildren who read it with curiosity. I am the person I love, I am my family, I am the person who scares me, who intimidates me, who annoys me, whom I am curious about, I am all… we are all made by the same creator and of similar substance, perhaps this was His intention. As heretical as it may be I am enamored by the idea that within each of us is a divine spark, mayhaps this is what is drawn in… like a small flicker drawn not only towards it’s source but also towards the other flames. Heat seeking at all times.

We see and are enamored by the beauty of God within others and within music and art and nature. It is the brief contact and the aching satisfaction of coming as close to it as we can, forever on the urge but never fully satisfied, for we cannot immerse in it…only that in heaven… all we can do here on earth is press as closely to the other flames as possible. I think this is why we love, an attempt to merge two flames, to hold each other as close as possible in effort to be a brighter light, to follow Him more closely.

If this visual is so, then think of what worship must be, truly, so many small flames pressing together in homage to the source, drawing near to God and surely as we draw closer to Him, the more fervently does our flicker tremble sensing our own weakness, yet beauty in that we have some claim to the roaring fire that is god.

I pray that I might experience this fire.

There is a power and a beauty in our humanness, weakness as well, but we are stronger, and brighter together.

‘Duduk of north’ –Hans Zimmerman